Chương 2
Sofia climbed onto the leather sofa and pulled her knees beneath her dress. Daniel set the backpack on the rug in front of her.
“Are you hurt?”
She shook her head.
“Did Vanessa touch you?”
Another shake.
“Did she block the door or stop you from leaving your room?”
“No.”
“What happened?”
Sofia stared at the backpack. The loose sleeve had picked up a gray smear from the marble floor.
Daniel sat in the chair across from her, leaving space between them. He had learned that much from the child therapist Claire’s parents had insisted on after the funeral. Questions felt different to children when adults were not looming over them. He had attended four sessions before work travel began interfering. Vanessa had attended the next eleven.
Sofia picked at a thread on her sock.
“She said I was spying.”
“Were you in her office?”
“I needed tape.”
“There’s tape in the kitchen drawer.”
“That one doesn’t stick.”
It was such a Sofia answer that Daniel nearly smiled. She had inherited Claire’s distrust of cheap adhesive and Claire’s conviction that every household problem deserved the correct tool.
“What did you see in the office?”
“A school.”
“What school?”
“The one with bedrooms.”
Daniel’s breath slowed.
“Briarwood?”
Sofia’s eyes rose. “You know it?”
He did.
The name had appeared in an email Vanessa sent him two weeks earlier. The subject line had read EDUCATIONAL OPTIONS. He had opened it between meetings at an airport lounge in Chicago. The message contained links to three schools, a paragraph about Sofia needing structure, and a sentence explaining that one of the schools had an optional residential program for older students.
He had replied, Let’s talk when I’m home. Gather whatever you think is useful.
They had not talked.
“What else did you see?”
“A picture of me.”
“In the paperwork?”
Sofia nodded. “And it said I would live there.”
Daniel leaned forward. “Did the paper say when?”
“August.”
It was May.
He looked toward the closed library doors.
“What did Vanessa say when she found you?”
Sofia’s fingers worked faster at the loose thread.
“She said I ruin everything.”
The chandelier in the foyer gave a faint crystalline shiver.
Daniel waited.
Sofia looked at him as if she expected him to finish the story for her, or correct it into something safer.
“She said you finally agreed we could be a real family,” Sofia whispered. “And I asked if I wasn’t real.”
Daniel’s throat tightened.
“What did she say?”
Sofia’s gaze dropped again. “She said not every child belongs in every home.”
The words were not exactly the sentence Sofia had cried in the foyer. They were worse because they sounded considered.
“Then what?”
“I told her Mommy belonged here.”
Daniel looked at Claire’s photograph on the shelf.
In it, Claire stood on a beach in Maine, holding three-year-old Sofia under the arms while a cold Atlantic wave struck both of them. Claire’s face was turned away, laughing at someone outside the frame. Daniel had taken the picture. He remembered complaining afterward because sand got into the rental car.
“And then?” he asked.
Sofia folded herself tighter. “Vanessa said Mommy was gone.”
Daniel shut his eyes.
Only for a moment.
When he opened them, Sofia was watching him with a child’s terrible attention.
He moved from the chair to the rug and sat beside the backpack.
“Listen to me,” he said. “You are not going to Briarwood in August. You are not leaving this house because Vanessa says so. You belong with me.”
She did not relax.
Children did not trust declarations merely because adults made them loudly.
“What if you go to Chicago?”
“I’m not going to Chicago.”
“You always say that, and then Mr. Leon calls.”
Mr. Leon was Daniel’s chief operating officer. Daniel had never considered that his daughter knew the name of the person who most often took him away.
He rubbed one hand over his face.
“You’re right,” he said.
Sofia waited for the excuse.
He did not give one.
“I have said I would stay, and then I left. I’m sorry.”
“Are you leaving tonight?”
“No.”
“Tomorrow?”
“No.”
“What about Thursday?”
“I’m not leaving Thursday.”
She considered this. “Friday?”
“I’m staying Friday too.”
A tiny crease appeared between her eyebrows. “All the days?”
“As many as you need.”
The answer was impossible in the literal sense, and they both knew it. That was the trouble with promises made to children. Adults wanted credit for intention. Children measured whether someone was there when the hallway light came on at two in the morning.
Daniel reached for the backpack zipper.
“May I look inside?”
Sofia hesitated, then nodded.
He pulled the zipper down carefully so the sweater would not snag. Inside were two dresses, three pairs of underwear, one sock, a toothbrush without toothpaste, a paperback about a mouse detective, Claire’s old blue scarf, a box of animal crackers, and a silver picture frame wrapped in a washcloth.
He unwrapped it.
The photograph showed Claire holding newborn Sofia in the hospital. Daniel stood beside the bed looking younger than he remembered ever being, one hand awkwardly supporting the baby’s head.
Sofia touched the corner of the frame.
“I thought Vanessa might throw it away.”
“She won’t.”
“You don’t know.”
No, he thought. Apparently, he did not.
A knock sounded at the library door.
Vanessa entered without waiting.
“I need to speak with you.”
Daniel rose. “Not now.”
“The foundation photographer is arriving in forty minutes.”
“Cancel him.”
“We cannot simply cancel. The campaign launches Monday.”
“Then tell him there is a family emergency.”
Vanessa gave a short, disbelieving laugh. “And what do you imagine this will become if I start describing it as an emergency?”
“A six-year-old was about to walk twelve miles in a storm.”
“Because she was having a tantrum.”
Sofia flinched.
Daniel moved between them.
“Leave the room.”
Vanessa folded her arms. “You have heard one version.”
“I’ve seen an application.”
May you like
“A draft application.”
“For a boarding school.”
