Something About Sophie

by Mary Kay McComas

  Never easy.

  But that was the fun of it, the challenge. Discovering all the pieces and putting them together, finding solutions, adapting. She was good at it . . .

  I am, she insisted, staring blindly at the front door of Graham Metzer’s law office from the pretty white gazebo in the center of the round town square across the way.

  After leaving Hollis and the attorney a second time, still with no clear plan—or explanation—for BelleEllen, she’d paused on the sidewalk, bewildered and discouraged. And really, really cranky. She’d looked up the street at her path back to the B&B and Jesse and more questions she simply couldn’t face—then looked down the street toward nothing familiar or comforting. Her gaze shifted forward and elevated slightly and suddenly she was sitting on a built-in bench inside the gazebo, crabby and cross.

  She was not an impotent person. She wasn’t a weak powerless weenie careening from pillar to post through life. She was goal oriented and methodical. She had ingenuity, logic, and imagination. She was a puzzle solver to her very core. She hated feeling lost and stupid and vulnerable and—

  “I think you need more information.”

  She cried. She coiled. She cursed. “Dammit, Billy!”

  “Sorry. There was no good way to do that.”

  “You scared the hell out of me!”

  He nodded. “I thought you would hear me coming. I’m sorry.” He turned on his charm and flashed her a cajoling smile. “I am. Are you going to be okay? Want me to call Drew? Tell him what I’ve done? Let him beat the crap out of me? I will. I owe you that.” Even as he said it, he knew that she knew he was joking—if she wanted revenge she’d have to instigate it herself. He wasn’t an idiot.

  “Tsk.” She turned her back on him. “Why are you here anyway?” She twisted to face him again. “You snuck up behind me on purpose!”

  “No. Well, yes. But, no.” He decided to sit. “I stopped by Jesse’s to talk to you. She said you were meeting Hollis at Metzer’s office for the big announcement.” He shrugged but she sensed he wasn’t entirely indifferent. “On my way back, I saw you sitting here so I pulled up over there, out of the way, to give you a ride home when you were done bein’ all mopey—”

  “Mopey?”

  “Because the brother thing didn’t work out for ya.” He flipped his palm upward in the direction of her face to display his copious evidence. “Clearly. But I have a life of my own, you know, so I couldn’t wait for—”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why did you stop by Jesse’s to talk to me? Clearly you don’t need to practice being rude so you must have had some other reason.”

  His laugh had a mission-accomplished ring to it that snagged her attention. She watched as the humor in his grin gradually turned sheepish. “No, I don’t need to practice. It’s a natural talent. However, I didn’t need to use it on you last night. I was out of line. I stopped by Jesse’s to apologize.”

  Sophie took a mental step back, recognizing something familiar in Billy’s modus operandi—part of it anyway. Where it was Drew’s practice to use humor to engage or deflect or redirect the emotions of other people . . . and possibly his own as well, it looked as if Billy’s mechanism, though not nearly as charming as Drew’s, worked just as well. He pissed people off—intentionally as often as not—and not always without kind intent.

  “You did apologize.”

  “Not really. That was sort of a . . . perfunctory thing to get me out of the room in one piece. This is me begging for your forgiveness—voluntary—a rare and notable event by the way.”

  He didn’t deserve it, but she grinned. “You’re kind of a jerk, you know.”

  He bobbed his head, sensing her merciful nature. “You’re not buying that it’s part of my artistic temperament, I take it.”

  She shrugged. “Artistic or not, I banish five-year-olds to a chair in the back of the room until they’re ready to be polite to the rest of the class. Being an ass doesn’t make you a better anything. It just makes you an ass.”

  “What about a mood disorder? I’m a sensitive guy. I’m probably bipolar, you know.” There didn’t seem to be any denial or disrespect of the condition in the humor rippling in his voice—only friendly banter.

  But she suspected he was also telling the truth, that he was a sensitive guy—an acutely sensitive guy with a not-so-tough shell for protection.

  “All right, I’ll forgive you on one condition.” She had his attention. “Tell me why you were willing to bet that Arthur Cubeck wasn’t my father?”

  “Oh.” He relaxed against the gazebo wall and stretched his long legs out in front of him. Her discouragement met acceptance in his eyes. “Too obvious. If that was why he left you BelleEllen, why didn’t he just say so?” Billy attempted to say it in legalese: “I leave the farm to Sophie Shepard because she’s my illegitimate daughter and I have felt like a hypocritical douchebag for her entire life because I agreed to give her up and now I’m hoping that by leaving her the family home I will somehow be making up for it.” He shook his head. “Doesn’t make sense. Plus, it was too easy to check out. He’d have known you guys would get a paternity test.” He shook his head again. “Then, too, if he knew all about you—which I’m guessing he did because he knew your name and how to contact you—then he knew you were okay and happy and all, so he didn’t really have anything to make up to you; he would have made this huge big mess just to ease his own guilty conscience.” He squinted. “I’m not seeing it that way . . . well, at least not for that reason.

  “No. If you’re going to do something shocking, it’s usually for some distinct reason and you say so up front. Or . . .” he said, a little dramatically. “You do it in secret to keep it a secret, because you’re doing it because of a secret, because you think the secret is a secret that will never . . . or should never come to light.”

  He nodded while they both mentally reviewed his hypothesis.

  Sophie frowned. “So you’re saying that if he’d wanted us to know why, he’d have told us. And since he didn’t, we never will.”

  “No. I’m saying Arthur had a secret. A big one. Profoundly personal, but not obvious.”

  “That involved me.”

  “Yeah.” He furrowed the skin between his eyebrows. “Except . . . well, I caddied for the guy sometimes when I was a kid. Twice I saw him make an honor call when he accidentally moved his ball, and I’m pretty sure no one else saw it. That’s kind of how he always was, you know? So, maybe it wasn’t something he did personally, but only knew about. And it ate at him.”

  “Maybe something he heard about through his ministry, you mean?” She shook her head; she wasn’t buying it. “What could anyone have told him that was so awful that he felt simply knowing about it obligated him to leave me BelleEllen? That’s ridiculous.”

  “Yes, it is. Which leads us back to my original statement.” She frowned at him. “I think you need more information, Red.”

  “Brilliant.” He grinned. “And don’t call me, Red.”

  “Arthur did two things for you: he got your attention—in a really big way—and he left you a clue.”

  “My birth mother.” She sighed, disinclined to look in that direction again. The only mother she cared about was the one she missed so deeply that the nucleus of every cell in her body ached. There was no enthusiasm in her voice when she spoke again. “I did promise Hollis I’d at least think about digging into my adoption.”

  “Good. Where will you start?”

  “My dad. He might remember the name of the lawyer who arranged it.”

  “Excellent.” He stood. “And I’ll snoop around town, see what I can turn up.”

  “Why? Why would you do that?”

  “I like a good mystery.” When the silence that followed demanded more of an explanation, he added, “My town. I know which rocks to look under, who to ask . . . and I owe you one. Come on. I’ll drop you off.”

  “So I said, ‘No way. Please draw up the papers to t
ransfer ownership to Hollis and I’ll sign them,’ ” Sophie said, telling Drew, Jesse, and Mike about her visit to the lawyer’s office at the dinner table that night. “But Hollis wouldn’t budge. He kept saying that if his father felt so strongly indebted to me, for whatever reason, he wanted to honor his father’s wishes.”

  “That sounds like Hollis.” Jesse passed a bowl of potato salad back to Mike. “But I don’t know how you can walk away from such a mystery. If Arthur wasn’t your father, what did he know about your mother that was important enough to call you to his deathbed? What did he know that caused him to feel like he owed you BelleEllen? Aren’t you dying to know?” More like dying to be able to stop thinking and talking about it.

  As Sophie shook her head, Mike said, “I get that part. You can ask yourself questions and wonder and stuff, but sometimes you feel safer not knowing the answers. And even if you did know the answers, you can never be sure anyone else wants to hear ’em . . . or if telling someone else means you’d be hurting a bunch of people you don’t even know. And if you’re not hurting—just wondering and stuff—and you’re mostly happy as you are, why take the chance of messing things up? You know, rocking the boat.”

  It didn’t take the short, shy, and wholly astute meeting of their eyes for Sophie—for any of them—to understand he was speaking from his experience with his father. She wanted to hug him till his ribs cracked. But he swiftly realized he was perched on a thin emotional limb and shrugged indifferently. “Could someone pass that chicken down here?” A quick visual appraisal of his mom’s feelings, and he added, “Please.”

  “That’s exactly it,” Sophie said, redirecting the spotlight so his supper wouldn’t suffer. “Aside from everyone’s curiosity—which, by the way, didn’t even exist a week ago—there’s no real point to digging it all up. What is it going to change?” She bobbled her head and grimaced. “But I did promise Hollis that I’d look into it. A little.”

  “That’s our girl!” Jesse was thrilled. “I knew you couldn’t be so . . . dull.”

  “Well, he’s flying home tonight to take care of his own life and I’ll be here a while longer, it looks like.” She glanced at Drew—who seemed to have his eyes carefully aimed at his plate. What was she expecting to see? Was he to spring onto the table and dance a jig at hearing she’d be staying a few more days? “I mean, I can’t go home until the sheriff releases me anyway.” Another peek at Drew as he broke open a country biscuit and started to butter it—and she was hoping he’d, what? Fall off his chair, land on the floor in a fetal position and weep a saltwater river of despair at the thought of her leaving? Get a grip! “I’m not going to pry up any big rocks or anything, but I thought I could blow some dust off some of the basic information that I already know and see where it goes.” She held a fork full of seasoned green beans over her plate. “Like, I know it was a private adoption, so my dad might remember the lawyer’s name or have some paperwork with his name on it. And simply because they were living in Charlottesville when they got me, that doesn’t necessarily mean I was born there. I could have been born right here in Clearfield. Maybe that’s what Mr. Cubeck wanted to tell me.” She hesitated. “He’d have to know who my mother was to know that—”

  She was about to mention Billy’s offer to help her when Jesse broke in. “Yes! That’s it. Arthur was a minister.” Jesse seemed surprised she hadn’t thought of this before. “Oh my. Maybe he knew two young kids who got in trouble and he helped them put the baby up for adoption. That makes perfect sense.” She turned to her sense of the slightly more theatrical. “Well, maybe it was a little more complicated. Maybe someone simply left you in a basket on the steps of Arthur’s church one day. And maybe he found out who it was but didn’t tell anyone.” She looked at Sophie. “Arthur might think you’d want to know that. Would you want to know that?”

  Sophie squinted and mulled it over. “Yeah. Maybe. If someone cared enough to put me in a basket and take me to someone who’d make sure I was taken care of . . . as opposed to simply dropping me in a Dumpster, then yeah, I guess I might want to know. But why would that weigh on his mind? That would have been a good thing—he wouldn’t have done anything to feel guilty about. He certainly wouldn’t feel compelled to give me BelleEllen for that.”

  They all looked to be seriously contemplating the color of their food for the next few minutes before Drew spoke. “That’s always the rub, isn’t it? No matter which direction you take, you always come back to: What did Arthur know about your birth that would cause him to spend half his lifetime in that type of remorse?”

  “Maybe if you find that lawyer, he’ll know something,” Jesse suggested.

  “Maybe. Good news is: Sheriff Murphy called and he’s releasing my car as evidence. There were no fingerprints on my car that matched any on the truck,” she said, avoiding the word murder for Jesse’s sake. Hers, too, to be truthful. “Lonny said I could pick it up or he’d have someone drop it off in the morning.”

  “If you do track the lawyer down and decide to go to Charlottesville to talk with him, let me know,” Drew said. “I’ll make arrangements to go with you. If that’s okay.”

  She wasn’t going to pretend that she hadn’t been hoping he’d offer to do just that. “Thank you. I will.”

  Jesse squirmed happily. “And if he doesn’t tell you that your mother was a furry red alien from Mars—or something equally disturbing—the two of you can make a day . . . and night of it.”

  Drew’s gaze met Sophie’s and he winked. It wasn’t until they were out on the porch, saying their goodbyes, that the gesture didn’t seem quite so contradictory to his behavior throughout the rest of the meal.

  She could tell he wanted to kiss her, but he hadn’t come even close to making a move yet. Maybe he was taking a step back—and maybe he was right to do so. . . .

  She was craving the touch of his lips.

  “So, you’ll call your dad tonight?” He swung his legs slowly down the three steps off Jesse’s front porch to the sidewalk. She held her ground at the bright white pillar that supported the roof—she wouldn’t chase him all the way to his car for a kiss.

  “Mm. But it’s Monday—Lions Club night. He’s good with names, but I doubt he’ll remember the lawyer’s name off the top of his head and I can’t ask him to look tonight after a long day. So I won’t know anything until tomorrow.”

  “Will it upset him? You digging into this?”

  She shrugged. “We talked about all this before I left. He understands. And he knows he’s my real dad no matter what.”

  He nodded as he turned to look up at her. He glanced away, looked at his feet, and looked back at the street again before deciding to speak.

  “Look—”

  “I know.”

  “What?”

  “We don’t have enough time. You and I.”

  He lowered his head, dejected, but didn’t give up. “No. We don’t. But . . .” He was suddenly on the step below her looking straight into her eyes. “I know we talked about this last night: starting something that might get complicated, that’ll probably hurt like hell to leave unfinished. . . . I thought . . . I hoped the cold light of day would cool me off, bring me to my senses but. . . .”

  He looked pained—and he was so uncharacteristically unsure of himself, she couldn’t help herself. She grinned.

  “Oh.” The word escaped on his breath like a prayer—he wasn’t alone. “Earlier you were talking about having to stay, like you couldn’t get away fast enough. I thought . . . well, I know you’ll be leaving eventually but . . . Damn it! Help me out here. Say something. What are you thinking?” He stopped short like he could hear the echo of his words in the evening quiet, then pinched her chance to speak. “Christ, this is nuts. We both know it. We should stop now. Run in opposite directions. We have completely different lives in completely different places. We haven’t got a clue to how long it’s going to take Fred to find Cliff’s killer—but he’ll have to release you eventually. You won’t have anything e
lse to keep you here. We won’t have time to—”

  Her forearms came to rest on his shoulders, to ease his burden. She looked directly into the fine green eyes that were beginning to haunt her dreams and smiled.

  “We have now.”

  “My father said the lawyer’s name was Biggs, Henry Biggs,” she told Hollis the next afternoon. “But that his penmanship is so bad it looks like Hobart Biddles or Horace Bzzzzzz.” She’d laughed when her father did it, but Hollis was quiet on the other end of the phone. “There’s a Biggs & Biggs listing in Charlottesville—Henry W. and Daniel H. Biggs. They were booked the rest of today, but I got an appointment for ten o’clock tomorrow. Drew McCarren is going with me, so the sheriff says I can go. We should know something one way or another by tomorrow afternoon, at the latest.”

  “Thanks, Sophie.” He sounded tired and relieved. “I know this isn’t easy for you. I know you’re doing it for me.”

  “I’ve never had an almost-brother before. You do things like this for almost-family, right?” She chuckled, tried to make light of it but—“You know, you could have been such an ass when all this started. You’ve been nothing but great . . . and gracious. I feel like I owe you this. And it isn’t easy for you, either.” She heard him sigh. “How’s Austin, Texas?”

  He chuckled. “We’re still weird,” he said proudly. “And both boys are off to a high school football camp at the university next Monday. Jane and I will have the whole week to ourselves—we’ll probably go into withdrawal and die of silence.”

  She took a couple of minutes to ask questions about his teenaged sons that he was delighted to answer. Discovering they were only eighteen months apart in age, she was curious to know if they were competitive with each other.