Sophie Last Seen

by Marlene Adelstein

  “That’s amazing. So cool.”

  “I know. We read books about crows. Watched documentary films about how intelligent they are and how they’ve been known to do this with people they trust.” She picked up a bottle cap and turned it over in her hand then put it back in its spot. She lifted out a yellow Lego piece and showed Barnes. He took it in his hand and examined it. “This went on for a couple of years. She collected the gifts, labeled each one, made notes in her journals. Somehow, word got out, and she was written up in the local paper.” Jesse took a newspaper clipping down off the bulletin board and showed Barnes. There was a photo of Sophie holding her box filled with her tiny presents.

  He read the headline aloud—“Bird Girl Gets Gifts from Crows”—and smiled.

  “The network evening news picked up the story. And then even Charles Osgood came to interview her for his morning show. Sophie got letters from people all over the country and England. Even Japan. People who’d had the same experience. Everyone started calling her Bird Girl. She became a mini celebrity for a while. It was crazy but fun for her. The crows were still coming up until the time she disappeared. She loved those birds and especially Sheryl Crow, the one I painted on the mural. She had an unusual shiny patch on her head.”

  Barnes laughed. “Really? Sheryl Crow?”

  “I used to play that song ‘All I Wanna Do Is Have Some Fun,’ and it became our song. We sang it together a lot. In the car. At the kitchen table. Sophie loved it. We’d dance. It was silly. Anyway, Sophie was convinced that crow, Sheryl Crow, was leaving her the best gifts. Like this one.” She picked up a charm, a small silver heart that looked as though it came from a bracelet. It had “Best Friend” engraved on the back.

  “Those are wonderful memories,” he said. “You’re lucky to have them.”

  “I guess that’s one way to look at it. Each bird I hear now brings back a different memory. When I hear the loud insistent caw of a crow, I can’t help but run out to see what they’re trying to tell me. Maybe some good news.” She brought the little heart to her chest, smiled, then shrugged. She placed the charm back in its compartment in the box before closing the lid with a pat.

  “Reminds me of some special times with Kiki.”

  “Kiki?”

  “My daughter.”

  Jesse clapped her hands. “I knew you had a child. How old is she?”

  He looked away, shaking his head. “She would have been twelve this December.”

  Jesse inhaled, a wave of shock rippling through her body. Not her, too. She gently placed her hand on his arm and held it there.

  “She was a great kid. Happy. She was my Kikareeno. My pal.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. He opened it, slid out a color photo, and handed it to Jesse. She stared at the photo of a slightly younger-looking Barnes with a smiling girl, their arms around each other in front of a tent.

  She touched the image with her finger. “She’s pretty.”

  “Yes, she was. I took her camping. Our private father-daughter thing. But about three years ago, she was super busy with school, music lessons, gymnastics, and suddenly, she started to drag around. She wasn’t herself. She became lethargic, lost weight. We took her to the doctor. My wife and I.”

  She looked at him expectantly.

  “Nora. My ex-wife now.” He breathed in deeply. He stared off for a moment. “It was childhood leukemia. Acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Once it was diagnosed, the nightmare began. What she went through...”

  She shook her head. “I’m so sorry.”

  “If the God-awful treatment would have worked, okay, then it would have been worth the pain. But it didn’t. So it wasn’t. I keep thinking we shouldn’t have put her through it.”

  “But you had to. You had to try it, right?”

  “I suppose. But after, I haven’t stopped second-guessing. There was a round of chemo that didn’t work, then they did the stem-cell transplant. It was brutal. She had to be quarantined in the hospital. The nausea, the fevers. Eight months later, she was gone. And Nora and I didn’t make it, either. It was just too much on the marriage.”

  Jesse nodded. “I know about that.”

  He shook his head. “I really fucked up. I was so stressed out. I couldn’t deal with it all and my job.”

  “This job?”

  “No. Back then, I was a cop.”

  “I knew it.”

  He nodded. “Between taking Kiki to the first round of treatments and then coping with the stem-cell transplant, the ups and downs, these intense emotions, I cracked. I started drinking. Then Kiki didn’t make it. I neglected my job. I made mistakes. I just couldn’t be a team player. I didn’t care. I ended up quitting. Nora freaked. All those years toward my pension down the drain. But I couldn’t think about that. There was nothing I could control anymore. I felt worthless.”

  It was hard to equate the calm, even-tempered man before her to the person he just described. “You were grieving. It’s normal.”

  He nodded again. “I know that now. But everyone has to go through it in their own way.” He leaned in close, looking her straight in the eyes. “You know that, right? There’s no time limit on grief.”

  Jesse gave a tiny nod. Then he pulled away.

  “Nora and I, we couldn’t comfort each other. We were too angry and empty. The pain was too intense.”

  He could have been talking about her own fractured marriage. Her own pain. She laid her hand over his. “I’m so sorry.” She’d been so immersed in her own grief, she’d never really imagined anyone else’s. Not even Cooper’s. “It’s not fair.”

  “I took it out on Nora.” He glanced at Jesse. “I was mean. Yelling. Sarcastic.” He choked up and stumbled over the next words. “I have regrets.”

  “We all do.”

  “Nora is a good person. She didn’t deserve the way I behaved.” He rubbed the top of his head. “She found someone new. Months later, I moved into an apartment in Maplewood, New Jersey. I was starting all over. I got a job assisting a PI. Started by staking out cheating husbands, deadbeat dads who hadn’t paid their child support, then some missing kids. After a few cases where I located a runaway teen, I started to develop a reputation. I was good and was able to use some of my old contacts. I was patient. God, am I patient. I went out on my own. I’d have preferred to sit in my office, tracking identity theft cases on the internet, but these missing kid cases were what found me. Occasionally, there’s a happy ending. But mostly, it’s a lot of sad stories. Sometimes lost people just don’t want to be found.”

  Maybe it was true of Sophie. Maybe she’d run away.

  He took her hand. “I’m okay now. It took a while. Day by day, you know.” He took a breath. “I think I see her all the time. Young girls walking down the street.”

  Jesse nodded but didn’t tell him of her own Sophie sightings.

  “But I’m onto a new life chapter. It’s my second chance. And I’m grateful for it.”

  A second chance. That was what she needed.

  “I told you before. Now I’m going back to school. It’ll take a while, but I’d like to help people.”

  Their eyes met. She glanced away then back to his face. “Did you... did you do anything like I did with Gary?”

  “Oh, yes. I did stuff I’m not proud of.” He looked away then back. “Why do you think I’m so obsessed with running now? I needed control of something. At least it’s a healthy addiction.” He paused then said, “Enough of this serious talk. Tell me something about yourself that no one knows.”

  She thought a moment then said, “I can’t swallow a capsule. I have to trick myself by hiding it in some food, a piece of banana or cheese, as if I were a dog.”

  They both laughed.

  “What about you? Tell me something.”

  He turned his head, thinking. Then he stood up, stared into her eyes. “I want to have some fun.” He extended both his hands out to her.

  She looked up at him questioningly.

  “C’mo
n, girl,” He said. “I know you want to. Sing with me.”

  Jesse took his hands and let him pull her up to standing. He swung her hands from side to side, and they both started singing the Sheryl Crow song and swaying to their beat. His voice was smooth and mellow. Sexy. He made up his own lyrics and sang, “Until the sun comes up over Jesse Albright’s hideaway.”

  They sang, danced, and laughed until they fell back to the floor, exhausted. Jesse couldn’t remember the last time she had laughed like that. It felt amazing. They sprawled on the carpet on their stomachs, talking long into the night. She learned he wasn’t from Kentucky, as his name would suggest, but his great-great-granddad was. Barnes loved baseball and had dreamed of playing with the Yankees when he was a kid. And he liked working with his hands. He was even building a boat in his spare time. She told him about growing up in Chicago, being a daddy’s girl, then later a struggling artist in New York City. Meeting Cooper. Sophie.

  Finally, Jesse couldn’t keep her eyes open. “I just need to rest for a few minutes,” she said and lay down on Sophie’s bed.

  WHEN JESSE WOKE, SHE saw a small prism shining on the wall. For a minute, she didn’t know where she was. Then she remembered. Sophie’s room. The morning sun would catch the corner of a mirror and throw the colors all around. Sophie had called it her “morning rainbow.”

  Jesse was spooned with Barnes, her back tucked into his chest. He was still asleep. She snuggled in even closer then thought back to the previous night. Oh God, the party...

  She’d made a royal fool of herself. But the time afterward had felt so intimate. The hunter’s moon. That amazing hug. Talking all night. Dancing and singing together. Laughing. She got up on her elbow, turned, and looked over at Barnes’s face. For the first time, she could study him without feeling self-conscious. “Best to focus on bill and face,” Sophie had told her. His nose was wide but well-proportioned. His hair was short, close to his scalp, and reminded her of the texture of fleece, soft and fuzzy. It came to her. A cormorant. Gentle. Beautiful. Black and noble. She longed to reach out and touch him, but she didn’t dare. She watched his chest rise and fall, his breathing soft and steady.

  She quietly slipped out of bed and found Saint Anthony on the floor, curled in a ball right under Barnes’s side. She reached down and rubbed his head, whispering, “Morning, sweetie.”

  He opened one eye lazily, groaned, and nestled tighter.

  She walked up to the closet. Sophie’s private place. Taped to the door was a sign: Private. Stay out! Trespassers will be shot and stuffed. It always made Jesse smile.

  She opened the door. The large walk-in closet was filled with clothing and shoes. She separated the bottom rack, making a split in the middle, pushing bunches of clothes to both sides. The back wall was covered with a big fanciful drawing and writing in brightly colored markers. This was Jessie’s favorite of Sophie’s creations. Birds and people flying. Each bird was distinct and well-drawn, with its name under it. Robin. Starling. Rufous-sided towhee. And drawings of particular details: different birds’ bills, wings, spotted chests, bands on necks, claws. A story written in Sophie’s tiny handwriting wound around it in circles, spirals, and loops. She’d written magical stories about people with powers to fly, grant wishes, speak to birds in their own bird language, and morph into different creatures. Jesse read, Penny rode on Harper’s back. Harper was a red-winged blackbird. He could balance on a tall stem of grass on one leg then fly through the sky with Penny holding on. Penny was a regular nine-year-old girl who had shrunk down to bird size after eating brussels sprouts.

  Jesse looked to the farthest end of the closet, off to the left, down a narrow passageway perfect for a little person. Perfect for Sophie. Jesse sat on the lavender carpeted floor of the closet, just like Sophie used to, and closed the door most of the way. Jesse would often find her behind the door, hiding, talking to herself, or making up stories. With the clothes hanging down, it felt safe, like a cave. She looked up and tried to imagine exactly what Sophie had seen. Her shoes were jumbled in a messy pile. Jesse lifted out a pink sneaker, a Heely. Sophie had learned quickly how to skate fast on the one-wheeled shoe. She looked cute, zipping around in them, her binoculars bouncing on her chest. Her feet would be bigger now, maybe the same size as Jesse’s. She pulled her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. She turned the shoe in her hand. Fingered the lace. Spun the wheel with her index finger. “Mommy, Daddy, Sophie,” she said, softer than a whisper.

  “Hey.” Barnes was standing outside the closet, peering in through the small opening.

  “Hey yourself.”

  He opened the door another couple inches and poked his head inside. His shirt was wrinkled, and the bed sheets had made crease lines on his face, imprinting, Jesse imagined, a secret message on him. It made her smile. She would have liked to touch those crease lines to read his face, like a blind person.

  “Can I come in?” he asked softly.

  She nodded.

  He opened the door just enough to slip through. He got on the floor, crawled over, and snuggled next to her. Then he pulled the door closed so only the tiniest sliver of light came through underneath, near the floor. In the dark, Jesse felt more at ease, knowing he couldn’t see her.

  “She liked to come in here,” Jesse whispered.

  “Feels safe and cozy. It’s nice in here. Kiki had her own special place in our attic.” Barnes picked up a small round flashlight on the floor. It was attached to a piece of elastic.

  “Sophie’s headlight lamp. She wore it when she hid in here. She looked like a little miner girl.”

  He clicked it on, but nothing happened. “Batteries must be dead.”

  Jesse nodded. Of course they’d be dead after six years, but it made her feel sad. Barnes pulled a little flashlight attached to a keychain out of his pocket. He turned it on and pointed the light at the wall, illuminating the writing and drawings. He gazed at the wild, meandering mural for a minute.

  “Wow,” he whispered. “She really was something.” Then he pointed the light down toward the narrow section of the closet where her shoeboxes were stacked.

  “Huh.” He held the light toward the wall near the floor way in the back. “What’s that?”

  “What do you see?” Jesse leaned in to see that his light was highlighting a thin crack on the wall.

  Barnes got on his hands and knees, shoved aside a pile of shoes and clothes, and crawled all the way to the back through the narrow space. He knocked on the wall then reached into his pants pocket.

  “Boy Scouts,” he said, holding up an old pocketknife. He opened the blade and stuck it in the wall into a crack. Then he jiggled it and pried open a small rectangle of wood. A small door had been cut. It had fit in the wall perfectly. He took out the piece of wood and held the light inside.

  “Your plumber must have cut this. You’ve got some water pipes back here. A shut-off valve. Did you know?”

  “Yes. We had a leak one winter. Cooper kept a lightbulb on in there. He used to check it each winter, but after that day, I doubt he ever thought to do it anymore. I certainly haven’t been in there.”

  Barnes shined the light farther inside and rummaged around. “Sophie knew about this space.”

  “What do you mean? What do you see?” Her heart was suddenly off and racing.

  Barnes rustled around in there then pulled something out. He replaced the door, tapped it shut with the bottom of his pocketknife, and crawled backward to the closet entrance.

  He handed her a spiral notebook that had Sophie’s name handwritten on the cover in the shape and colors of a rainbow. There had been a stack of notebooks that Jesse had found long ago in Sophie’s room, diaries and log books, and this one looked like those. Her hands shaking, she flipped through the notebook. Like the others, it was filled with what looked like entries of a birder’s journal. The first entry was dated August of 2012. Their last trip to Wellfleet.

  Red in the bushes, long bill, white head, black chest with pink spo
ts... Bright-red bands at neck. Duck-like, large body and head...

  Wondering why Sophie would have hid this particular notebook, Jesse closed it, brought it to her nose, and sniffed, searching for some long-lost Sophie scent. It only smelled like a musty book, though. She would read it later when she was alone.

  “I never met a child like her,” Jesse said. “I know every parent thinks that about their kid. She was often in her own world. She’d sing and twirl and make up the most amazing stories or drawings. Like these.” She nodded at the wall mural. “She didn’t write or sound like her age, but years older. Everyone thought so. She taught me how to observe, how to watch for details, be patient. What things to look for first and record when looking at birds. It’s funny how she could sit for hours watching birds, waiting, listening, because somehow, she related to them. I don’t know why. Maybe she felt lonely or envied their freedom. Or was enchanted by their songs. Or their beauty. Or all of it. Whatever it was, I was in awe of that part of her.”

  “That’s wonderful.”

  She shook her head. “But I didn’t protect her.”

  “You can’t always protect them. I know that.”

  “Things are not what they seem.”

  “What things?”

  “Things,” she snapped. “Everything.”

  “Jesse, what is it? Tell me.” He took her by the shoulders and turned her toward him. “Tell me,” he whispered firmly.

  She was shaking her head back and forth. Back and forth. She couldn’t stop. Holding the notebook in the air, Jesse waved it furiously. “It’s a lie. It’s a big, fat disgusting lie. You see this smiling girl, this happy little girl, and the town and the city and the whole country see her photo plastered in every window on Main Street, on TV, and in the papers. They think she’s the perfect girl. They think we are the grieving parents of this perfect little innocent girl who was snatched away, but that’s not the truth.”

  “What do you mean?”