Chương 2
The man looked at her.
“Hello, Maggie.”
“Leave.”
Ethan moved between them. “You heard her.”
The stranger’s eyes went to Ethan, and something complicated passed through his face.
“You must be Ethan.”
“Don’t say my name.”
“All right.”
The answer was so mild that Ethan seemed unprepared for it.
Sophie hated the man for that immediately.
Not because he was calm.
Because he sounded human.
She wanted a monster. Her mother had given her one sentence—protecting you from him—and Sophie had already begun constructing the necessary face around it.
Monsters were easier if they looked like monsters.
This man looked tired.
There was rain beginning to spot the shoulders of his jacket.
He looked at Sophie again.
“Hi.”
She almost laughed.
The absurdity of the word was too large.
“Hi?”
“I know.”
“No, I don’t think you do.”
“You’re right.”
“Who are you?”
Margaret stepped forward. “Sophie, we’re going inside.”
“We are inside.”
“I mean the house.”
“No.”
“Sophie.”
“Who is he?”
Margaret looked toward the party.
Several guests had noticed the tension now.
Sophie’s aunt Linda stood beside the hydrangeas with a bottle of champagne in one hand. She was staring at the stranger.
The bottle slowly lowered.
That was the second thing Sophie noticed.
The first was Linda’s face.
Recognition.
“You know him too,” Sophie said.
Linda said nothing.
“Jesus Christ.”
“Sophie,” Margaret said.
“No. Don’t Sophie me. Does everybody here know him?”
“No,” Linda said quickly.
Margaret closed her eyes.
Linda winced.
Sophie gave a short, humorless laugh. “Great. Excellent answer.”
The stranger took one step backward, as if trying to make himself less intrusive.
It only made Sophie angrier.
“What’s your name?”
He hesitated.
“Michael Vale.”
The name meant nothing.
That should have helped.
It did not.
“Are you my father?”
Margaret said, “Not here.”
Sophie looked at her. “That wasn’t a question for you.”
Michael Vale’s eyes remained on Sophie.
“Yes.”
Thunder rolled across the lake.
No one spoke.
Sophie looked at the little girl in the locket.
A gust came through the doors hard enough to send two napkins spinning across the floor. One stuck briefly against Ethan’s shoe.
He kicked it away.
Michael watched the gesture.
“I shouldn’t have come like this,” he said.
“You shouldn’t have come at all,” Margaret replied.
“I was told today was the only chance.”
“By whom?”
Michael looked toward Linda.
Margaret turned.
Linda put the champagne bottle on the table.
“Oh, Linda.”
“I’m sorry.”
Margaret walked toward her sister.
“You told him?”
“I called him.”
“When?”
“Three days ago.”
Margaret stared at her.
Linda crossed her arms, then uncrossed them.
“I thought—”
“No. You didn’t.”
“That’s not fair.”
“You invited him to my birthday.”
“I didn’t invite him. I told him where we’d be.”
Ethan made an incredulous sound. “That is inviting him.”
“I know what it sounds like.”
“It sounds like you told some guy Mom has spent twenty-five years hiding from exactly where her daughter would be.”
Linda flinched.
Sophie looked from one face to another.
The room had rearranged itself without moving.
Her aunt knew.
Her mother knew.
Ethan apparently knew something.
Michael knew enough to come.
Sophie was the only person standing there without a script.
She snapped the locket shut.
“Everybody out.”
Margaret frowned. “What?”
“Not you three.”
She pointed toward the guests who had begun drifting closer.
“This is still Mom’s party,” Linda said quietly.
“No, it isn’t.”
“Sophie—”
“Please.”
Something in her voice worked.
Linda turned toward the others and began the humiliating work of pretending there was an ordinary explanation. Weather coming. Better to move toward the main house. They would bring the food. Somebody should cover the cake.
Nobody believed her.
But people were polite.
Politeness, Sophie discovered, could look remarkably similar to cowardice.
Within minutes the boathouse emptied.
Her cousin carried the cake out without meeting anyone’s eyes. An elderly neighbor took two champagne glasses because she had apparently forgotten she was holding them. The wind strengthened.
Then there were four.
Sophie.
Ethan.
Margaret.
Michael.
Five, if the photograph counted.
Sophie sat on the nearest bench.
Her knees had started feeling unreliable.
Ethan remained standing beside her.
Margaret faced Michael.
“You have five minutes.”
Michael looked at Sophie rather than Margaret.
“I’ll leave if she asks me to.”
“She doesn’t know what she’s asking.”
“That’s been the problem for twenty-two years.”
Margaret slapped him.
The sound cracked through the boathouse.
Ethan moved.
Sophie caught his sleeve.
“No.”
Margaret stood with her hand suspended between them.
Michael did not touch his cheek.
He looked almost unsurprised.
“Okay,” he said.
“Don’t you dare make me look irrational.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You came to my family’s home.”
“Linda said Sophie had started asking questions.”
Sophie looked at Linda’s abandoned champagne bottle on the table.
“What questions?”
Michael glanced at Margaret.
“No,” Sophie said. “You came here because of me. Talk to me.”
He nodded.
“About Daniel.”
The use of her father’s first name made Sophie’s stomach tighten.
“What about him?”
“You requested his military records.”
She stared.
Ethan turned to her. “You did what?”
Sophie ignored him.
Three months earlier, while helping Margaret sort paperwork after a leak in the basement of the family home, Sophie had found Daniel’s discharge papers in a plastic storage bin. There had been nothing dramatic about them. She had been trying to assemble a digital family archive because the originals were beginning to yellow.
One date had bothered her.
Daniel had supposedly met Margaret in the spring of 2000.
According to his service record, he had been stationed overseas then.
Sophie had assumed Margaret had simply remembered the year incorrectly.
Then she found their marriage certificate.
November 2001.
Sophie had been born in February.
She had never asked because families contained arithmetic people politely avoided.
Until two weeks ago.
“How do you know what records I requested?”
“I don’t. Linda told me you asked her about when your mother met Daniel.”
Sophie looked toward Margaret.
Her mother sat down.
May you like
Not gracefully.
She seemed suddenly exhausted.
