Sophia found it hard to breathe.
Her little suitcase sat near the man’s feet.
“When can I come home?” Sophia asked, as her mother pulled away.
Heather blinked at her, more tears streaming down her face. She seemed unable to speak.
“Best if we get on the road, Sophia,” the man said. “We have a long drive.”
“And the sheriff may be back,” Tim grumbled.
He grabbed Sophia and hugged her hard.
“Be strong, Soph,” he murmured.
Sophia hovered in the doorway staring into the huge veranda. A maroon carpeted staircase curved up from gleaming marble floors. Above the foyer hung a glistening chandelier, sparkling with hundreds of tiny lit bulbs. It reminded Sophia of a giant spider with a thousand glittering eyes.
The man, Andrew Porter, turned toward her. He offered her another smile of encouragement and beckoned her onward.
“It’s okay, Sophia,” he said kindly. “Your father was my best friend. We go all the way back to your age. A shame he passed, and I’m right sorry to have missed his funeral. Might have made this a little easier.” He gestured to the house. “I want to welcome you to my home, to your new house.”
“This is a house?” Sophia whispered. Her huge eyes tried to take it all in, walls climbing into dark crevices, vases and paintings and the aroma of overripe flowers. White statues with twisted faces and blank eyes watched her.
Sophia burst into tears before she could clamp the emotion back.
Suddenly she understood. Her father was dead, and her mother and two brothers were gone. She would never run her hands along Jasper the barn cat’s smooth back or feed breakfast scraps to their six chickens. Gone were humid nights on the porch listening to the crickets and the hoot owls and the bull frogs sing her to sleep. She would no longer feel her mother’s warm, callused fingers carefully brushing through the tangles of her hair while she sat in the wash basin. Sophia‘s little alcove behind the wash room where she snuck off to read books would sit empty. Gone was the closet that still held her daddy’s clothes where she laid and smelled the sweat and work of his days in the field even though he’d been in the ground for nine months.
Her legs trembled, and she spun toward the door, ready to run, but Andrew surrounded her with thick arms and the scent of some foreign cologne that made her eyes water. His stiff suit pressed close to her face, the fabric strange and dark. He shushed her and picked her up as if she were a baby and not a thirteen-year-old girl.
He carried her into an adjoining room and laid her on a stiff little sofa. She cried against an itchy pillow as the man, the stranger, rubbed her back and told her again and again that it would be okay.
Sophia sat in Andrew and Ruth Porter’s enormous parlor and tried to look anywhere except at Ruth, Mrs. Porter. Hands tucked beneath her thighs, palms sweating a halo into her dress, she stared out the giant window to the grounds beyond.
If she cupped her hands around her eyes and blotted out the room, she would only see the rolling expanse of trees and bright flowery bushes. Then she could almost believe she had walked into town to sit by the mail office or the library.
She had not been whisked away in the night by a strange man she’d never met, laid wide awake in a huge bed listening to the creaks and groans of the house, and cried an endless stream of tears for her mother, her father and her brothers.
Ruth watched her with a pinched, unhappy expression that made Sophia question the state of her dress and the dirt beneath her fingernails. It was her best dress, Daddy’s funeral dress, but the day of travel followed by a night sleeping in it left it slack and wrinkled. Her blonde hair, in braids when she left, hung mostly unravelled on her shoulders.
Ruth, Mrs. Porter, sat stiff like a broom with her hands in her lap. Her fingers, laced together, appeared to be clenching so tight that her knuckles looked white and hard.
Andrew walked into the room holding a clear glass filled with amber liquid. He took a sip, kissed Ruth lightly on the temple, and sat in a chair near a small table that held an ivory chess set. Ruth narrowed her eyes at the chair, as if she’d expected him to sit next to her, but he appeared not to notice.
Sophia smiled at Andrew, Mr. Porter, and then abruptly at her feet when she felt Mrs. Porter’s eyes boring into her.
“I know this is a big change, Sophia,” Andrew started.
“A change!” Ruth scoffed. “An intrusion!”
“Ruth,” Andrew warned in a voice that silenced his angry wife. “Should I speak to Sophia alone?”
Ruth glared at him but shut her mouth.
“I won’t bore with you the adult stuff,” Andrew began again. “Only that your mother and I agreed it was in your best interest to leave your farm for a while.”
“How long?” Sophia asked, praying he would say a few days, a week at most.
“A pretty long time,” he said. “Small towns have long memories, Sophia. What happened to that little girl…”
“Rosemary,” Sophia interrupted.
“Didn’t your mother teach you not to interrupt your elders?” Ruth snapped.
Andrew glowered at her.
“It’s okay, honey,” Andrew told Sophia. “You have questions and that’s okay. Yes, her name was Rosemary. What happened to Rosemary was a horrible tragedy, but it wasn’t your fault.”
“And how do you know that?” Ruth interjected, nearly rising out of her chair with the admonition.
Andrew stood and strode angrily to his wife.
“Please join me in other room. Excuse us, Sophia.”
Ruth sprang from her chair as if ready to attack Andrew, but composed herself at the last moment and followed him out the door.
Left behind, Sophia stood and drifted around the room, eyes darting again and again to the parlor doors. Small stiff furniture covered in strange fabrics that Sophia had never seen spread across the room accompanied by shiny tables holding vases and crystal bowls. A gold framed painting of a severe looking man astride a horse took up one entire wall.
In the distance, she heard muffled angry voices, but gratefully could not make out their words.
A sharp knock on the window startled her, and she nearly raced back to her chair, fearing that Mrs. Porter had caught her snooping. A face peered at her through the glass. The boy, older than her, had dark close-cropped hair and big, inquisitive gray eyes that sparkled in the morning sun. He knocked again and waved.
“I’m Jack,” she heard his muffled call through the glass. She smiled back.
1938
“Your mom hates me,” Sophia said, reaching up and running her fingers through Jack’s hair. It had grown long, much to Ruth Porter’s horror, but Sophia loved the dark curls he tucked behind his ears.
Jack leaned over Sophia, propped on one elbow in the grass that had once been a horse pasture before the Porter‘s estate had been scrubbed of its animals at the insistence of Ruth, the matriarch.
“My mom is…” he paused, frowning, “severe. But she doesn’t hate you. You’ve been here three years, Sophia. You’re part of us, now. Honestly, I think she always wanted a daughter and maybe you just remind her of what she never had.”
Sophia traced her finger along Jack’s jaw. He dipped down and kissed her.
If Ruth knew Sophia and Jack had fallen in love, she’d probably burn the estate to the ground.
In the three years Sophia had lived at the house, Ruth had never warmed to her. Andrew took her under his wing and treated her kindly, but it was Jack who loved her. Two years older than Sophia, Jack was worldly in a way Sophia couldn’t fathom. At first they were friends. Jack showed her the property, the woods, took her to town and introduced Sophia to his friends. He made sure that Sophia didn’t merely exist at her new home in Cadillac, but also had a life.