“I mean the thing about Sophie...” She paused, breathing heavily.
“What? Go on...”
“The thing about Sophie... was that she wasn’t really a sweet little girl... not like the impression you’d get from the picture of her that was everywhere.”
“No child is always good.”
“No. Sophie was different. She was sensitive to everything. If it was too sunny, it could freak her out. Or if a piece of clothing wasn’t just right. If it was corduroy and she wanted cotton, she’d flip. Blue not purple, freak-out. Itchy not smooth, tantrum. She had trouble transitioning. She was hard to be around. Demanding. She would slip into this dark place, where we couldn’t reach her. She’d go into sensory overload. She exhausted us... me. We ended up yelling at her. But stick a bird in front of her, and it was music to her. Calming. Contentment. She had these two distinct sides.
“I... we created this difficult child, and we didn’t know what to do. We took her to doctors and shrinks. Numerous ones. Specialists in Boston. New York City. Tests and more tests. We spent a fortune. Even took out loans to pay for it all. Asperger’s was the diagnosis from a couple doctors. Others said bipolar. One even said ADHD. Sophie displayed some symptoms from each, but then she had other behaviors that would negate them. It simply wasn’t clear-cut. There was never a consensus, and it became a constant conflict for Cooper and me, trying to treat different disorders, living with uncertainty. Living with Sophie.”
Barnes touched her arm, but she pulled it away.
“We tried medications, but she hated how they made her feel. I don’t think they worked anyway. She wished she were normal. She couldn’t control her tantrums. It was like something overtook her. She came here to her closet to rock herself into a calm state. She always felt remorseful afterward. I felt terrible for her. She mostly held it all in and only exploded around us at home. So most people thought she was different—creative, moody, obsessive—but not the full extent of who she was.” She paused then went on. “Sometimes, I wished I could return her and trade her in for a good kid. I actually thought that. I actually said that aloud to Cooper once.”
“Everyone thinks that about their kids at times.”
“Or it was me, my genes. Cooper had Caleb with his second wife. And from what I hear, Caleb is normal. You know... easy.”
“Jesse, the way Sophie was had nothing to do with her disappearance. Someone took her. That had nothing to do with her temperament.”
“I didn’t know how to handle her.” She looked up at him then continued in a whisper. “Sometimes she was hard to love. There were moments I hated her. Hated myself.” Her words spilled out. “To quiet her or get her to stop whining or screaming or demanding, we gave in. All the time-outs in the world never worked. We ended up giving in. That was bad—we knew it. But we didn’t know what else to do. Nothing else worked. Therapist after therapist, they all disagreed.” She dropped her voice even more. “I think I willed her to be taken.”
She wanted to tell him the other thing. It was right there, so close to the surface. The thing she hadn’t been able to tell anyone. She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. He held her face in his hands. He kissed the top of her head, wiping her tears with his shirt. Then he kissed her cheek. She clutched him back, and he kissed her eyelids. They held each other for a long time. Then they found each other’s mouths; they kissed long, deeply. Urgently. He tasted sweet like sugared coffee. It was so dark in the closet, she couldn’t see him, but she could hear her own hard, labored breaths and Barnes’s quieter shallow ones. She needed him to kiss her, to swallow her up. His hands felt strong but gentle.
The siren of a fire truck screeched. Startled, they pulled away from each other, pushing the closet door open to hear better. Another fire truck raced past. Then another. And another. Their sirens all blared. Alarms from two different fire stations went off simultaneously. A feeling of dread enveloped Jesse, and she grabbed his hand.
Chapter Fifteen
When Jesse tried to drive onto Main Street, a police barricade stopped her.
“Church Street is closed, too,” Barnes said, pointing out the side window. Jesse pulled the truck onto another side street, parked, and hopped out. Barnes followed. When Jesse rounded the corner, the smell of burnt paper and wood hit her hard. Then smoke filled her nostrils. Her eyes and lungs. The heat was so intense and so strong, it literally pushed and held her in place. Crowds of people stood behind yellow police tape, looking up. Jesse followed their gazes. The Book Barn was engulfed in fire. Barnes pulled her close to him.
“Oh God!” she said.
Orange flames shot out of second-floor windows. Clouds of thick black smoke billowed up from the structure. Fire trucks surrounded the Barn. Throngs of people huddled together, gawking, their hands held over their mouths in shock. The sight was surreal.
Voices murmured: “All those pumpkins.”
“I heard arson.”
“Poor Blue.”
With Barnes close behind, Jesse pushed her way between people. “Excuse me... I work here. Excuse me.”
“Let the lady through,” Barnes shouted.
Jesse inched closer to the front, feeling pulsating waves of that incredible heat. Firefighters aimed their hoses at the flames bursting through the roof.
Tears ran down Jesse’s face. She thought of all the times she’d lingered over books, how all the stories had comforted her. Being surrounded by the books had given her a sense of security when she needed it most. She loved the Barn. Now it was gone, too.
Everything she loved. Gone.
“I’m sorry,” Barnes whispered.
She shook her head slowly. “Everyone loved the Book Barn.”
She saw Blue, Beth, and Star huddled together off to the side, just watching numbly. Blue was clutching a book to his chest. Jesse saw neighbors go up, hug them, speaking in hushed tones.
Jesse turned to Barnes. “I’ll be right back.” She walked over to the Silvermans and wrapped her arms around Blue, then she hugged Beth tightly. They stood in their embrace for a moment. Jesse hadn’t been close to Beth in years. Hadn’t talked to her or hung out since That Day. She’d given a quick hello and exchanged a few brief pleasantries when they ran into each other in town, but nothing real. Raising daughters the same age, both only children, had been a strong bond all those years ago. At that moment, memories came racing back to Jesse. Late-night calls comparing worries about the girls. The time Sophie had the measles, which Star promptly caught. When Jesse confided in Beth about her difficulties with Sophie. They would often meet for morning coffee at Earl’s just to catch up, sharing laughs and tears. Then it all stopped.
“Did anyone get hurt?” Jesse asked.
“No, thank God,” Beth said, her face pale and drawn.
“Oh, Jess,” Blue said. “I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it.”
“What happened?”
“They don’t know yet,” Beth said. “They know it started sometime this morning. Jack Connors was working the early morning clean-up crew after the Harvest Fest. He saw smoke and called the fire department. They don’t know if they can save it. They let Blue go in earlier to get the cash box, some important papers, and to try to save the computer.”
Blue shook his head. “The firemen took me inside, and the heat was just overwhelming. The muck and water...” Tears sprouted from his eyes and rolled down his face. “All the books, Jess. The shelves are black. The books... ash. Everything ruined.” He hugged Beth. “I grabbed one on my way out.” He held up an early edition Collected Works of Shakespeare. He shook his head. “Why didn’t I grab more? I could have taken more.”
Star stood off to the side, staring at the Barn in a daze, her face red and blotchy from crying.
“I’m so sorry,” Jesse said.
Beth said, choking back more tears, “Everyone’s been so kind. People have been handing us money to help rebuild.”
It reminded Jesse of when Sophie had gone missing, how the town had rallied
. Neighbors and people she didn’t even know rushed to her house; some slipped pieces of paper into her pockets, phone numbers and notes offering help. And now, here they were again, the community of Canaan, offering their unwavering support. She looked around at the crowd, all the people she knew, young and old, and saw the anguish on each and every face.
She watched Star walk across the street toward a group of teens. They reached out for her, taking her hand, pulling her to them. Gone was the snotty teen who seemed to hate her dad’s store. She looked like a lost little girl.
Jesse turned back to Blue and Beth. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do. Anything.”
She headed back over to Barnes, and they stood mesmerized, along with most of the town, for over an hour, just staring and watching the blaze helplessly. Barnes’s cell phone rang. He answered it and spoke quietly for a minute. Then he slipped the phone back in his pocket.
“There’s been word on April Johnson,” he said to Jesse. “I have to go, but I’ll be back.”
She nodded. That girl was part of the puzzle, somehow. She felt it. He took her hands in both of his and brought them to his lips. “Remember, I see you,” he said softly then gently tapped his index finger on her forehead.
BY LATE AFTERNOON THE fire was finally contained. Fire Chief Michelson came out to talk to the crowd. He took his helmet off, extracted a handkerchief from his pocket, and wiped the soot and sweat that covered his face. Then he said, “The good news, folks, is that the fire is finally out.”
The crowd mumbled.
He held up his hands. “Wait now, wait. Unfortunately, there’s some bad news. The structure will have to come down soon.”
This brought on a communal groan then more murmuring.
“The building is a hazard now. I’m very sorry.”
Jesse watched as a fireman added the Book Barn sign that she had painted years ago to a small pile of saved items off to the side: the Free Books table, the antique cash register, and a handful of rescued hardbacks.
Slowly, the crowd dispersed. As Jesse walked back to the truck, a smoky haze lingered, and when she looked up, she saw tiny pieces of paper and black bits floating down from the heavens like charred snow, some landing in her hair. She extended her hand. At first, all she caught was a handful of ash, but when she opened her hand a second time, she saw crumbs of book pages, fragments of words and sentences. She looked up to the sky and whispered, “Soph?”
It was early evening, and Jesse took Saint Anthony down to the creek, where she used to love to sketch and just chill out. It was one of her favorite spots. She sat on one of the yellow Adirondack chairs facing the water, and the dog lay down beside her on the grass. She’d brought the notebook Barnes had found in Sophie’s closet, along with an old sketchbook. Between the disastrous party, baring her soul to Barnes, and the devastating fire, she was wrung out. She hadn’t had a chance to look through the notebook. Even though she could seriously use a drink, she needed to be clear-headed. She flipped Sophie’s notebook open and saw mentions of a herring gull, a bird that scavenged along the beaches. The pages were filled with Sophie’s tiny handwriting and drawings.
Herring Gull steals nest materials from other birds.
She flipped to another page.
He collects stuff for nest: garbage, plastic, fabric bits, string.
Flight pattern: takes off at 9:30 a.m. Returns at 5 p.m.
Takes a bird bath. Dumpster dives for food.
Jessie thought she’d found all the birding notebooks Sophie used to keep her life lists, notes, and sketches in. Why would she hide this one? It looked like the other notebooks. Then it dawned on her. Sophie knew about the water leak. She was there when the plumber had cut the hole in the wall. She knew Cooper checked it each winter. She must have put this notebook there on purpose, knowing her parents would open the little door at some point. She wanted us to find it. Sophie was leading her somewhere.
Jesse set it down and picked up the old sketchbook, one she hadn’t touched in years, and pulled out a charcoal pencil from her pocket. She gazed out at the creek. She listened to the rushing water, watching a red-tailed hawk glide way up in the sky, making its high-pitched screech. She noticed a bird’s nest up in a fir tree. She didn’t know what kind. Sophie would have been able to identify it. Jesse always found the empty, vacated bird homes sad. All that work, and then the intricate things were blown to the ground or left abandoned in a bush. In the same way, she’d neglected her own home, which she’d once nurtured so lovingly.
She closed her eyes, and an image of Sophie looking through her binoculars, staring out at the creek, came to her. A girl whose face was obscured by a pair of goggles. A girl searching for something.
Jesse opened her eyes and scanned through the pages of her old sketchbook. The last drawings were done before That Day. Landscapes. The Wetherby barn out on Kettle Corn Road. The McIntosh farmhouse. She’d sketched them so long ago, she barely recognized her own drawings. They certainly didn’t mean anything to her anymore.
She turned to a blank page, intending to sketch Sophie from memory. Using the edge of the charcoal, she marked an outline. But what started to emerge was the smiling image from the missing poster that had been implanted in her mind. The one that didn’t truly resemble the real Sophie. She scratched it out, marking over it with dark, jagged lines. She turned the page to start again. She closed her eyes once more, letting whatever picture of Sophie she could conjure rise from inside her.
What came through was a memory of Sophie sitting on her lap on the couch. She remembered stroking Sophie’s long dark hair, curling a piece of it behind her right ear, making a loose French braid.
“Mom, Mom, Mom, write me a story.”
They had a game in which Jesse would draw letters on Sophie’s back with her finger. Sophie had to guess what Jesse was writing, letter by letter. Once she got the first few letters, Jesse would begin to tell her a story, then they would switch. Sophie thought it was a game, but Jesse was glad for something that sometimes calmed her daughter.
“Make it a good one. A long one.”
“Okay.” She rubbed Sophie’s back on top of her shirt in big soothing circles, as if cleaning a slate, then began. She drew an M on Sophie’s back.
“M,” Sophie said.
She drew an A, which Sophie guessed right away, then a D.
“Madeline,” Sophie shouted.
“That’s right.” Jesse began the story of Madeline, going to the zoo in Paris.
Sophie was interested for a minute but grew restless. “Let me.”
Jesse turned around so Sophie could draw on her back. She wrote an E then an M.
“Auntie Em from the Wizard of Oz?” Jesse guessed.
“No, no. It’s Emmet. I’ve told you about him before.”
“Tell me again.”
Sophie began spouting one of her stories. “Emmet the woodpecker. He’s pileated. Really big”—she demonstrated with her hands, spreading them apart wide—“and noisy.”
All she needed was a little push, and like a jazz musician, Sophie was off on a riff. “He lives in a hole in a tree. He made the hole, and he lives in it with his friend, Frances, the tree frog. They make music together. Emmet pecks, and Frances croaks.”
Jesse didn’t dare move. She didn’t want to spoil the rare peaceful moment with her daughter. Sophie wasn’t good at transitioning, and any different subject or movement, any veering off the course that had been set, could be disastrous.
Then a loud slam startled them both. And Cooper appeared in the doorway, back from one of his weekend hiking trips. He looked tired, sporting three-day stubble and boots caked with mud. He dropped his backpack on the floor. “Hi there. How is everyone?”
Jesse shot him a look and blinked a few times as if trying to signal some secret code with her eyes. “Hi, honey,” she said.
He’d ruined the moment, not on purpose, but ruined it just the same. It never took much. If she’d heard his car drive up, she could have
forewarned Sophie, eased her into the change. Sometimes that helped.
“What’s for dinner?” He glanced between Jesse and Sophie and back to Jesse.
“Not hungry,” Sophie said. “What letter is this? You’re not guessing, Mom.”
“Sweetie,” Jesse said.
“How about pasgetti?” Cooper said, trying to cajole Sophie. “How about a hug hello, my chickadee?” He cautiously touched her arm.
“No.” She shook him away angrily. She only liked to be touched when she wanted to be touched.
Jesse exchanged looks with Cooper. They knew what they were in for. Help me, she tried to say with her eyes. As if a switch had been tripped, Sophie was fully charged like a ball of raw electricity. From restful green to the frightening red zone in seconds flat.
“I said no!” she shrieked. Legs, arms, fingers, darting, jabbing, flailing, grabbing at whatever was in her path. Lamps on tables, pictures on walls, hair on parents’ heads. She erupted into a full-blown tantrum. Screeching, kicking, hair flying, tears. A wild-child rage. Patty Duke playing Helen Keller.
Cooper scooped her up in one swift practiced motion, being careful to hold her tightly as he carried her upstairs to her room.
She shouted, “I hate you. I hate you. You’re hurting Emmet.”
Jesse knew he would put her on her bed, leave the room, and close the door behind him. They’d long ago learned that when she hit a certain point, there was no stopping her tantrums. Like a fire that had to burn out on its own, Sophie would find her way to the comfort of her dark closet and rock herself into a calmer state.
Jesse was filling a pot with water at the kitchen sink and hadn’t heard Cooper come back downstairs when he said, “She’s decompressing.”
She jumped. “You scared me.” And as she spun around to see him, the pot slipped from her hands into the sink, the water slopping out all around.
“Sorry, honey,” he said.
She bent over the sink and covered her face with her hands.
He put his arms around her. “I know.”
Sophie Last Seen Page 15
