Chương 13
Sophie ran upstairs.
A door slammed.
Elena stood beside the dishwasher with a dish towel in one hand.
For several seconds she wanted to follow and finish the argument.
Win it.
Then she remembered Daniel at the witness stand, explaining fire as if enough words might let him control it again.
She put down the towel.
Twenty minutes later, she knocked on Sophie’s door.
“Go away.”
“No.”
“I said go away.”
“I heard you.”
Silence.
Elena sat on the hallway floor.
The carpet was uncomfortable.
Her left knee still disliked hard surfaces.
“Sophie.”
Nothing.
“I’m sorry.”
A pause.
“You’re not.”
“I’m sorry for saying you don’t understand. You understand what you’ve been told. You’re allowed to want more.”
The door remained closed.
Elena looked at the ceiling.
“I’m scared.”
That opened it.
Sophie stood there with swollen eyes.
“Of Dad?”
“Yes.”
“He can’t hurt you from prison.”
“I know.”
“Then what?”
Elena searched for a child-sized version of the truth and found none.
“That if you meet him, he’ll be somebody to you. Not just a story.”
Sophie stared.
“He already is.”
Elena closed her eyes briefly.
There were sentences that rearranged a room.
Daniel had spoken one in court years earlier.
Sophie had just spoken another.
Elena nodded.
They arranged the visit.
Rebecca objected.
Margaret said nothing.
The therapist prepared Sophie.
Elena prepared herself badly.
At the correctional facility, they passed through security, left phones in lockers, and sat in a visitation room that smelled faintly of disinfectant and vending-machine coffee.
Daniel entered wearing prison khakis.
He was fifty-one.
His hair had gone gray at the temples.
Sophie stood.
Elena did not.
Daniel stopped three feet from the table.
His face crumpled when he saw his daughter.
He controlled it quickly.
“Hi.”
Sophie said, “Hi.”
Daniel looked at Elena.
She gave him nothing.
They sat.
The first ten minutes were terrible.
Daniel asked about school.
Sophie said, “Fine.”
He asked about soccer.
She said she quit soccer.
He asked what she liked now.
“Robotics.”
Daniel smiled.
“I was terrible at that kind of thing.”
“You had robots when you were a kid?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know?”
Daniel laughed.
It sounded like him.
Elena hated how familiar it was.
Eventually Sophie asked, “Did you try to kill Mom?”
The room went silent.
A guard across the room looked over.
Daniel’s face lost color.
Elena had not told Sophie to ask that.
She had known she might.
Daniel looked at his daughter.
“No.”
Sophie looked at Elena.
Elena kept still.
Daniel continued.
“But I did something that could have killed her.”
“Why?”
“I was scared.”
“Of Mom?”
“Of losing things.”
“What things?”
“My job. The company. Money. What people thought of me.”
Sophie frowned.
“That’s stupid.”
A laugh escaped Elena before she could stop it.
Daniel looked at her.
For one second, something like the old marriage passed between them.
Then it was gone.
“Yes,” Daniel told Sophie. “It was.”
“Did you know I was downstairs?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Daniel swallowed.
“Because I made sure you were.”
Sophie stared at him.
“Then you knew Mom was upstairs.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you make sure she was downstairs?”
Daniel looked toward the table.
No answer came.
Sophie waited.
Children could be merciless simply by refusing to help adults escape their own sentences.
Daniel finally said, “Because I cared more about what I wanted than what could happen to her.”
Sophie looked at Elena.
Elena’s eyes had filled.
She hated that.
Daniel said, “I’m sorry.”
Elena wiped beneath one eye.
“Don’t.”
He stopped.
“This visit is for her.”
Daniel nodded.
Sophie asked another question.
Then another.
They stayed fifty-eight minutes.
On the drive home, Sophie stared out the window.
Elena did not ask how she felt.
Ten miles passed.
Then Sophie said, “He’s shorter than I thought.”
Elena laughed.
“He used to claim six feet.”
“He is not six feet.”
“No.”
Another mile.
“Do you still love him?”
Elena tightened both hands on the steering wheel.
“No.”
Sophie waited.
Elena added, “But I used to.”
“Even after the fire?”
“That’s harder.”
Sophie looked at her.
Elena kept watching the road.
“Feelings don’t always leave when they become inconvenient.”
“That sounds annoying.”
“It is.”
They stopped for burgers on the way home.
Sophie ordered too many fries and ate half of Elena’s instead.
That night Elena dreamed of the courtroom.
Not the fire.
The courtroom.
Daniel’s hand.
Margaret’s voice.
The monitor flickering.
The shadow moving toward the bedroom door.
In the dream, the damaged footage never revealed a face.
It played forever at the moment before recognition.
Elena woke at 3:17 a.m.
For years she had believed that was the worst part of uncertainty: not knowing who was coming through the dark.
Now she understood something else.
The face had mattered less than the choices surrounding it.
Daniel had been the figure.
Margaret had known.
Maya had carried Sophie downstairs.
Rebecca had believed Elena when belief was inconvenient.
Kell had made mistakes and then corrected them.
Naomi had prosecuted what she could prove instead of promising what Elena wanted.
Claire had defended her brother and later admitted she had been wrong.
Elena herself had hidden, lied, delayed, resented, forgiven selectively, and sometimes used fear as if it were wisdom.
Nobody had emerged clean.
That made the truth more difficult.
It also made it real.
She got out of bed and walked downstairs.
Sophie had left a robotics project on the dining table: a little wheeled machine designed to follow a strip of black tape.
One wire had come loose.
Elena sat.
Her scarred fingers were still clumsy with tiny connectors, but she tried anyway.
After three attempts, she got the wire back into place.
The robot moved six inches, turned the wrong direction, and drove into a chair leg.
Elena laughed.
Upstairs, Sophie called, “Mom?”
“Go back to sleep.”
“What are you doing?”
“Breaking your robot.”
A pause.
“You better not.”
Elena smiled.
May you like
“Sleep.”
Years earlier, everyone had asked why she returned to that courtroom carrying Sophie.
