Sophie Last Seen

by Marlene Adelstein

  “Paul Bunyan?” Jesse reached over and touched the carved initials, as well. Yet another breadcrumb-like clue from Sophie.

  “I know. It was silly. But we were just kids.”

  “Tell me more about what’s been going on with you and Sophie.”

  Star took a breath and began slowly, “She keeps coming to me. It’s like she’s mad at me or something.”

  “When did this start?”

  “A few months ago. I saw some show about those three girls from Cleveland. The ones missing for like ten years and found alive in that sicko’s house. I think that brought Sophie on. Maybe I was thinking she could be alive like them.”

  Jesse had, of course, heard of that terrifying, unfathomable story. The girls had been held captive, beaten, raped, impregnated, and physically and emotionally closed off from the world. She prayed that or any version of it hadn’t happened to her daughter. What could life be like for a young woman after living through something like that? Would it still be better to be alive?

  Hearing about it from Star, she felt a prickly sensation in her fingers and rubbed her hands together. Maybe it was similar to the feeling Barnes had said he felt when he was near a missing person he was searching for. I’m getting close.

  “Usually, it’s at night when I fall asleep,” Star continued. “She looks like she did, but she sounds different. All full of herself and angry.”

  It almost sounded as if Star were describing the way she’d been acting lately.

  “So I try not to fall asleep because it’s not fun to see her. It’s creepy.”

  “Does she look like a ghost?”

  “She just looks like her ten-year-old self. Suddenly, she’s there. And then a while later, poof. She’s gone. Like magic.” Star put her finger to her mouth and started biting her nail. “Today, things really changed. She came to me at school for the first time. I couldn’t concentrate in class with her jabbering in my ear. No one else saw her. I think I’m going crazy.”

  Jesse studied Star. She had matured over the years. Her face and her whole body was firmer. No baby fat. She was pretty, with fair skin and a slightly downturned mouth, but she hid under her long hair. She seemed to have taken on Sophie’s creased forehead and worried eyebrows. “Introjecting,” she remembered Lila called it. When someone adopted the behavior or mannerisms of someone else. Jesse noticed the nasty red cuts on Star’s arm. She’d seen them that time at the Book Barn, but the small round burn mark was new.

  Star tugged her sleeve down to cover up. Jesse could feel Star’s defenses rise like a brick wall. She had to tread lightly and decided to ease into that subject later. They sat in silence for a moment.

  Jesse roused herself. “Let’s check into that motel across the way on Route 6. We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.” She gazed around the cottage loaded with memories, knowing it would be for the very last time.

  ONCE THEY WERE CHECKED into the Wellfleet Motel, Jesse collapsed on one of the beds, Saint Anthony on the floor. Star took an extra-long shower, swiped the free mini shampoo and soap, and took the other bed, the one near the bathroom.

  She checked out the pay-per-view TV until Jesse took the remote out of her hand, saying, “Tell me more about this Paul Bunyan character. Can you describe him for me?”

  Star leaned back on the bed and closed her eyes, as if trying to conjure him up. “I haven’t really thought about him for years. Not until I saw Sophie’s notebook today.”

  “I know. Think back.”

  She scrunched her eyes tighter, and after a moment, she smiled as if a happy memory had washed over her. “I remember. I was with Sophie, and we were ten. We were in our bathing suits, sitting on the screened-in porch in Ocean Breezy. ‘OB,’ we used to call it. We sat on the glider couch, our bare feet up against the wall in front of us. Sophie had her binoculars around her neck and was peering through them, as usual.” Star opened her eyes, looked up at Jesse, then continued painting a picture of her last summer with Sophie.

  “Sophie had spotted something. She handed me the binos and showed me a hand, way off in the distance, lobster-red, poking out of the wild beach grass, but it wasn’t moving. It looked like someone had cut off a hand and placed it there on top of the grass. After we stared at it for minutes, it finally moved, then a whole body stood up.

  “We both shrieked, ‘It’s alive!’ The sunburned hand was attached to a man. He walked around, lowered his head, and then we could tell he was peeing in the grass. We thought it was gross, but we laughed, passing the binos back and forth.”

  Star paused then looked up at Jesse. “He had a full gray beard. His hair was shaggy, longish, the color of wet sand. He wore T-shirts, a bunch of different ones. I heart NYC, Bruce Springsteen, Harley Davidson. Sometimes, he wore plaid flannel shirts over them even though it was summer. And dirty blue jeans held up with a piece of rope. He was skinny. He didn’t look mean or anything. We figured he was homeless. He had an old red bicycle that he rode away from the beach each day. It had lots of plastic bags attached to it filled with empty soda bottles he’d collected and a fishing net hanging off the back. A couple times, we followed him on our bikes as far as we could down the bike path before we got nervous that our parents, you guys, would find out so we turned back.”

  Jesse was staring at her, listening hard.

  “One day, we went to the beach to check out where he slept after we saw him ride off. There was a rotted wooden boat that had washed ashore. He used it to store his blankets and other stuff like a pair of eyeglasses, fishing lures, and a beach chair. It was all neat and organized. Once we left him a peanut butter sandwich and some cookies in a baggie tucked in with the blankets. Another time, we were at the flea market and saw his bike locked to a tree. We waited for him for a long time, but he never came back. There was a day we were driving with you and Cooper to town and passed him on Main Street on his bike. We giggled and pointed, but you guys didn’t notice.”

  Star nodded to Jesse’s purse. “Can I have Sophie’s notebook?” She took it from Jesse and spent a little time reading several pages then flipping ahead and reading some more. Then she opened it to a random page. “‘PB picks up stuff on beach for nest materials.’” She flipped to another page. “‘Collects garbage, plastic, fabric bits, string.’ That’s self-explanatory. ‘Works on his nest in the morning.’ This was his routine. Every morning, he’d pee then comb his hair, then he would lay out his blankets to dry over bushes. He had a bunch of different ones. I remember a big blue one, a patchwork quilt, a dark striped one. He’d shake them out, then he’d fold and re-fold them perfectly and stash them in the old rowboat.”

  She flipped to another page and tapped a line. “‘Flight pattern of PB: takes off at nine thirty a.m. Returns at five o’clock p.m.’ He took off on his bicycle. It was loaded down with all these plastic bottles he’d collected on the beach. I guess he took them in for the deposit money.”

  “‘Markings: black chest with red spot.’” She thought a minute. “That must have been his black Harley T-shirt with some red letters in the middle.”

  Jesse scrunched her eyes in confusion.

  “I’m not making this stuff up. It’s right here in black and white. I knew Sophie took notes on the guy, and we watched him a lot and made jokes. But she was obviously obsessed with him. He was like one of her birds. You know, like her game. Everyone was a kind of bird. You were a whippoorwill. I was a great blue heron. That Professor Pollen was a yellow-bellied sapsucker.”

  “Why?”

  “The bird has a red throat, like his red bow tie. He had a little stutter that made us laugh, but Sophie thought it was like the tap, tap, tap of the sapsucker checking for sap in a tree.” She closed the notebook and set it on her lap. “And Paul Bunyan was a seagull.

  “I remember now she told me that his name was really Gregory, but she didn’t know his last name. We still called him Paul Bunyan. She said he liked to watch birds, too. I didn’t believe her.”

  Jesse looked straight ahe
ad. “I never saw him, never heard about him until yesterday. I know, oblivious parent doesn’t even know what her daughter is up to. Typical, right?” She took the notebook from Star and looked through it. There was Sophie’s tiny writing with her small drawings in colored pencil. She’d drawn close-up images of the birds—their bodies, beaks, wings—or shown them in flight. “This book looks like all the rest of her bird journals, but she’s often writing about this homeless man. Do you think it’s possible? She might have spoken to him. Befriended him. She could have felt comfortable with someone different. Someone more like her, a loner. They got along, understood each other. He could have told her he’d come meet her. He could have hitchhiked to Canaan. She could have told him where we lived. He could have followed us, scoped us out. Or stolen a car.” She took a breath and continued, “That’s it. He drove all the way to our house, followed us to the mall. He was at the Zone that day, and she was happy to see him.”

  She stared off into space. “Pay close attention to outlying birds or those that behave differently.” A sickly, guttural moan escaped her throat. She turned to Star, her eyes watery. “It’s Bixby. It’s Sophie. Leading us here. It’s possible. Do you think it’s possible?”

  Star just looked at her apprehensively. She didn’t say a word.

  “Maybe he’s not awful,” Jesse said. “Maybe he brought her back here, and they’re living somewhere. In a closed-up cabin like Ocean Breezy. Maybe he’s taking care of her. It’s possible, isn’t it?” Her eyes grew wide. “Isn’t it?” Remain hopeful. Never give up. Never stop looking.

  “Sure, it’s possible. I guess,” Star said, but it sounded as though she didn’t believe it at all. “But we need to know more about him. For him to come all the way to Canaan, then to go to the mall, then back here when he was homeless... I just don’t know.”

  Jesse dropped her head to her chest.

  “I have an idea,” Star said. “We have to have a picture of him. Something to show people tomorrow when we look for him around town. A drawing.”

  Jesse nodded. “Oh, my God. Of course. You’re right. I’m so out of it. I should have thought of that.”

  They sat on the bed with paper and pencils and worked on the drawing for close to two hours.

  Star described him bit by bit, and Jesse drew. It was slow and tedious. The shape of Paul’s head: squarish. The hairstyle: stringy and hippie-like. The shape and length of his nose: narrow and long. His eyes: small, brown, and close together. And Star kept looking at the drawing and telling her what was wrong, and Jesse erased it and changed it. They argued back and forth.

  Finally, Star grabbed the pencil out of Jesse’s hand. “This looks nothing like him. Not even close.” She worked at it for another half hour, basically redoing the whole thing, and Jesse sat next to her, watching the entire time.

  “Sophie told me he was a real melt bird. He just melted right into the scenery. Maybe he was. I thought he looked nice even though I was too scared to talk to him. My parents hammered it into me: don’t talk to strangers.”

  Jesse nodded. “I thought Sophie knew that, as well.”

  Star studied the drawing. “If I were to see this for the first time, I’m pretty sure I’d think it was Paul Bunyan. There’s that look he had on his face, something around the mouth and eyes.” Jesse thought he looked as though he were carrying around a secret that he wasn’t going to share with anyone. That was the way she felt about her secrets. Maybe it was how Star felt about hers, too.

  Star crawled into bed with a heavy sigh, and Jesse got into hers, turning out the light. After a few minutes, Star whispered, “Jesse?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m afraid.”

  “What are you afraid of?”

  “I’m afraid of Sophie coming to me. I have nothing to keep me awake.”

  “Oh, sweetie. Since Sophie doesn’t seem to want to see me, maybe I’ll keep her away. I’ll sleep with you. Don’t worry.” Jesse got out of her bed and crawled into Star’s, sliding under the covers. Snuggling up close, Jesse curled into Star’s back.

  “I’m cold,” Star said.

  Jesse pulled up the extra blanket. “I’ll keep you warm.” And she moved in even closer.

  After a few minutes, Star whispered, “Jesse?”

  “Yes?”

  “I did something bad,” she said softly.

  “What, honey?”

  “The Barn.” And even more softly, she added, “I set the Barn on fire.”

  Jesse sat up, took Star by the shoulders, and turned her so they were facing each other. It was dark, but they were so close, she could see Star’s eyes open wide. “What are you talking about?”

  “It was the night of the Harvest Fest. I left the party after you did. I didn’t want to go home alone yet. I went to the Book Barn. I have a key. I made some coffee. I looked at some bird books. I was smoking a cigarette. I know I’m not supposed to smoke in there. But I did, and I don’t remember what happened.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t remember where I put it out or if I even did.” She described how she turned on the computer and surfed the net. And then how Sophie appeared to her, sitting in Jesse’s chair. “She was talking about acquaintance kidnapping, reeling off statistics. It freaked me out. I ran out of there so fast. I burned the Book Barn down. I didn’t mean to, and I’m so fucking screwed.”

  Jesse shook her head. “You don’t know that for sure.”

  “They’re investigating, and they’ll figure it out. What else could it have been?”

  “What else? There were hundreds of lit pumpkins all over town. It’s a miracle there hasn’t been a fire before. Sweetie, you don’t know for sure.”

  “I’ve royally screwed up my life. My dad’s business is gone. You don’t have a job. The whole town will hate me when they find out. Everyone loved the Book Barn, and I’ll be in juvey prison for years.”

  “I think you’re overreacting. You don’t know. And if they find out it was a cigarette, they won’t know it’s you.”

  “Hello? Have you heard of fingerprints? DNA? Don’t you watch NCIS? They can figure that stuff out. I know I said I didn’t care, but I didn’t want to burn my dad’s business down. Really.” She started to cry.

  Jesse hugged her. “I know. I know. Shhh, it’s okay, honey. It’s really, really going to be okay.”

  Jesse had her lie back down and pulled the covers up to her chin.

  “Jesse?”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t tell my parents.”

  Chapter Twenty

  After checking out of the motel the next morning, Jesse asked Star to show her where Paul Bunyan had set up camp on the beach.

  “This way,” Star said, leading her to the spot back near the Duneside Cottages. The morning sun was starting to burn off the thick fog as they followed a path through tall beach grass and low rosa rugosa to the ocean. Saint Anthony ran freely off-leash, galloping in and out of the shallow water.

  Star turned to the right, then finally, she stopped and nodded. “This is the spot. I remember we used this telephone pole as a marker.”

  Jesse sat down on a big rock and gazed about. Shore birds. The tide. Seashells. Little crabs. Listen for any movement. Stand in one spot. Gaze out with a wide view.

  Star gestured toward nearby shrubbery. “He used to throw his blankets over these bushes in the morning. And the abandoned rowboat I told you about where he stashed his stuff was around here. But that’s gone.”

  Jesse got up and walked to where Star had pointed. She bent down, picked up a handful of sand, and let it run through her fingers. “Hey, look at this,” she said, tugging at something buried in the sand. She held it up.

  “An empty Snapple bottle?” Star said.

  “Well, it could have been his.” Jesse wiped off the bottle. “And what about this?” She kicked a broken lobster trap with ropes and other bits of plastic caught inside it.

  “Jesse, it’s garbage. He’s gone, and all his stuff is
long gone, too.”

  There was no sign of Paul Bunyan at all. No remnants of a person. I must have been insane to think anything of his would be left. She let the Snapple bottle drop to the sand and shook her head. “You’re right.”

  She looked out at the calm ocean before her, the wide-open sky, pale blue and cloudless. A seagull with a crab dangling from its mouth swooped overhead. The goldenrod was in bloom, and the morning light was soft and yellow, perfect for landscape painting. Despite how beautiful the Cape was in the fall, Jesse wished she were back in her studio, a paintbrush in her hand, instead of sitting on a beach with a crude drawing of some homeless man who may have kidnapped her daughter.

  She nodded to Star. “C’mon. Let’s go.”

  They followed the path back and arrived at the truck. Saint Anthony gave a shake, wriggling his whole body, flinging water everywhere, and ending with a little swirl of his butt.

  “Hey,” Star shouted, “I already took a shower.”

  Jesse grabbed a towel out of her truck, rubbed the dog down, then gave him a pat on the rear. She opened the passenger door. “In you go, Brownie.”

  “Yuck. He smells like a wet sweater,” Star said as she climbed in.

  Jesse got into the driver's seat. “Let’s do what we came here to do.”

  She pulled out onto Route 6 and headed for the center of Wellfleet. It was a sweet town, not fancy. Only a few locals were out on Main Street, making it feel more like a ghost town. She recognized many of the shops from her past visits—Hatch’s Fish Market, Pickle and Puppy, and Herridge Books. She thought of the Book Barn and felt a tug of sadness.

  After stopping at a diner for take-out coffee and muffins, they pulled up to the Wellfleet Methodist Church. Jesse had made a list of possible places a homeless man might frequent in town. A sandwich board sign on the sidewalk with big black letters read: Food Pantry Open Today.