Sophia picked an apple from the ground and sniffed it. The fruit smelled pungent, overripe and on its way to rot. She stood and picked a few from the tree and stuffed them into the bag and ate two before setting off.
It had been ten years since she’d last experienced freedom, and she felt lost in the world. Where did she go for help? If she knocked on someone’s door, they’d surely turn her in. At that moment, Dr. Kaiser was likely turning the world against her. The police, the townspeople would all be hunting her, and the sensation was one Sophia remembered well.
She thought back to the day Rosemary died, the angry look on Margaret Bell’s face as she stared at Sophia. The devil’s mark, she’d said, and only later did Sophia learn what she meant - the caul wrapped around Sophia’s face at birth. There were stories associated with such a thing and they weren’t good ones. Except Sophia’s daddy never portrayed it that way. He said it made Sophia special, it was a mark all right, a mark of magic he once told her when tucking her in for bed.
“I could really use your guidance right now, Daddy,” she murmured, climbing over a dead tree and scanning the forest for clues as to which way she should travel.
The early sunlight slanted through a tall shimmering maple tree and she turned in that direction. The forest felt safe. Every tree, plant, bug and bird were connected to her life - either her own childhood or the childhood of her children.
After she married Jack, they moved away from the Porter’s estate and settled into a creaky old farmhouse on fifty acres of forest that bordered another three hundred acres of state land. In the fall they tapped Maple trees, in the summer she and the kids picked berries for jam and muffins. In winter they strapped on homemade snowshoes that Jack fashioned from the branches of an ash tree and covered with deer hide. Jack liked to joke they had created their own Walden’s Pond. He was much more read than she, an intimidating factor when she first met him which he quickly laid to rest. What she lacked in book smarts, she made up in knowledge of the natural world. He read to her from Thoreau, Emerson and Poe. She revealed to him the mysteries each season brought, the edible plants and mushrooms and how to live with the land rather than on it.
Theirs had been a love they had to fight for and neither of them took it for granted. When Gram Ruth first caught them kissing, she sent Jack away to stay with his cousins in New York for two weeks. She put Sophia to work scrubbing the tile floors and dusting the porcelain figures who often watched Sophia with quiet disproving eyes. When Andrew, Ruth’s husband, returned from a business trip, he was outraged at Ruth’s behavior. He insisted Sophia stop cleaning. He drove to New York and picked up their son. Ruth railed against him. Sophia could hear their yelling through three stories as she slept in a little bedroom on the third floor. Jack would sneak into her room and they would make a canopy with her blankets and lay beneath it listening to the booming voices of his parents. Sophia offered several times to leave, but Jack insisted wherever she went, he would follow so she stayed knowing it would only break Ruth’s heart more if she stole her only child.
Sophia kicked at a fallen apple and looked to the sky. The sun had risen, and the temperature climbed. She peeled off her sweater and walked. After years in the asylum, many of them sedentary on Dr. Kaiser’s orders, her muscles cramped. She stopped frequently to rest and gulp huge breaths, savoring the damp forest, but most of all the freedom of being outdoors. Not a white wall in sight, no narrow bed and closed door waiting at the end of her day, and most of all, no Doctor Kaiser.
She walked during the day, following the sun. Despite her aching legs, the image of her and Jack’s farm was a beacon that drove her forward. It was seventy miles from Traverse City, the home of the Northern Michigan Asylum. A long walk, sure, but she could do it. It would take time following the road from the safety of the forest.
The wildlife delighted her, she stopped at a small stream, cupping the cool water in her hands to drink and looked up to find a spotted fawn on the opposite bank. He stared at her with his black inquisitive eyes and then bounced back into the forest joining several does waiting in the trees. She watched a raccoon climb a tree, squirrels foraging for acorns, and even a fox who streaked past her in a red blur.
When she neared farms, she snuck to their perimeters and snatched a few vegetables for her bag.
She walked for five days before the roads grew familiar. When she found her own road, she lay on the ground and cried, bunching the leaves in her hands and weeping into the soil, reliving a thousand barefoot summer days in the woods.
Chapter 29
September 19, 1965
Jude
Jude knocked on Detective Kurt Bell’s door, holding the envelope of photos clutched against her chest. Bell lived in an apartment next to a large courthouse, above a pharmacy.
Jude heard someone inside rustling about.
“Hold on,” a voice called.
The door opened, and Kurt stood on the threshold. He’d thrown on a knit shirt unbuttoned, and wore a pair of jeans. He was barefoot, his hair tousled, and several little tissues stuck to his face where he’d cut himself shaving. He scowled when he saw her and stepped from the apartment, closing the door firmly behind him.
“It’s inappropriate that you’re standing on my doorstep, Miss Porter. Is the press that desperate for a story?”
He touched his face, noticed the tissues, and scrubbed them off, looking more irritated that she had caught him so indisposed.
“Why shave the beard?” she asked. “It looks good on you and I bet the old guys don’t think they’re getting bossed by a rookie when you‘re wearing it.”
Bell frowned and lifted his eyebrows.
“What can I do for you, Miss Porter?”
Jude, realizing he was not softening anytime soon, pulled a picture from the envelope. She had considered waiting until the next day and going to the police station. The problem was that if she told her story there, other people would hear it, and the snickers would spread around the town in no time. Alone, Detective Bell might at least consider Hattie’s painting.
“I may have misrepresented myself the other day,” Jude started. “I do work for a newspaper, but I’m not actually writing a story about Rosemary. Sophia Gray, the woman accused of your sister’s murder, is my mother.”
Bell released a long sigh and pressed his hand to his head rubbing his thumb and forefinger over his temples.
He looked toward the window at the end of the hall and lifted his wrist examining his watch.
“I can give you twenty minutes,” he told her.
Jude, relieved, pushed forward, but he stopped her with a hand.
“Not in my apartment. I don’t do business here, ever. There’s a bench at the courthouse. That’ll do just fine.” He gestured toward the window. “I’ll meet you down there in two minutes.”
“Okay, fine, sure,” she said, retreating down the steps. The courthouse had a perfectly manicured lawn and in one corner sat an enormous cannon on a foundation of cement and stone. Jude saw a plaque on the side likely naming some general rather than the men who actually wielded the weapon. She took a seat on a bench.