Snapdragon Way (Firefly Hollow Book 8)

by T. L. Haddix

  Haley studied her for a long minute, then sighed. She picked up the large, thick envelope she’d laid on the counter when she came in and handed it to Sophie. She’d taken the letters to work and made copies of them today before meeting Jenna for lunch to give the originals back to her.

  “If you’ll excuse me for a moment, I need the restroom.”

  When she came back out, Sophie was on the couch, the stack of copied letters on the table in front of her. She had her hands steepled together under her chin, her index fingers touching her lips as though she was shushing herself.

  “Where’d you get these?” she asked Haley, her voice quiet. She didn’t lift her gaze from the papers, just reached down and slowly flipped the page.

  “Jenna, that they’re addressed to? She’s been my friend since grade school. When she figured out who Eli was last Friday when we met for dinner, she told me about them. About Erica. They knew each other in North Carolina.”

  “I know. I remember her. She was snooty little shit, Erica’s shadow for years,” Sophie said, glancing up at Haley. “I won’t apologize if that offends you. The truth sucks sometimes.”

  Haley crossed her arms and took a seat on one of the barstools beside the counter that separated the kitchen and living room. “The last one is the most interesting, I thought.”

  Sophie thumbed to the back of the stack.

  As she read the letter that detailed Eli’s affair with her, Haley watched. She saw Sophie draw in a bracing breath, hold it, then slowly release it as she lifted her head and stared across the room. Without speaking, she stacked the papers back neatly, then carefully placed them on the table as though they contained an explosive charge.

  Haley supposed they did, in a way.

  “Well?” she asked after a minute when Sophie didn’t speak.

  “Have you ever had the occasion to spend time with a pure sociopath, Haley? Moreover, a narcissistic one?” There was something in her eyes when she finally looked toward Haley that hurt to see.

  Haley shrugged. “Not really. Narcissists, yes, but not the other.”

  Sophie sat back against the cushions of the couch carefully as though she feared moving too fast would hurt. “I have. I came to live with Erica and her parents when I was nine. My father had gotten a job in a less than safe part of the world, and he needed to leave me someplace I’d be protected. My mother and Erica’s father are siblings. Dad never came back for me, and I ended up staying with Uncle Harold and Aunt Renny until I graduated high school. It wasn’t an ideal situation in a lot of ways, but I didn’t understand just how problematic it was until I was a sophomore. I guess Eli’s told you about what happened?”

  “No,” Haley said, shaking her head. “Only in the loosest of terms.”

  “Really?” Sophie asked, staring at her. “Wow. Okay. I’ll bet he chickened out. It’s not a pretty story.”

  “Then why don’t you tell it to me and let’s get it out of the way?”

  Sophie’s mouth tightened. “I don’t know that it’s my place to tell you.”

  Haley actually laughed. “Seriously? You barge in here demanding answers, but when I ask the questions, you’re not sure it’s your place? Unbelievable.” She got up and went to the fridge for a cold soda.

  “Could I have some water?” Sophie asked. “And yeah, I guess that was ballsy. I’m sorry. All of this, it’s not easy to talk about.” She tapped on the letters.

  Haley got her the water, then resumed her seat on the barstool. “So enlighten me.”

  After taking a drink, Sophie nodded. “You have to understand who Eli was back then. Middle child, star athlete, utterly normal. A bit of a temper that flared mostly through his mouth. A good guy but pretty immature overall, though most guys his age are. And he’d been in competition with Noah ever since they were little and Noah did a couple of things that the family felt were pretty heroic.”

  There was a harshness in Sophie’s voice when she said Noah’s name that told Haley she had very complicated feelings for the man, but since that was neither here nor there, she ignored the tone.

  “When Eli started dating Erica, they… She knew what buttons to push, okay? She was always able to read people, their insecurities, their desires, all that sort of thing. She’d have made an excellent profiler or psychologist if she hadn’t been a pure bitch. And that is something else I no longer apologize for, calling that particular spade what she was.

  “Anyhow, even though I never saw John and Zanny make one bit of difference between the boys, Eli felt like they did. Like he could do no right and Noah could do no wrong. Well, to be fair, he got into scrapes and trouble when Noah didn’t. Noah didn’t have anything to do with other people, and Eli’s always been right there in the thick of things. So they got into a little spat, I don’t even remember what it was about, and Noah pissed him off. And Eli ran his mouth to Erica about certain things Noah could do. Things that would make Noah look bad if they came out.”

  Haley frowned. “That’s not the least bit confusing or concerning. What exactly can he do?”

  Sophie watched her closely for a minute. “If you tell anyone outside the Campbell family I said this, I’ll hunt you down and kick your ass, and I don’t give two shits if you have me arrested for it. Understand?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me.” Sophie lifted her chin, her gaze direct. “I’ll have your word on this or we’re finished talking.”

  “You still care about him, don’t you?” Haley asked softly. “Eli was right.”

  Sophie looked away. “Your word?”

  “Fine. Cross my heart, blah blah.”

  From the scowl Sophie sent her, she wasn’t happy with Haley’s flip response. Regardless, she answered. “Noah’s a medium.”

  Haley blinked. “A what?”

  “A medium. He can communicate with the dead. Has been since he was a little guy.”

  Haley’s first instinct was to protest, to tell Sophie she was being ridiculous, but something made her stop and think. She recalled the stories Fred had told her about his ancestors, his own insistence that he could see people’s true colors, the hours he’d spent talking to Owen about auras and healers and the like, and Noah’s peculiar quietness. And something clicked.

  “Oh, my God. Really?”

  Sophie nodded briefly. “You believe me?”

  Haley picked up the can of soda and played with the tab. “It fits. It just fits. Makes sense. Wow. The poor guy. That has to be a heavy load.”

  Sophie’s breath escaped in a long sigh. “It is. I thought I’d have to fight to convince you.”

  “I grew up around here, remember? My grandfather raised me, and he… well, he was different. He hadn’t forgotten the old ways, let’s say. So Eli told Erica about what Noah is? Good Lord… in high school? I guess it’s too much to ask that she kept it to herself.”

  “Hell, no. She blabbed it to everyone she could, along with other things. Things that aren’t relevant to all this mess,” she said, tapping the letters. “At least not in a way that matters or that I’m willing to go into. And when Noah found out, that’s what caused the fight between them. If the teachers hadn’t pulled them apart, they’d have killed each other. Literally. Noah was at the tail-end of his senior year, Eli was a sophomore.”

  “That couldn’t have gone over well,” Haley said, moving to sit beside Sophie on the couch.

  “It didn’t. Noah withdrew, went to the county high school to finish out the year. And as soon as he graduated, he was gone,” she said quietly. “It devastated the family. I think Eli realized pretty fast how wrong he’d been, especially since everyone put most of the blame on his shoulders, but there was Erica every time he turned around. And she wouldn’t let him go. God, they fought. At least every month or two, they’d break up and then get back together.
Every time, it was this big production on her part. She enjoyed it, Haley. Enjoyed putting him through that. Making him crawl and beg and prove himself to her, over and over and over again. And that was how their relationship was from day one until the day she died.

  “God forgive me, I’m glad she’s dead,” Sophie whispered. “She wanted Noah, you see and had wanted him all along. She had him, and he threw her away. Well, nobody but nobody threw Erica away. She was the one who did the trashing. So she saw Eli as the perfect punishment for Noah. If she hadn’t died, none of us would ever have been free of her.”

  Haley was stunned by several things. First, that Sophie’s words were so close to what she’d heard Eli say when talking about his late wife. But perhaps more so by her claim that Noah and Erica had been…

  “You’re saying Noah slept with Erica?” Haley knew her tone was incredulous, but she couldn’t help it. She wouldn’t have been more stunned if Sophie’d said he was an alien life form. “No.”

  Sophie looked at her. “Eli said he swore up and down after the wreck that he’d never touched her.”

  “But you still think he did?”

  “At least once, in high school. It makes sense.”

  “No, it doesn’t. I mean, I don’t know him that well, but Noah doesn’t strike me as the kind of man who would do that. Not even when he was an impulsive teenager having problems with Eli.”

  Sophie shrugged. “He told everyone he did. Literally, at school during the fight, he threw that at Eli like a punch. ‘I had her first.’ We all heard it. He was quite proud of himself.”

  Haley winced with dismay, imagining how painful that had to have been to witness, especially for a young girl who was in love with him. “Oh, Sophie.”

  The other woman waved it away. “It’s over and done. But you see, that whole fight? That was what Erica wanted. She thrived on creating that kind of chaos. It gave her a sense of power over other people.” She laughed.

  “I remember one time when we were maybe fourteen or so, she was eating a bowl of macaroni and cheese. And one of our neighbor’s little kids was at the house. These people had nothing. Single mom, struggling to feed four mouths, and this kid, he was so hungry. She sits down in front of him and starts eating it, and he was so shy… but he asked her for some. And do you know what she did?”

  Haley shook her head mutely.

  When Sophie looked at her, there was hatred and pain in her gaze. “She told him that it was her food, and if he wanted some, his mother needed to buy it for him. I was so angry with her, I wanted to shove that food down her throat. A fucking ninety-nine cent box of mac and cheese, Haley, and they were so poor, they couldn’t swing it. I got up to get him some, and she looks at me and says ‘don’t bother getting him any from the pot on the stove. I spat in it.’ You see, she always did that. If she made food for herself, she’d spit in it so no one else would want it. I never knew that until that day.”

  Haley closed her eyes. “Surely to God…”

  “So I went into the kitchen and I got every fucking box of mac and cheese we had, and the milk and butter to make it, and I walked him next door. And I made sure he had as much as he wanted, and his brothers and sister, too.”

  “What’d Erica do? Surely her parents didn’t let her get away with that?”

  “Oh, they thought it was funny. At least Aunt Renny did. She’s as bad as Erica was in her own way. Harold was appalled, but Renny protected her. Said she was right, that the mom should have bought it for the kids if they wanted it. Erica was the only child they could have, you see, and she couldn’t do any wrong as far as they were concerned. I think she could have danced on someone’s grave—literally—and they’d have let her.”

  Sophie sat forward and flipped through the letters. “I could tell you a hundred other things she did that were just as awful from the time we were children until she died. That’s who she was, Haley. There was no good in her. So I don’t have to read these letters to have a good idea of what they contain. She’s always the victim, proud of the wrongs she’s done, and can’t understand why people don’t ‘get’ her. Something’s wrong with them. And with Eli, especially.” She looked at Haley. “Am I right?”

  Haley felt sick as she nodded. She’d already figured out that a lot of what was in the letters was pure fabrication, but hearing Sophie talk about how vile Erica had been, it put a whole new twist on the content.

  “In that last letter…”

  Sophie stood and walked to the fireplace, which Haley’d decorated with a basket of cheerful fall flowers. “Eli’s like a brother to me, always has been. If you think he’s the kind of man who’d do what she accuses him of in that? Walk away now. Please, just walk away.”

  Haley closed her eyes against the tears that were trying to form. “I don’t, not really,” she admitted in a whisper. “I wasn’t expecting all this, and on top of everything else that’s happened the last few weeks, I couldn’t deal with it. I didn’t deal with it.”

  Sophie turned back to her. “I’m not saying he’s perfect. God knows, the man has a bit of a temper that, as I said, tends to run his mouth from time to time. And he’s stubborn as a damned mule. That’s practically stamped onto the Campbell gene. But he’s a good man, Haley. A truly good man. And there aren’t a lot of those out there.”

  “Is it true, what she did?” It was Haley’s turn to touch the letters. “With Eddie?”

  “Yeah. She told me in the car after I picked her up from the bar the night she died. See, a few weeks back, I’d found out she was cheating on Eli. She’d moved in with a guy in the apartment complex, practically. She spent more time at his place than her own. And even though I knew she’d cheated before, there’d never been proof. So I e-mailed Eli and told him what was going on. It was the last straw for him. I wasn’t about to let her hurt him again, make a fool of him again. I have a habit, apparently, of sticking my nose in his business,” she said with a rueful smile.

  “Apparently,” Haley said, returning the smile for a second. “What happened?”

  Sophie laughed bitterly. “She did what Erica always did. Sought revenge. She knew I’d told Eli. Knew it was really over between them this time. He grew up on her, you see. And so she struck out at me. She went over to the house I shared with Eddie one weekend when I was out of town for work, about two weeks before she died, and she slept with him. She’d just finished telling me about it when we wrecked. And that’s when the world changed again.”

  When she dropped an elegant hand to her belly for a brief instant in an unconscious move, Haley sucked in a breath. “Oh, no. Oh, Sophie.”

  Sophie glanced at her, then down at her hand, and grimaced. “I still do that. I don’t know why. Instinct, I guess. I hadn’t even told him yet. I’d just been to the doctor that morning and had it confirmed. When I came to after the wreck, I was in traction, bandaged from head to toe. The baby was gone. And Eddie was there, standing over me, nothing but love and concern in his eyes. He kept telling me it was okay, that everything was okay, we would be okay.”

  She walked to the window to straighten one of the curtain ties. “The first words I spoke after I woke up were to ask my fiancée if he’d screwed my cousin. He didn’t even have to answer me. I saw it on his face. And I remember thinking that Erica would be so damned proud of herself.” She sighed. “What are you going to do about Eli?”

  Haley shrugged and clasped her hands together between her knees. “I don’t know. I’ve been worrying about that all week. I don’t even know if he would talk to me. I’m afraid to find out. When he was here Saturday, I was running on about three hours of sleep over two days. I truly didn’t handle it well.”

  “Do you love him?”

  “I do. And that scares me to death,” she whispered, hoping she could figure out how to explain. “I just came out of this long, hard journey with my grandfathe
r where I had all this responsibility and pressure and weight, and I wasn’t expecting to fall in love with anyone, much less one of my patients. And then losing Gramps the way I did, losing the only place I’ve ever called home, it’s not been an easy road, Sophie.”

  “I guess it hasn’t. And you’re terrified that you’re what, only in love with him because he’s helped you? Because he’s the guy who’s been there and you’re afraid it won’t last?”

  Haley nodded. “And I know what I feel for him, it’s deeper than that. Part of me knows I’m being stupid, knows that he’s a once-in-a-lifetime guy. The other part of me, that little voice that nags, the Haley whose mother walked away when she was an infant, who doesn’t know who her father is, the girl whose beloved grandfather left her homeless, quite literally? She’s got cold feet. So seeing those letters… they were the last straw on an already loaded-down camel.”

  She rubbed her hands over her face. “And then at lunch today, I gave Jenna back the originals, and when she asked me about moving on, I told her I didn’t want to do that. I wasn’t ready to call it quits. So now she’s mad at me, because she believes everything in those letters and more. She loved Erica.”

  “They were two of a kind, best I recall,” Sophie said, resuming her seat. “I’m so sorry. I do understand a lot of where you’re coming from. I have trust issues, myself. Someday, maybe we can compare parental war stories.”

  Haley laughed soggily. “If we do, there’d better be a lot of alcohol involved.”

  “And chocolate,” Sophie promptly added. “Maybe some ice cream and birthday cake, too. With real buttercream icing.”

  The relief of having someone who wasn’t judging her, someone who actually seemed to get it, was so great, Haley started crying.

  A few minutes later, she was mopping her face as Sophie awkwardly patted her shoulder in a move that reminded Haley of Fred. That set her off again.