French Fried

by Kylie Logan

  Still, some of the tension seemed to go out of Declan’s shoulders. “I hear you’re looking for these.” He had the pile of newspaper articles, the scrapbook, and the notebook banded together and tucked up under his arm. “Then again, Sophie was the one who called and asked me to go get this stuff out of your car. Maybe she’s the one . . .” Even before he’d turned toward Sophie’s bed, I had my hand out for the papers.

  He pretended to think about it for a moment before he handed them to me and grinned. “So what are you looking for?” he asked.

  It wasn’t what he was asking about, but tell that to my conscience! “Maybe the chance to explain,” I said.

  “Then maybe once your head doesn’t feel like it’s going to crack open, you’ll have coffee with me.”

  “Will it be a date?”

  “Do you want it to be?”

  Blame my whirling head. For once, the truth seemed like a better option than beating around the bush.

  “Yes,” I said. “I would like that very much.”

  He might have replied if a long, dreamy sigh from Sophie didn’t interrupt us.

  “So . . .” With a quick grin in my direction, Declan got down to business. He pointed at the stack of papers I’d already unbanded and separated into three piles: the scrapbook, the notebook, the newspaper articles.

  “I don’t know exactly what we’re looking for,” I admitted. “But remember that note . . . ‘Leave the past in the past’ . . . We think”—I glanced Sophie’s way to indicate that we’d worked through the problem together—“We think these papers might hold the key to that past.”

  “Makes sense.” He nodded. “That’s why Rocky wanted to keep all this stuff safe.”

  “Because someone wanted the past left in the past.”

  “And these articles, they’re definitely all about the past.”

  “So who’d want to make sure this stuff stays quiet?” I was talking more to myself than to Declan or Sophie and it was a good thing since I knew neither of them had the answer for me.

  I shuffled through the articles and once again found myself looking at that picture of wild-eyed Steve Pastori.

  “How about him?” I asked, flashing the article at Sophie. “Could Rocky have been planning to say something about Steve at the symposium, something that maybe even after all these years, he didn’t want anyone to hear?”

  She was chewing on a chocolate-covered caramel, so she simply nodded. Once she swallowed, she said, “Oh, there was plenty she could have said about Steve. You see, he kind of . . . oh, I don’t know how you’d say it. I guess you could say he went off the reservation.”

  Declan and I exchanged looks before we both looked Sophie’s way.

  “Like I told you this morning, Laurel, Steve was committed to the movement. To the point of obsession. The kids in the Young People’s Underground for Peace, they were all about nonviolent protests. You know, real flower power types. It was what made the group so effective. They didn’t go out and cause trouble, they wanted to change the world and they thought they could do that through love and brotherhood.”

  “But not Steve.” Somehow, just looking into his eyes in that picture told me it was true. “You said he went off the reservation.”

  “Well, not at first, of course,” she said, plucking another caramel out of the box and popping it in her mouth. She offered the candy our way, and both Declan and I declined. Sophie chewed quietly for a few moments. “I remember one night when I found Rocky in the school library. It was very late, and she was very upset.”

  “About Steve?”

  “About what Steve had become. You see, he was an impatient guy, and he didn’t see things changing fast enough, not to suit him. That night we talked at the library, Rocky had just left a meeting of the Young People’s Underground, and at the meeting, Steve said he thought it was time to step things up, to take their protests to the next level.”

  “With violence?” Declan asked.

  Sophie nodded. “Rocky was desperate to talk him out of it. She begged him, but he wouldn’t listen. A week or so later . . .” Sophie’s eyes clouded with the memory. “The campus ROTC building . . . ROTC, I think it’s still around but I bet you kids don’t know about it. ROTC, it stands for . . .” She had to think about it for a minute. “Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, that’s what it is. It’s college-based officers’ training for the armed forces. Well, you can imagine, back in the late ’60s and early ’70s when there was so much student unrest and so many people protesting about our country’s military involvement in Vietnam, ROTC headquarters on campuses around the country were at the center of a lot of the controversy. And about a week after Rocky and Steve had that fight, an ROTC building at a nearby college was firebombed.”

  This wasn’t what I was expecting from a group called the Young People’s Underground for Peace, and I gasped.

  “Oh yes. Sad but true.” Sophie shook her head in dismay. “I bet when we look closely, we’ll find articles about it there in Rocky’s things. A couple of people inside the building were badly hurt. But that . . .” Her gaze drifted off. “That wasn’t the end of it, I’m afraid. A few days later, there was a firebomb attack at a different college and this time, two people were killed.”

  I looked down at the picture of the long-haired, bearded kid from the old newspaper. “Steve Pastori did that? He killed people?”

  Sophie nodded. “The cops were sure it was him, and Rocky, well, she was heartbroken. Just heartbroken. She couldn’t understand how someone she believed in, someone who’d preached peace and love, could turn to violence.”

  “Then Steve Pastori . . .” I flicked the photo with one finger. “Maybe what Rocky was going to say at the symposium had something to do with him. Maybe he’s the one who wanted her to leave the past in the past. Maybe he . . .” Again, I couldn’t help but look at the photograph. “Could he have killed Rocky?”

  “Oh no. That isn’t possible.” Thinking, Sophie cocked her head, both her hands against the lid of the now-closed box of candy. “You see, a couple of months after the first bombing . . . well, the cops were all over the Young People’s Underground, looking for information, searching for Steve. They talked to Rocky over and over and she told them she had no idea where he’d disappeared to after those buildings were firebombed. He was in hiding, and it was true, she didn’t have a clue where he was. Then one day I was with Rocky when we got word. There was another firebomb, at an ROTC building at a college campus in Illinois, and Steve, well, he didn’t get out of the building fast enough. They found his body in the wreckage.”

  I didn’t realize how much I’d glommed on to the idea of Steve as bad guy until a wave of disappointment enveloped me. “Then Steve couldn’t have written that note in Rocky’s bedroom. He couldn’t have been the one Rocky was looking for.”

  It was Sophie’s turn to look at me in wonder, and I realized this was one part of the story she didn’t know. It wasn’t my secret. I turned to Declan.

  “A few years ago,” he explained, “Rocky came to me looking for advice on how to locate someone.”

  For a few, long moments, Sophie went very still. She swallowed hard. “Did she say who?”

  Declan shook his head. “I asked, but she wouldn’t tell me.”

  Sophie coughed behind her hand. “Did she say if she ever found the person?”

  “She never said another word to me about it,” Declan told her.

  “Well, then, it might have been . . .” For a minute, Sophie wrestled with her words. For a woman who usually let it all hang out (as the Young People’s Underground might have said), it was an odd response, and something about it made me feel as if there were a rubber band inside me, stretched tight and ready to snap.

  “I mean I can’t say for sure because she didn’t say anything to me about it,” Sophie said. “But it’s possible, I suppose and really, I guess it�
��s only natural if after all these years . . .” She set her shoulders and lifted her chin. “I guess Rocky might have been searching for her baby.”

  Chapter 17

  It must have been the smack on the head. I could have sworn Sophie said . . .

  “Baby?” I stared across the small space that separated our hospital beds, my jaw slack. “You never told me that Rocky had a—”

  “Well, it wasn’t my secret to tell.” Sophie stuck out her lower lip. “And it wasn’t anything she ever talked about. I mean, not for the last forty years or so. You just don’t go spreading those kinds of personal stories about your friends. Not for no reason.”

  “But there might be a reason!” Something told me that the hit-with-a-cream-pie look on Declan’s face matched my own. “Did she give up the child for adoption?” he asked.

  “Yes. Back in . . .” Sophie did some mental calculations. “It was ’71. Or maybe ’72. I’m pretty sure it was early ’72. Maybe. I know I’d already left Ohio State and was back in Hubbard. Yes, ’72. Winter. I’m sure of it.”

  Declan whistled low under his breath. “Then that explains who she was searching for!”

  “Well, we don’t know that for sure,” Sophie warned both of us. “But I suppose it’s possible.”

  “Leave the past in the past.” Possibility after possibility cascaded through my head and I whispered the words in wonder. “Maybe the baby she was looking for didn’t want to be found.”

  For a few minutes, we let the revelation sink in and when it did, I finally was able to shake my head (carefully, of course!) and order my thoughts.

  “You’ve got a lot to tell us,” I said to Sophie. “I think you should start at the beginning.”

  “The beginning.” Sophie considered this for a moment. “Well, I suppose the beginning is when Rocky joined the Young People’s Underground for Peace. That’s when she met Steve.”

  “Wait a minute! Wait a minute!” Before she could say another word and make my head spin even more, I waved Sophie into silence. “Are you saying that Rocky and Steve Pastori were—”

  “A couple? Well, certainly.” She folded her hands on top of that box of candy. “Why else would Rocky be so upset when Steve went rogue? She loved him. Or at least she thought she did. Until she realized the man she was in love with never really existed.”

  I gave her a squint-eyed look. “You mean Steve—”

  “Oh, I don’t mean he never existed.” Sophie laughed. “Of course he existed. Of course he was a real person. He just wasn’t the person Rocky thought he was. Once he resorted to violence to further his cause, he proved that to her and to the world.”

  “But before that?” Declan asked.

  “Well, they were completely and totally into each other,” Sophie told us. “Head over heels in love. And they were the perfect couple!” Thinking, she tipped back her head. “He was tall and long haired and his eyes, they were dreamy, like a poet’s. And Rocky . . . well, there she was, straight out of some little village somewhere outside of Paris, and she was so interesting and so exotic and so pretty. They got to know each other when they joined the Underground and I think it took exactly . . .” Her cheeks flushed a deep pink and Sophie looked away. “I don’t think I’m telling tales,” she said, “because Rocky told me about it when it happened. It took exactly one meeting of the Underground and one cup of coffee after and wham! Just like that, they fell into bed together. They knew they were meant for each other, you see.”

  I didn’t like the way she paused after she said that, or the way she stared at me and Declan as if she expected that something inside our heads would instantly click and we’d call for the hospital chaplain to perform the wedding ceremony.

  When we didn’t (big surprise), Sophie’s lips pinched, but she went right on. “From that day on, Rocky and Steve were inseparable. They were both devoted to ending the war in Vietnam. They were both committed to changing the world. There’s nothing sexier, is there, than two people who are working together for a common cause?”

  Again, her gaze slid from me to Declan.

  Rather than be derailed—by her suggestion or by the thoughts that popped into my head because of it—I stuck to the matter at hand.

  “And Rocky had a baby,” I said to try to get Sophie back on track. “What did Steve think of that?”

  “Well, that was one of the terrible things,” she said. “With the old Steve . . . well, when Steve was like the Steve she first met, I think Rocky pictured a perfect life. Her, Steve, the baby. She had this dream that they’d live on a little farm somewhere together, grow organic crops, and be at peace with the world.”

  “Which is what she ended up doing all by herself,” I said. Not that anyone needed it pointed out. “And now after all these years, Rocky might have been searching for that baby.” I drummed my fingers against the cotton blanket and thought this through.

  A tear slipped down Sophie’s cheek. “I remember it like it was yesterday. At first, I mean at first when Rocky found out she was pregnant, well, she was so thrilled, she could hardly contain herself. By that time, Steve was already talking about violent protests, about going to war with the police, and about organizing a militant wing of the Young People’s Underground. And Rocky was convinced that once he knew he had a baby coming, it would make a difference.” When she sighed, Sophie’s shoulders rose and fell. “She thought he’d come to his senses and realize he couldn’t risk his life and his safety and his reputation by committing criminal acts. She thought that once he knew about the baby, he’d realize that a world of violence wasn’t the kind of place they wanted to raise their child. She thought he’d come back around to her way of thinking.”

  “But he didn’t.” It was obvious, so I guess I really didn’t need to say it.

  “Knowing about the baby only made Steve more determined than ever to change the world right there, right then. He said he owed it to his child. He said he was doing all of it for his child—the rallies and the protests, the rock throwing and yes, the bombs. He told Rocky that if she didn’t understand that, then they really had nothing more to say to each other. And after that . . .” Her shrug was casual enough but the tone of Sophie’s voice gave her away. Even all these years later, she remembered Rocky’s pain. She felt it deep in her bones.

  “Steve left and after that, that’s when we heard about the first bombing. Rocky was beside herself, desperate. Then once Steve was dead . . .”

  She cleared her throat and held out a hand. “Let me see that picture of Steve.”

  I handed it to Declan, who got up and gave it to Sophie.

  “Yes. See.” Sophie tapped the newspaper photo with one finger. “It’s hard to tell, of course. The picture is black and white and it’s old, but you see what Steve is wearing? He had this beat-up old green army jacket with a red peace patch on the sleeve. You know the one.” With one finger, she drew a peace sign in the air, a circle with a line cutting it in half and two smaller slanted lines toward the bottom.

  “We used to tease Steve about that jacket. We used to tell him that it didn’t make any sense that he opposed the military but he wore a military jacket. And he said it made perfect sense because it was the warmest coat he’d ever had and because he wore it to show his defiance. He wore it to show that when you don a uniform, you don’t have to go to war. And he added that big, red peace sign patch . . . at least that’s what he always said . . . to show that soldiers don’t have to conform, that they can still go their own way and make their own choices and listen to their own consciences, that they don’t have to obey orders that aren’t honorable.”

  One more look at the picture and Sophie waved the article back at Declan, who got up and took it from her. “That last bombing, when they found him in the rubble, that army jacket with the red patch was practically burned to a crisp.” Sophie’s voice dropped. “So was Steve.”

  It wasn’t a pretty
thought so I decided to set it aside. “And the baby?”

  Sophie shook her head. “The baby hadn’t been born yet, and Rocky agonized over what to do. Steve was dead and all she had of him, all she had to remember him by, was that baby. But she was young, and she knew she couldn’t care for the child the way she should. Once he was born, she put him up for adoption.”

  “He.”

  This was a crucial part of the story that Sophie had failed to mention, and Declan noticed it, too. His eyebrows rose, but before he could say another word, Sophie went right on.

  “Rocky was devastated. By what Steve had turned into. By his death. By the grief she felt at having to give up her son. She couldn’t eat. She couldn’t sleep. She’d gone back to school after the baby was born, but she couldn’t concentrate and her grades went right down the tubes. By that time, I’d already left Ohio State and I was back in Hubbard so I convinced her to come stay with me for a while. That’s when she found the farm, and the farm . . . well, Pacifique saved her. I saw it happen, acre by acre and year by year. She moved on from all the sadness and she made a life for herself. And you think . . .” She raised tear-filled eyes to Declan. “You think that now, she was looking for this boy?”

  “It’s possible,” he admitted.

  Sophie’s salt-and-pepper eyebrows dropped low over her eyes and I could tell that though she’d never admit it, she was upset. “She never said anything about it to me.”

  “Maybe she just wanted to get more information before she spilled the beans,” I told her. I had no way of knowing that was true, but I knew it would soothe Sophie’s hurt feelings.

  “It’s also possible . . .” I’m not a mind reader, but somehow, I knew what Declan was going to say. Sophie hadn’t thought of it yet. I could tell as much from the look on her face. It was all about old memories, good and bad. It hadn’t yet registered with her that those old memories might be what Rocky’s murder was all about.