Chương 3
That was the first time she cried without trying to hide it.
Alexander arrived thirty-two minutes later wearing jeans, dark boots, and an old green field jacket I remembered from the last winter of our marriage. His hair had gone almost completely gray. He had lost weight through the face, and there was a stiffness in his left leg that had not been there before.
When I opened the door, he looked at me for half a second. Then he saw the blood on my sleeve.
“Where?”
I stepped aside.
He entered quickly, then stopped at the edge of the living room.
Sofia had pulled a blanket around her shoulders. Her dress spread across the sofa and onto the floor like something abandoned after a fire.
Alexander did not say her name at first.
His jaw tightened. His right hand closed once, then opened. He crossed the room and lowered himself onto one knee in front of her, slow enough not to startle her.
“Baby girl.”
Sofia looked at him.
The years between them crowded the room. Her college graduation, which he had attended from the back row and left before she could decide whether to speak to him. The Christmas he sent a plane ticket she did not use. The morning he called after his own father died and neither of them knew how to discuss grief without touching the subject of abandonment.
She whispered, “Dad?”
He held out his hand, palm up.
After a long moment, she placed her fingers in it.
His eyes moved over her injuries: the lip, the swelling, the marks on her arms, the blood dried at her hairline. He did not ask who had done it. He looked at me instead.
“How long ago?”
“She arrived forty minutes before you.”
“Did she shower?”
“No.”
“Change clothes?”
“No.”
“Use the restroom?”
Sofia pulled her hand back.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to preserve evidence.”
“I’m not evidence.”
“No.” His voice softened. “You’re not.”
“You walked in and started asking about my clothes.”
“You’re right.”
He sat back on his heel. The apology cost him. I could see that, and I hated that I noticed.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “May I ask questions that help keep these people from lying about what they did?”
Sofia looked at the door.
“They’ll find me.”
“Maybe,” he said. “So we make finding you difficult.”
“You can’t make this into a military operation.”
“No.”
“You always do that.”
His face tightened again, but he nodded.
“Then tell me how to help.”
The question unsettled her more than an order would have.
She touched her swollen cheek.
“I don’t want to go to a hospital.”
“Why?”
“They said they’d kill me if I told anyone.”
Alexander glanced at me. His expression carried no surprise, which frightened me.
“Threats work best when they leave you alone,” he said. “Right now you’re not alone.”
“That doesn’t mean they can’t hurt Mom.”
“No. It means we take precautions for her too.”
“You don’t even live here.”
“That can change.”
“Don’t.”
He looked down.
The old Alexander would have pushed. He would have explained the plan, then explained why resistance was irrational. Years ago, he once spent three hours teaching twelve-year-old Sofia how to change a tire after she had asked him to stop. By the end, she could change it perfectly and refused to speak to him for the rest of the weekend.
This Alexander remained on the floor.
“Would you agree to let a doctor come here?” he asked.
“I don’t want strangers in the apartment.”
“What about one person you choose?”
“I don’t know any doctors.”
“I do.”
She gave a tired, bitter laugh. “Of course you do.”
He accepted that too.
I said, “Sofia, your breathing isn’t right.”
“It hurts when I breathe deep.”
Alexander’s eyes shifted toward her ribs.
“We’re going,” I said.
She shook her head.
“I’m your mother.”
“That doesn’t make it your decision.”
“No. The possibility that you have a head injury makes it my decision until a doctor says you don’t.”
She stared at me, furious and frightened.
“Fine,” she said. “But no police.”
Alexander stood carefully.
“We’ll discuss that after you’re examined.”
“I said no police.”
“I heard you.”
“That’s not the same as agreeing.”
“No,” he said. “It isn’t.”
She looked as if she wanted to throw something at him. I almost smiled, which made me feel terrible. Anger was at least movement. Anger belonged to the living.
Before we left, Alexander asked for a clean sheet. We wrapped it loosely around the lower part of Sofia’s dress so it would not drag across the parking garage. He found a paper grocery bag in my pantry and placed the broken shoe inside without touching the strap.
“Stop collecting me,” Sofia said.
He froze.
Then he handed the bag to me.
“You carry it.”
We used the service elevator. Alexander went ahead to check the garage while I stayed with Sofia. A delivery driver waited beside us with three insulated bags and pretended not to stare. When the elevator arrived, he stepped back and said he would take the next one.
Sofia whispered, “He knows.”
“He knows you’re hurt.”
“He knows I got married today.”
“Dallas is full of brides.”
“Not at four in the morning.”
The driver looked down at his phone.
I wanted to tell her no one could see humiliation unless the guilty person was the one feeling it. It sounded like something printed on a mug, so I kept quiet.
Alexander drove an old black SUV with no military plates and a crack across one corner of the windshield. He had placed a folded blanket on the back seat. Sofia lay partly across it, her head in my lap, while downtown lights passed over the windows.
Her eyes opened when we turned toward the medical district.
“You lied.”
“I didn’t tell you which hospital,” I said.
“I said I didn’t want to go.”
May you like
“You also said your ribs hurt.”
She closed her eyes again.
