RUNNING A COMB through her wet hair, Sophie opens her tablet’s social media app. “Join me today at The Warren Black Dome on Pier 88 to take a stand for whatever cause is in your heart. Hope to see you all there! #PutASTOPTo”
“Oh, hey,” she says as Oliver enters the walk-in closet in just his suit pants. “I got you something.”
He pulls a pressed white shirt off the hanger and drapes it over his shoulders. “What?”
From her drawer, Sophie pulls out a medium-sized black gift box with matching ribbon and hands it over to him.
“What’s the occasion?” He is clearly confused.
“Well, today.”
“Sophie, you didn’t have to do that.”
She grins. “I know.”
He unties the ribbon and lifts the lid. It’s a mini wooden chest. He studies it carefully, passing his hand over the top.
Before he opens it, Sophie says, “I’ve seen that picture in your office of you and your parents when you were a kid. You know, the one in the tree house you and your father built together? And, well, I kind of googled the exact type of wood and had it carved into a chest. It’s 21-year old white oak.”
He nods and rubs his mouth, unable to speak. Astonishment doesn’t quite cover it.
“I was nine.” His smile shows nothing compared to what he feels inside. “We had just put the last board in place. My mother was pregnant with Cassie. In a way, the four of us are there in that photo. It’s a memory I’ll treasure my whole life.”
She softly puts her hand on his abdomen. “Well, go ahead. Open it.”
He does and finds a black felt lining and plenty of space to store little trinkets. There is a small, chrome cufflinks box. His reaction is sweet and heartfelt after reading the message engraved on it.
Loving you always, Dad.
Inside is a pair of handcrafted silver and wood cufflinks, monogrammed with his initials: OJB. Oliver James Black.
“It’s the same wood as the chest,” Sophie explains, the moved expression on his face sending her heart into somersaults. “They’re not much. You probably have ones that are more expensive. But I know how much this day means to you. It was your father’s project. I thought maybe you’d want to wear something special today, in his honor.”
He looks up at her. There’s something in his eyes that fills her with sweet, crazy emotion. “This is my father’s handwriting, Sophie.” She’s never heard his voice waver before.
“That’s right. Cassie had it scanned from a birthday card. So what do you say, huh? Do you like them?”
Sophie can’t possibly know, but the gift means more to him than anything.
“Oliver,” she chuckles nervously, “say something.”
He can’t. So instead he pulls her in a sudden embrace so tight, a gasp escapes her lips. His hands desperately wrap around her frail body like he’s going to lose her. She feels his body press in, his chest rigid and warm. She squeezes him back. She, too, is home.
MOBS OF CAMERAS and reporters swarm like locusts as Sophie and Oliver arrive at the pier hand in hand, all wide grins and perfect poise. The mayor speaks briefly to offer congratulations and introduce Oliver. During Oliver’s ceremonial speech, Gordon Flynn, Sophie, the mayor, the governor, architects, and city officials all remain to the side of the lectern. Since Oliver singlehandedly funded the dome, Gordon Flynn has no choice but to stand there, smile, and listen to him speak.
“Good afternoon to you all. This is a joyous occasion. My father, Warren Black, had a vision for New York: invest in the long term infrastructure needs of the city. Sadly, cancer took away his life much too early. I was born here in New York. I grew up here. I won’t resort to clichés, but in no other place on Earth that I can think of, can you find an abundance of culture and history. I cannot express more about New York than what has already been written by Mark Twain, said by Charlie Chaplin, or sung by Frank Sinatra. The city is not perfect; it’s not the biggest, nor is it the most beautiful, but to understand what makes it great, you have to understand what makes the people great. We are writers, dancers, painters, doctors, taxi drivers, models, journalists. We are hard workers. And so it is an extraordinary privilege to be here today presenting this unique leisure destination my father ideated, the result of five years of patience and perseverance.”
Oliver explains the impact, design, and many features of the park. “The dome houses a spacious amphitheater for concerts and other performances. No gym membership? No problem. Bicyclists, skaters, joggers, and pets are welcome. Enjoy a yoga workout or salsa dance on the stage. The retractable glass dome regulates the climate, protecting the park from extreme temperatures. Or it can remain open when the weather is balmy. Either way, it allows for year-round pleasure.”
Sophie looks positively angelic in a fitted baby blue knee-length dress. There are so many things she can’t believe. First, that’s her man up there owning it, new cufflinks and all. Second, smelling sweet flowers and plants as opposed to exhaust, dog turds, and hot dogs in a park in New York is a literal breath of fresh air. Third, the park is jam-packed. Fourth, holy crap, if you stand still long enough, you can feel the pier moving from side to side.
In closing, Oliver expresses his appreciation to his family, the mayor, the governor, and Black International for its assistance in the construction of the park. “Sophie, my love, thank you for your strength and standing with me. Dad, Mom, wherever you may be, this is a story of promises kept. I kept my promise. And now I introduce, The Warren Black Dome.”
The red ribbon is cut with big golden scissors and the park officially opens to the public. Thousands of people erupt in cheers.
Sophie walks toward Oliver, clapping. “I am so proud of you,” she says and gives him a hug. She falls a little harder, a little deeper for him in the span of his speech’s length.
Sophie and Oliver take an inaugural walk along the beautifully landscaped gardens, past the restaurants, shops, and a bust of the late Warren Black himself. Their private moment doesn’t last long before Aunt Peg and her daughters catch their attention. Oliver thanks them for coming out to support the event just as a reporter approaches.
Oliver goes for a stroll with Green Magazine interviewer Bob Nelson to explain about the energy efficient landscape and vegetation. Sophie moves to the central lawn with her aunt and the girls, where Lily and Gracie can run free and wild at the playground. Designers have re-imagined playtime. There are splash pads, group swings, climbing walls, structures for bouncing and sliding, and a tree house manufactured from steel (Oliver’s personal touch).
Gordon corners Sophie as she walks across the tree-lined gardens headed back to the stage. “Gordon Flynn. I haven’t had the pleasure.” He extends his hand to her.
Oliver goes on and on about him all the time—Gordon said this; Gordon did that—which is why she can only answer with, “I suppose not.” She gives him her hand and he clamps it in a viselike squeeze causing her rings to cut into her fingers.
“You’re hurting my hand.” She says more like an observation than a complaint.
His ice-blue eyes are dangerous, his face taut. “Oh, sorry. That’s golf.” With a perverse smile, he releases her and makes an imaginary golf swing. “My instructor says I have a strong grip.”
Sophie makes sure to give him an interested look. “Do you always play to win?”
The question sounds like an accusation, and it takes him by surprise. But the answer is unhesitating. “Even if it hurts.”
“They say ambition can be a bad thing. We all know what happened to Julius Caesar.”
He chuckles, but not in a kind way. “I thought we were talking about golf.”
“Sports. Business. Life. Isn’t it the same game? Playing an opponent?”
“Don’t you worry your pretty little head about that,” he tells her gravely, warningly.
“Sophie.” With all the tension brewing, the way her name slides off Oliver’s tongue and his hand suddenly on the small of her back makes Sophie feel
like jumping out of her skin. “It’s time for your speech.”
Gordon stares at Oliver. “Oliver Black, you’re a lucky man.”
“I know.”
“Anyway,” Gordon forces a polite smile, “Sophie, nice knowing you.”
And then he is gone, leaving Oliver suspicious and her with a scowl.
“There’s something definitely off about him,” she says.
“You think there’s something off about everyone.”
“So you think I’m crazy?”
“All women are crazy. But this time, I think you and I have never been more on the same page.”
Sophie takes a minute to muster some courage and confidence to give her speech. An assembly of men and women gather around to hear Sophie share her story. She keeps the tone light. “I thought no one would come today. I asked myself, who would want to come out and hear this messed up chick with a horrible sense of humor talk?” The audience laughs. “But you came. You really came.”
White rubber bracelets are passed around and Sophie encourages everyone to wear them as a physical reminder to take a stand now and again, fight for what’s right. “We are not defined by our pain and our mistakes. We are more than our problems and our regrets. Someone once said to me I was made of stardust. That we all are. It was a discovery to me. Thank you, Oliver. You took my breath away. All of us live completely different lives, but we all have bits and pieces of star stuff deep in our DNA. So how about we be friends today?”
It’s all quiet one second and then a cacophony of cheers, whooping, and hollering erupt the next.
Because it is the first day of December, the park transforms into a winter wonderland as the last remaining threads of orange sink beneath the horizon. At the same time, thousands of bracelets light up in different colors. It’s symbolic: Shine a light on something that matters. People are fascinated. They throw their hands up in the air and the band starts playing. Sophie speaks to the media, shakes hands, takes pictures, and even talks to several people who come up to her with their own stories of survival.
The event culminates with the lightning of the 45-foot Christmas tree.
T W E N T Y
* * *
Screwed Six Ways To Sunday
EXHAUSTED SOPHIE AND Oliver land face first on their bed. Neither has trouble sleeping soundly through the night.
At around noon, an odd grin plays on Sarah’s lips as she observes Sophie sleeping. Defenseless. Oliver took off early. Sarah is humming a song, stroking Sophie’s golden tresses. Her eyes run down the length of her sister’s hair, then she examines her own hair with the plastic hand mirror she carries hidden in her handbag. The sisters look wildly alike. Some of their features are practically identical. Lips, eyebrows, oval-shaped face, even their jawline is similar, but Sophie is taller at five foot nine, older by six years, and has a vaguely slimmer nose.
Sophie slowly opens one eye, then the other. Little by little, her vision clears. She makes out the silhouette of someone and catapults forward, grabbing the covers tight. “Sarah, what the hell?”
“Good morning, sleepy head.” Sarah giggles and reaches over to pat her, but Sophie pushes her hand away.
“What do you want?” she hisses, almost choking on her terror.
“You sleep too much,” she says. She tilts her head sideways, thinking, and just says what’s on her mind. “Do you think I need a haircut?”
“Huh?”
“Did I tell you about the time I almost shaved my head? It was last summer. I couldn’t stand the heat. What a silly time that was. We can laugh about it over coffee. Black, right?”
“Sarah, what do you want?” she asks again, slower this time.
“Isn’t it obvious? To spend time with you, goof-nugget. You’re always too busy with other things. I was thinking we could bake cupcakes. Chocolate with vanilla icing. They’re my favorite.”
Goof-nugget? “We’re out of sugar. Where’s Oliver?”
She shrugs. “What about Africa? Can we go to Africa? That’s where all the wild animals are.” She rubs Sophie’s hair again and flinches when she shouts, “Hey! Hands off. This is not a petting zoo.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Just let me sleep, will you? I’m tired.” She turns over and nudges her face into the pillow.
“Don’t do that!” Sarah shouts, panicked. “You’ll ruin your makeup.”
Sophie jerks to a sitting position, exasperated. “What? What are you talking about now?”
Sarah holds the hand mirror to her face. “See? You like it?” She reads the answer in Sophie’s disturbed expression.
The needle on her gut-o-meter has never been more in the red “warning, warning…something is really wrong with her” zone. “You put lipstick on me while I slept?”
“And a little concealer under your eyes. I just wanted to help you get ready,” she says sadly.
“Ready? Ready for what?”
“To go see Mom,” Sarah says with a smile.
“Say again?”
“It’s her death-aversary. Didn’t you know?”
She takes a sharp breath. “Sarah, I have a mother figure in my life. Her name is Margaret.”
“Aunt Peg didn’t give birth to you.”
“It’s not about blood. It’s about the person who raised me, fed me, put me to sleep, taught me how to read, and loves me no matter what.”
Sarah’s face crumples up in confusion and dislike. She stands, starts to pace, and bites her nails. Her words shift and turn in her head, cascading out of control. But then she forgets and turns back like nothing was said. “Mom is buried here in New York. Can we visit her?”
“Not really.”
“Can we bring her flowers?”
Sophie feels a migraine coming on. “Look, Sarah. No one is talking about Susan today. No one is getting her flowers. And no one is going to the cemetery. Okay?” She feels like a kidnapper making ransom demands.
SOPHIE GRUMBLES WHEN she and Sarah arrive at the Calvary Cemetery in Woodside, which is covered in crystal-like snow. It’s a sea of decaying flesh with rows of headstones standing erect in silence. There isn’t another person in sight. Not alive, anyway. Sophie’s brain gives way to a stream of inappropriate thoughts. Who went to heaven? Who went to hell? Did they even…go? Are their spirits still lingering around?
They pass through the lot of entombed cadavers. Sarah bends and puts the colorful tulips over a headstone with overgrown ivy around it. She removes her gloves and passes her fingers over the white engraved lettering.
This is the closest Sophie has been to her mother since she last saw her that day when the cops ushered her away. She sighs. It’s been too long. It’s said that time heals all wounds. Some people close a horror book, go to sleep, and move on to another, never thinking about it again. The end. Other people can’t let go easily. The story stays with them, leaves them thinking. They desperately try to rationalize. So, of course, the temptation is to read back into the book. Because no one forgets pain. And some pain, the kind that doesn’t involve bandages, you just never quite get over.
Sarah begins telling her mother about her new life with Sophie and Oliver, including what she ate for breakfast.
“You know you’re talking to bones,” Sophie says.
Sarah notices a bouquet of flowers already on the grave. She brushes the snow off. “Someone was here,” she says, getting up.
Sophie briefly looks around. “Yeah, they’re probably from Aunt Peg.”
“No, they’re not.”
“Okay,” she says, uncaring.
“We have to go. He was here.”
“Who was here?”
Ready to draw her concealed blades from her boots if she has to, Sarah looks around in panic, searching for potential threats and signs of anything unusual.
“Sarah, who was here?”
“Him,” she repeats.
“Does ‘him’ have a name?”
“You don’t understand. They made me. They’re on to me.
They must’ve followed me from the house. We have to get outta here.”
“Okay, calm down. Breathe. That’s it. Breathe.” Sophie holds Sarah close and comforts her while looking all around and beating feet back to the Mercedes.
“STAY HERE,” SOPHIE warns Sarah when they arrive at E Models New York.
Sarah sinks in her seat and crosses her hands over her chest, pouting. “Well, why’s he get to go?” She looks at Reed opening the back door to the Mercedes. He checks the perimeter of the car and keeps his gun ready for any surprises.
“Because he’s my bodyguard.”
“Why can’t I be your bodyguard?”
“Sarah, listen to me. I’m serious. You need to stay here. I don’t want anyone to see you.” Wherever she goes, she gives the media something to talk about.
“Are you trying to get rid of me?”
“What? No,” she says, flustered. “Reporters are everywhere, and…” She trails off instead of saying something that might hurt or confuse Sarah. She hasn’t the time or energy to explain about pre-trial publicity, preliminary hearings, or jury bias. “Sarah, my brain is on overload right now. So, be a pal. Stay in the car. Otherwise, my mind is going to explode.”
“Your brain or your mind?”
“What?
“Your brain or your mind? They are two different things. Your mind is not made up of matter, so technically, it can’t explode.”
“God, you sound just like him.”
“Like who?”
“John.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
For some reason, her eyes seem kind and her questions sincere. Sophie pretends to look at her imaginary watch. “Oh, would you look at the time.”
“What is it?”
“Interrogation is over. Stay in the car.”
Sophie gets out, hiding under a gray beanie and sunglasses and heads into the building, then rides up the elevator. The car grinds to a halt and dings open to a view of skeletal girls with numbers attached to their chests oscillating as they pace back in forth in their underwear. They’re numbers. They’re not people. The atmosphere is a smidgen too tense. She immediately lays eyes on Kim, hysterically walking around fussing.
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