Saving Sofia

by Linda Seed

  “I need to talk to Benny and Martina,” Bianca said.

  “You … wait. What? Why?”

  “Just let me talk to Benny and Martina.”

  When Sofia saw what Bianca had in mind, she was speechless.

  “They said it’s okay. I knew they would. They really like Patrick.” Bianca held their mother’s first-edition To Kill a Mockingbird.

  “I can’t give him that.” Sofia didn’t take the book Bianca was offering her.

  “Of course you can.”

  “But … it was Mom’s. And it’s valuable. And … why would they say I could give him that?”

  But even as she asked the question, she knew why. Her sisters thought it was okay to give him the book because they thought it was likely to remain in the family. They’d already pegged him as The One, and something about that irked and upset Sofia—even if she had more or less concluded the same thing.

  “No.” She pushed the book toward Bianca. “This belongs to you, Benny, and Martina as much as it belongs to me. I can’t take it away from you.”

  “Do you love him?” Bianca asked.

  Sofia wanted to say yes, but she couldn’t make the word come out. She nodded silently instead.

  “Then you can give it to him, and you should. He’s an English professor; he’ll appreciate it as much as any of us could. And it makes a statement, Sofia. He’s making a statement by taking you to meet his parents, and you need to make one, too, if you’re serious about him.”

  Sofia still wouldn’t take the book, so Bianca went to Sofia’s open suitcase and tucked it inside. “Just take it with you and think about it.”

  After Bianca left the room, Sofia stood next to the suitcase and stared down at the book. She didn’t want to give Patrick something of her mother’s. She wanted her mother to be here to meet him, to get to know him. She wanted her mother to be a part of this important moment in her life.

  Because the moment was important, no matter how she might want to pretend it wasn’t.

  She went back to packing, thinking that this was all wrong. She couldn’t enjoy the major milestones of her life without her parents to share them with her.

  Patrick and Sofia flew into Grand Rapids, but his parents and siblings lived in Muskegon, a city of 38,000 about a forty-five-minute drive away.

  They got a rental car at the airport and took Interstate 96 northwest, out of the urban center and toward Lake Michigan. There’d been a recent snowfall, but today the skies were clear and the roads had been plowed. The temperature hovered around thirty-five, and they were grateful that the car had reliable heating.

  He’d told her the basics about his family, of course, but the drive gave him a chance to add details: here was the office furniture factory where his father had worked for more than thirty years; here was the hospital where his mother was a nurse in the intensive care unit; here was the high school he and his siblings had attended; and here was the grocery store where he’d had his first job when he was sixteen.

  At about six p.m., they arrived at his parents’ home, a two-story midcentury house with pale green wood siding and white trim. A small, scraggly tree reached up through the snow in the front yard, and the concrete walkway that led to the front porch had been freshly shoveled.

  The sun set early this time of year so the skies were already dark, but the streetlights and the porch light glowed. The windows on either side of the front door shone with a welcoming golden light.

  It was a house, that was all. A house made for a family just like hers. It was well-tended and unimposing, a house that spoke of middle-American values and Sunday dinners.

  So why was she so damned scared of it?

  “You okay?” Patrick turned off the engine and looked at Sofia with concern. He took her hand and held it in his.

  “Me? Sure. Of course.”

  “Because you look a little green,” he said.

  “Oh, it’s just … I get a little carsick.”

  “You’ve never mentioned that before.”

  “Why are you grilling me about it?” she snapped at him. “I ought to know if I get carsick, shouldn’t I?”

  “You should, yes.” He squeezed her hand. “Sofia, it’s going to be fine. They’re going to love you.”

  “Listen, I was thinking … Maybe we should get a hotel room. Maybe—”

  She was interrupted when a woman in her midfifties came out the front door, exclaimed, “Patrick!” and began hurrying down the front steps toward them.

  Patrick got out of the car and met her halfway. “Hi, Mom.” They embraced, and Sofia felt almost overwhelmed with emotion.

  “Come and meet Sofia,” Patrick said.

  Sofia supposed it was too late now for her hotel plan.

  They’d arrived in time for dinner, and Sofia ate pot roast, mashed potatoes, fresh rolls, and peas as Patrick’s mother questioned her about every aspect of her life while trying to seem as though she wasn’t questioning her.

  “So, a kayak instructor!” Aileen said when they were about halfway through their meal. “How fun! I’ve always wanted to learn to kayak. Haven’t I, Hugh?” she asked her husband. “Remember the time we went to Hawaii, when Patrick was ten? I told you then that I wanted to learn to kayak.”

  “You told me,” Hugh agreed pleasantly enough, though he barely looked up from his plate.

  “It’s not too late to learn,” Sofia said. “I could teach you. When the weather’s warmer, I mean, or maybe when you come to Cambria.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Aileen laughed. “I’d probably end up in the emergency room.”

  “I certainly hope not,” Sofia said. “One Connelly almost dying in a kayak accident is enough.”

  Sofia noticed the look of alarm on Patrick’s face, but it was too late. She’d already said it.

  “What do you mean, one Connelly almost dying in a kayak accident?” Aileen looked horror-stricken. “Patrick? What is she talking about?”

  “Well, that was a rocky start,” Sofia observed later, when she and Patrick were lying side by side in the upstairs guest bed. The mattress had probably been bought when Patrick was a toddler, judging by the way Sofia could feel springs digging into her back.

  “She could clearly see that I wasn’t dead,” Patrick commented. “And yet …”

  Aileen had insisted on hearing every detail of the story, then had grilled her son on why he’d gone kayaking when he couldn’t swim; why he hadn’t told her that he’d been in the hospital; and whether he was having any lingering effects from the head trauma. Her experience as an intensive care nurse meant she was more knowledgeable than most people on traumatic brain injuries, so her interrogation was both extensive and annoyingly specific.

  Patrick had eventually stopped answering her questions, reasoning that it was the only way to get her to stop asking them. That had irritated Aileen to the point that she’d stopped talking entirely, leaving Sofia to try to make small talk with Hugh, who limited his remarks to the route Sofia and Patrick had taken from the airport.

  “Did you come up through Coopersville?” he’d wanted to know. “Because Aileen’s cousin Louise came by way of Kent City last spring, and that was just stupid.”

  Sofia had worried that Aileen might hold her responsible for her son’s near death experience, but the opposite turned out to be true. When Sofia was in the kitchen after dinner, offering to help clean up, Aileen grabbed her and pulled her into a fierce hug.

  “Why, honey, you saved his life,” she’d said, her voice thick with emotion. “I don’t know how I can ever pay you back for a thing like that.”

  “You certainly earned a lot of points,” Patrick said now as they recapped the day, looking at the popcorn ceilings in the guest bedroom. “I, on the other hand, was lucky not to be disowned.”

  “She loves you.” Sofia rolled onto her stomach to be able to see Patrick better. “I get that, because I do, too.”

  Sofia had told Patrick she loved him before, so it didn’t have the gravit
y of the first time. But every time she said it, she still felt the same nervous quiver in her gut, the same sensation of the magnitude of it. She loved him, and that made her vulnerable in a way she hadn’t been since her parents’ deaths.

  She still wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

  “I love you, too, Sofia.” He put a hand on the side of her face and caressed her cheek with his thumb. “Thank you for coming with me.”

  “I don’t—”

  But he didn’t wait to hear what she didn’t do, didn’t want, didn’t feel. He kissed her and pulled her into his arms, and after that, they were both too busy to talk.

  27

  The next couple of days were a blur of activity. Sofia met Fiona and her family, then Sean and his boyfriend, Ethan, an accountant at the Meijer headquarters in Grand Rapids.

  The family occupied themselves with a great deal of fussing over gifts, decorations, and food—and over Sofia.

  She fielded question after question: “Tell me how you two met,” and “When are you moving in together?” and “Has Patrick told you he wants kids?”

  The first one was easy enough, now that Aileen had gotten past her horror over Patrick’s accident, but the others seemed to Sofia to be breathtakingly presumptuous.

  Did everyone assume they were going to live together, get married, and have children? Was that even what she wanted?

  The atmosphere in the house was chaotic but warm and loving, and everyone seemed to want to pull Sofia into the center of it. There seemed to be some sort of conspiracy to make her feel like part of the family.

  Aileen drew her into the kitchen to help cook and to talk. Fiona told her stories about Patrick’s childhood and teen years. Sean kept offering her food. Fiona’s kids begged her to play video games and then board games with them.

  The effect was both intoxicating and disorienting. Every glimpse she had of this full, complete, and thriving family reminded her that her own family had been shattered. Every gesture of acceptance from Patrick’s family made her want to be a part of it—but that left her feeling guilt-stricken, as though she were betraying her own parents.

  She wasn’t ready for this—for any of it. And yet she felt as though she were being swept along on an irresistible tide of longing. Everything she wanted was here, and she was being beckoned to reach out and take it. But how could she, when her own parents were irreplaceable? How could she take hold of her own happiness, when her mother and father had been robbed of theirs?

  And—most troubling of all—how could she move toward a permanent relationship with Patrick when her parents would never be there to see her engagement? Her wedding? The birth of her children?

  It had been a mistake to come. And Sofia didn’t know how she’d been foolish enough to make it.

  Patrick had thought things were going well, but now he wasn’t so sure. His family were all being nice to Sofia—not a given, after the way they’d treated Kim—but with each passing hour that they stayed here, he could see her withdrawing bit by bit.

  “Sofia? Are you all right?” They were taking a walk along the Lakeshore Trail on the morning of Christmas Eve, the icy waters of Muskegon Lake stretching out to their left.

  “I’m fine.” She wrapped her arms around herself, tucking her hands into her armpits. The weather was in the high thirties—not too bad, from Patrick’s perspective—but she looked like she was freezing despite her down jacket, hat, and gloves.

  “Are you cold?” he asked.

  “I said I’m fine.”

  They walked a while longer in silence, their boots crunching on the snowy trail.

  “Is it my family? Has someone done something?” he tried again.

  “No, Patrick.” She stopped walking and faced him. “They’re wonderful. All of them.”

  “Then what’s going on?” He put his hands on her biceps and peered into her face.

  “Nothing’s going on.” She avoided his gaze. “You know what? I am cold. Can we just go back?”

  Sofia tried to hold it together the best she could. She’d thought that once she was there, in Patrick’s childhood home, she would be able to handle all of the emotional connections that represented. She’d been wrong. Being here had stirred up such a potent soup of longing, grief, and resentment that she could barely face such simple tasks as showering and feeding herself, let alone being pleasant and gracious to the Connellys.

  Still, she told herself that it was almost over. One more day, that was all. Today was Christmas Day, and they would do the gift exchange, eat the holiday dinner, and be back at the airport tomorrow morning. Then she could get home, go back to her normal routine, and pretend that what was happening between her and Patrick—this irresistible force drawing them toward eventual marriage—wasn’t really happening.

  But getting through one more day was harder than she’d thought it would be.

  It started with the pancakes.

  When Sofia got up that morning, the kitchen already smelled of warm pancakes and maple syrup. Aileen was standing at the stove in a holiday apron, Christmas carols playing softly on the stereo.

  “Good morning, honey!” she called to Sofia. “Merry Christmas! Do you want some pancakes?”

  It wasn’t that she looked like Sofia’s mother, because she didn’t. Carmela’s hair was a glossy black, while Aileen’s was auburn shot with gray; Carmela had been a sturdy woman, short and stocky, while Aileen was tall and willowy. Yet, something about the circumstances—the Christmas morning greeting, the use of the word honey, and especially the pancakes—gave Sofia a flashback to her childhood that was so intense and vivid that she nearly swooned.

  Aileen must have seen it on her face, because she suddenly looked alarmed. “Sofia! What’s wrong? Are you all right? Come on, sit down.” She hurried over to the kitchen table to pull out a chair for Sofia.

  “Just … a little dizzy for a minute,” Sofia said, lying to cover the truth.

  She realized within seconds that the lie had been a mistake.

  “Oh … Sofia, are you pregnant?” Aileen stage-whispered the last word. “Does Patrick know? Oh, I know it’s not ideal, with the two of you not married yet, but how wonderful! What a marvelous Christmas surprise. Oh—”

  “No!” Sofia exclaimed. “No, no! I’m not pregnant! No! There’s no Christmas surprise. I’m not … There’s no way I could be pregnant.”

  But even as she said it, she knew that wasn’t true. That time in his office, they’d been too rushed, too caught up in the moment, to use a condom. Afterward, she’d chastised herself for being careless and had gone on the pill. But still … She didn’t have a calendar in front of her, but wasn’t it possible that she was late?

  She’d lied about the dizziness, yes. But she’d been especially irritable lately.…

  “Sofia?” Aileen was looking at her intently. “You look a little pale. Let me get you a glass of water.”

  Sofia drank the water gratefully when Aileen brought it. Then she told herself to calm down. She definitely wasn’t pregnant. Probably. But that didn’t change the fact that being here, in this kitchen with the carols and the smells and the rosebud wallpaper made her think of her mother, and that was almost more than she could bear.

  “What’s going on?” Sean, a tall, handsome man in his late twenties with dark hair and a slim build, came into the room and looked at Sofia, and then at his mother. “Is everything okay?”

  “Sofia feels dizzy,” Aileen said, loading the word with meaning. “And we were just wondering if maybe there’s a reason she might be having morning sickness….”

  “Oh,” Sean said. Then: “Oh!”

  “No, I’m just—”

  “Does Patrick know?” Sean asked.

  “There’s nothing for him to know!” Sofia could feel the situation slipping out of her control—not that it had been firmly in her control in the first place.

  “Here. Have some pancakes.” Aileen set a plate in front of Sofia. “Having something in your stomach will make yo
u feel better. At least, it always worked for me.”

  “Sofia? Are you sick?” Patrick came into the room, looking adorably tousled in pajama pants and a Cal Poly San Luis Obispo T-shirt. He ran a hand through his hair, which made it stick up at odd angles.

  “No,” she said.

  “Just dizzy,” Sean supplied, leaning against the counter with a glass of orange juice in his hand. “And maybe a little nauseous. In the morning.” He winked at Patrick.

  “I never said I was nauseous!” Sofia insisted. But she was, a little bit, now that she thought about it. Oh, God.

  “Wait, did something happen?” Patrick squinted, confused. “Is there something going on?”

  “I just … Thank you, but … I need to take a shower.” Sofia got up, leaving her pancakes untouched, and left the room.

  As she left, she heard Aileen say, “Dizzy and no appetite first thing in the morning. That’s a dead giveaway. Oh, Patrick, it’s so wonderful.”

  By the time Sofia got into the shower and away from the Connellys, she really was feeling sick. How had she let this happen? How had she let Patrick’s family believe she was pregnant?

  Which she wasn’t, she was sure. Almost sure.

  But what if she were? It was all just moving so fast, and she wanted to talk it over with her mother. She wanted that good, solid reassurance from her father. But they weren’t here, and they never would be again.

  She should feel better than this after two years, shouldn’t she? Why didn’t she? Why was it that Bianca and Benny and Martina could function normally and get on with their lives, while Sofia couldn’t?

  It’s because I never cried. That’s what Bianca would say. Because I never talk about it, never got it all out. But what good would that do? It wouldn’t bring her mother and father back.

  She got under the hot water and tried to feel better. When Patrick knocked softly on the door and called to her, asking if she was all right, she told him that she was. She wasn’t, but it was the only thing she could say that would make him give her the space she needed.