Something About Sophie

by Mary Kay McComas

  Like lightning, she pierced the air with her rod and struck him again, and again.

  “Mother!” Billy shouted too late.

  “She was unconscious when he took his turn.” She made a snarling sound. “Unconscious.”

  Sophie’s dry eyes burned and scratched as she lowered her lids over them to close out the picture forming in her head—there was no more room.

  Billy’s weak laugh was meant to pacify his troubled parent. “You know those things leave marks, don’t you? Really distinct marks. Nobody’s going to believe he sat out here electrocuting himself before he committed suicide.”

  He had a point.

  “Yes. I see it.” She put the hotshot on the ground at her feet, saying, “We must remember to wipe it clean and put his fingerprints all over it so they’ll know he used it.” She went for her gun.

  “No, leave it, Mother. You don’t need it right now. He’s not going anywhere. And the fewer prints you put on it, the fewer we’ll have to wipe off.”

  Another good point. She nodded, clearly still willing to accept rational input.

  “Okay. So.” Billy picked up the thread. “He’s killing everyone who knows what happened. And he tries to kill Sophie because he thinks she knows, too, and that that’s why she came to town. For revenge.”

  “Yes.”

  Looking confused, he took another step her way. “And how would Sophie find out?”

  “Arthur. Arthur knew! That’s why he wrote to her to come.”

  “But how did Arthur know?”

  “He. . . .” She shook her head. His common sense was beginning to frustrate her. “Listen to me. You have no idea how difficult Arthur could be. It’s been twenty-eight years and I had to talk him out of confessing almost every single one of them. He kept track of her . . . and didn’t tell me for years. He went to her high school graduation—against my advice and my explicit wishes. This last time, after he got sick, he sent for her and then told me what he’d done. I wanted to kill him. Have you ever heard of anything more selfish? He was going to die and leave me holding the bag.”

  “Holding what bag?”

  “The bag of truth!”

  Billy’s hesitation was brief. “What truth, Mother?”

  Sophie wasn’t sure if Billy saw the lights moving through the trees in the distance behind Elizabeth, but it might explain some of the new tension and urgency in his voice. “The truth about how you and Arthur knew who was there that night? And what they did to Lonny’s daughter? The truth about how you know when this guy took his turn at her?”

  “What?” His mother looked as if he was speaking Mandarin with his soft southern drawl.

  “Did one of them confess to Arthur or to you? Is that how you knew?” He was less than two steps from her. “Or were you both there?”

  “No. No.” She shook her head. “I believe someone may have—”

  “You and Arthur were there. You saw the whole thing.”

  “No!”

  “You saw and did nothing.” Billy was shattered, his disillusionment shining in his eyes, ringing in his voice.

  “We couldn’t!”

  “You couldn’t? Really? Why not?”

  Elizabeth said nothing, so Billy continued to press her. “What exactly were you and Arthur doing up here? That is, what were you doing before you saw what was happening and did nothing?”

  Her eyes shifted to Sophie and then back to Billy. She was caught. Her neck stiffened and she became noticeably taller as she straightened her spine, holding her head high. A proud and beautiful creature caught in her own trap. She was angry.

  “Your father was never home! He’s still never home! I was young and lonely. I was alone and isolated with only Andrew and Pamela to look after. Soon they were in school all day. I was so lonely. I took up gardening—alone—everything died. I took on more community responsibilities, more charities, more and more activities. And invariably Arthur would be on one committee or another with me.

  “My . . . our favorite was always the clean-up committee. Ellen had been gone for years by then. We’d talk after. Have coffee sometimes. He and I, we both took all the jobs no one else wanted because we had no one to . . . we had no one. We loved our children, naturally. But they don’t provide adult companionship. We were young—your age. We spent time together. We were lonely. We had needs.”

  “You had an affair.” It wasn’t a question. Elizabeth said nothing, stoically ambiguous. “You were up here somewhere going at it. You heard her screams. You went to investigate. You found them. But if they saw you, you’d have to explain what you were doing here—with Arthur. Dad would divorce you and Arthur would end up preaching to the pews. You’d both lose everything. So you hid. You watched. You did nothing.”

  She had the grace to look away . . . far, far away. “Arthur would have. He wanted to. He begged me. He promised to leave me out of it, to say he was here alone. But you open a door to evil and it’ll walk right in. I couldn’t risk it. I loved my family. It would have devastated my husband, my children. Destroy my home. Yes, everything. I had to protect all that. I had too much to lose. We both did. I said no. It broke my heart; killed me. Arthur cried. He covered his ears and curled up on the ground beside me. It tormented him. Always.” She looked back at Billy. “We were so young.”

  Far afield, the first twinkling of searchlights flickered like stars in the night. Faint, indistinguishable shouts floated on a mild breeze.

  Then and there, Sophie made a solemn vow: She was going to eat all the maple bars she wanted, whenever she wanted. Life was fragile and uncertain and she needed to do everything she wanted to do when she wanted to do it and not wait because the only thing certain in life is uncertainty and she loved maple bars and she was sick of not eating them because they have no nutritional value whatsoever, unlike cauliflower—the most incredible bland-tasting white stuff since notebook paper.

  Pleased with the new declaration, with the rescuers almost upon them and with the budding belief that she would likely live through the night, she turned to Billy to share her elation . . . only to find him staring at her strangely.

  Hadn’t he seen the lights? Was he hearing impaired?

  She glanced over his shoulder at Elizabeth, who looked spent and deep in thought. It occurred to her that being rescued, while wonderful, would drill his mother’s life deep into the ground. And the reality of her being a murderess?

  She tried to form an understanding, encouraging and now-she-can-get-the-help-she-needs expression on her face because she truly did empathize with those who were Elizabeth’s collateral damage—her family and the families of the men she’d killed—attempting to protect her, Sophie realized and accepted sadly.

  Billy continued to stare.

  “What?”

  “Your birthday. It’s only a few weeks before mine.”

  “So?” she said, wondering if he’d taken the ride around the bend with his mother.

  He merely nodded, and while they stood locked in pensive eye contact, she watched his thoughts and emotions come and go; add, subtract, and divide. In slow-witted stages, she picked up his trail: noted the similarity in their ages and recalled his orangeness in the apple bowl. After a few minutes, his lids fell like the final curtain on a stage and when they opened he was a changed character.

  “You were young, you said.” He turned back to his mother. “Young like me, you said.” She frowned. He made no sense. She had no playbill. “Young like Sophie, too. Right?”

  She darted her eyes in Sophie’s direction. “I suppose.”

  “Sophie and I are the same age, Mother.” She smiled—that was nice, but it wasn’t going to solve the problem of disposing of Frank Lanyard, now was it? Billy lost it. “For God’s sake! Was he my father?”

  “Who?”

  “Arthur Cubeck!”

  “What?”

  “Sophie and I were conceived on the same night, right?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Elizabeth was clearly shocked.
/>
  Then she stunned them when she burst out laughing—hysterically.

  Sophie forced her sore, shaky legs to walk to Billy’s side. She slipped her hand into his.

  Still seeming vastly too amused, Elizabeth asked, “Did this just now come to you? This revelation?”

  “No.” He spoke stiffly. “It didn’t. Pam used to tell me I was adopted. All the time. I thought she was just being mean, but after a while I—”

  “Pamela is a royal bitch and you know it,” she said, not with her usual sophistication. She chuckled at the absurdity of his assertion and shook her head.

  Sophie heard her name in the wind. Clearer. Closer.

  “I’m glad you find my question entertaining, Mother, but I’d still like an answer. Who is my father?”

  “Oh, darling,” she said, smiling broadly, straining for control. She took a step toward him and he stepped back.

  “Stop it!” His hands convulsed with anger and Sophie yelped with pain. He let go immediately. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not laughing.”

  “So I see. But you will be. It’s the best part of the story. Honestly.” With her arms out in hopeless irony, she shouted to the treetops. “Nothing happened! It’s classic. It’s comical. We flirted back and forth for for-ever. Harmless. Fun. It didn’t mean anything. We were lonely, is all. But then we kissed. We were so appalled we couldn’t look each other in the eye for weeks . . . until it happened again. It was exciting. Thrilling. It was like playing at being teenagers again. We’d go out for coffee after the most tedious meetings imaginable and hold hands under the table. We’d whisper and blush, steal kisses in dark corners. We’d get so frustrated . . . needy, you know?” Billy was stone still. “One night we just went . . . too far. We never meant to hurt anyone—it just happened. I remember feeling so free and happy and filled with anticipation . . . he drove straight through the chain blocking the access road.” Her lovely animated face melted like heated wax. “It was barely dusk. I could see the longing in his eyes, his desire for me. I felt beautiful again. I wanted it to last forever, that feeling.” She was as empty as her sigh. The vacancy in her eyes as she turned toward the thrashing noises of their rescuers said it all. She didn’t turn back before she continued.

  “Nothing happened—her first scream shattered everything between us. Afterward, I was so guilty I seduced your father every chance I got trying to make it up to him. And when I found out about you, I never wanted a child more than I wanted you, Billy. You were my gift to my family for failing them so miserably. You saved us. You made my family normal and safe again.

  “But Arthur and I . . . well, we were already in hell before we heard her cry out a second time.” She turned back to them with a small smile on her face and the gun in her right hand. “We never made it back, sweetheart.”

  In a grotesque slow-motion scene, like so many frames from an old silent film, Elizabeth raised her right arm into the air, one jerky movement after the next. Her wrist twisted and her hand pulled the gun around until it gradually lined the nose up with her ear. A large dark form passed by low in Sophie’s peripheral vision. Billy. His mother’s amazing grace was still evident in the motion of the backlash that followed the sound of an underwater explosion. Sophie actually saw the bullet floating in the air. . . .

  But that’s all she saw.

  “Sophie.” It was Jesse. “Sophie, honey?”

  Her eyes opened, wide with fear. But a split second later she knew she was safe with her friend, and that while most of the noise and commotion was several feet away, she could continue to hide away . . . leave the lights off . . . let the phone ring . . . ignore it all.

  “Sophie.” Drew this time.

  Blinding light. Tender facial poking. The light went away, but the squeezing and gentle bending continued until he said it again. “Sophie?”

  Another blink showed her the crowd was breaking up. She got that movie’s-over, time-to-go-home feeling and took another quick peek. People were pairing up, forming small groups. Jesse was holding Billy—he was sobbing, clinging to her. Frank Lanyard had three policemen with him. People huddled low to the ground . . . Elizabeth. She turned her head and looked up at Drew.

  Those eyes. . . . His wonderful, caring eyes. The deep pain inside them; the terrified concern. The questions he couldn’t begin to ask. The tears pooling on the rims.

  He said her name again and she lifted her hand, smeared dirt on his cheek and said, “I’m so sorry.”

  “Oh, Sophie.” He rolled her up into his arms and lowered his forehead to the curve of her neck. He wept.

  When Billy fought going back to town in the ambulance, his brother became insistent.

  “The sheriff wants you to go. He said he’d meet you back in the ER and get more details. There’s nothing else you can do here.”

  “She shouldn’t be left alone.”

  “She won’t be. I promise.”

  “I should stay. Sophie needs you. You go with her and I’ll stay with Mother.”

  A darting glance at Sophie on the stretcher in the back of the ambulance reassured him. “Sophie’s going to be fine. She needs medical care and so do you. Please. Go with her. Keep an eye on her for me, will you?”

  Billy looked back at the second emergency vehicle containing the shrouded body of his mother—devastated, aching for the power to turn back time.

  “I pushed her.” He confided in a low voice to his big brother. “I was angry. I wanted an answer. I pushed her too hard.”

  “Stop. It’s not your fault. You didn’t know. Hell, no one knew.” Though Drew had no clear answers of his own for what had happened, he grabbed Billy’s forearms to get his attention and did his puzzling out loud, on the fly. “This started before you were born. And she . . . she always had Arthur to share their secret with. When he died, she was alone. Imagine having to carry all that guilt alone.” It was clear that neither brother could conceive it. “The first time Cliff Palmeroy looked in Sophie’s direction, she started rolling, taking down everyone in her path who was a threat . . . to Sophie or to her and Arthur’s secret, I don’t know. Both. We may never know. And you just happened to get in her way.” He moved both his hands to Billy’s neck and gave him an affectionate shake. “You kept her from killing Lanyard. And maybe Sophie, too. And I promise you, I don’t think you pushed her into doing anything she hadn’t planned on doing anyway. I don’t.”

  It was a long minute before Billy grabbed at Drew’s shirtsleeves and they gave each other weird, rigid little jerks before embracing.

  Sophie let her heavy eyelids close. For a fraction of a second, she contemplated drumming up a bit of blame of her own—but there was none. This wasn’t one of those unpleasant situations in which there was plenty of blameworthiness to go around. This was an instance of one drop of evil being added to any amount of weakness becoming the perfect recipe for a great deal of pain inflicted on a lot of innocent people.

  A hand touched her shoulder and she looked into Billy’s core-deep misery. She wormed a hand from her warm cocoon of blankets and rounded her fingers over his. Without words, he was quick to get that he wasn’t alone; that for all time, she would be a part of his nightmares, that she would factor into the most traumatic hours of his life—and he hers. They recognized this perpetual bond in each other’s eyes—took comfort in it; promised hope and support.

  Even without a siren, the ride back to the hospital was remarkably short. The lights were on; people were waiting for them. She’d long ago lost track of the time, but it was still dark when her eyes rolled open once more with the wobbly rocking of the stretcher as they entered.

  Fading fast, beyond exhausted, Sophie only half listened to the med-speak.

  Her here, him over there . . . a third victim on the way. Seriously? She tried, but couldn’t raise a kernel of care that they were misidentifying Frank Lanyard as a third victim—the sheriff would sort all that out. . . .

  Start an IV. Allergies? Current medications? Does pushing here hurt? C
ut that. Get an X-ray. Next of kin? Clean this up. No stitches. Grip tighter. Where’s the pain on a scale from 1 to 10?

  Kin? Next of kin?

  Draw blood for a full panel. Steri-Strips. Chronic medical conditions? Pregnant? Last menstrual cycle?

  Next of kin?

  Surgeries? Primary physician. Shivering—more blankets.

  It all stopped so abruptly it was jarring. She opened one eye to the back of a woman in blue scrubs and whimpered in the blessed peace. Safe, warm, peaceful.

  Except for that word that played over and over in her head. Kin . . .

  She opened both her eyes. Nothing felt real. Actually, nothing felt at all. She was numb, body and soul . . . except for that word. Kin . . . She took in the curtained cubicle and the short end of the counter surrounding the nurse’s station a few yards away. The IV in the bend of her arm was tender; the oxygen blowing in her nose had turned the mucus membrane inside dry and stiff and crusty. She took note of the wires for the heart monitor, the clip on her finger, and the clean hospital gown lying loose on her shoulders, and, apparently, over her denim skirt beneath the covers.

  Kin. She ached for her dad’s strong arms and low soothing voice. But short of that . . . she had a grandfather on the second floor.

  As if on cue, the flurry that ensued with Lanyard’s arrival allowed Sophie to fling off the oxygen before rattling the divided rails on the stretcher—both locked tight.

  It was one of those nights. . . .

  The space between the rails was too small to squeeze through, so scooting to the bottom—stretching the monitor wires and IV tubing beyond their company recommended distances—allowed her the freedom to move around unsteadily. She first found the off button on the monitor and then removed the IV the way she’d seen the nurses do it a hundred times for her mother, using a tissue to block the blood and hold pressure to the site.

  Spying—and straining air through her teeth at the pain in her arm muscles when she raised them to tie up the back of her gown—she located an exit and began a shadowy escape.