Sophie's Path

by Catherine Lanigan

  Sophie followed him in and glanced at the massive iron four-poster French bed covered in a beige-and-gold duvet and a pile of matching pillows. In the middle of the bed was a pink doggie blanket and the teddy bear they’d bought Frenchie at the pet store that first day. Sophie felt her heart melt another fraction. Frenchie sprang out of Sophie’s arms and directly onto the pink blanket. She cuddled around the teddy bear, still shivering, though measurably less now that Jack was in sight.

  Jack continued into the bathroom and picked up a towel to dry off his face, shirt and shoes.

  “The teddy bear,” Sophie said, pointing at Frenchie. “She seems attached to it.”

  “She is. We picked it out together, as I remember.” He came to the doorway, still scrubbing his hair with the towel. “You and I, that is.”

  Sophie eased around Jack and found the hair dryer, then turned it on full blast. “Come here,” she ordered.

  “My hair’s dry enough,” he said, but he moved closer, anyway. “I could dry yours for you, though.”

  Sophie dropped to her knees to hide her blush and started drying his pants’ legs. “If you let the water set, there will be a permanent stain around the edges. As soon as you can on Monday, take the tux to the cleaners and ask them to work on these water stains. Maybe you can save the suit.” She was rambling.

  “The jacket is probably toast, but it was worth it.”

  Sophie continued drying his pants’ legs, pretending she hadn’t heard what he’d just said. She was thankful she was on the floor because being this close to Jack, in this intimate setting, had turned her bones to jelly.

  Jack reached down and gently pulled Sophie to her feet. He took the hair dryer from her and turned it off. Suddenly, the room seemed as quiet as a church at midnight.

  “You can’t help it, can you?”

  “What?”

  “It’s just in you to always help,” he explained. “The broken, the wounded, dogs, anyone in pain. Me included. Do you ever put yourself first?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “If you do, I certainly haven’t seen it.”

  He put his palm on her cheek and stroked her temple with his thumb. His eyes roamed her face slowly, as if memorizing it. “You didn’t dry your own hair, which is quite wet. Still beautiful. But wet. You didn’t towel off your dress, which probably needs to go to the cleaners just as much as my tux. Maybe more. My tux is a decade old. And that’s new, isn’t it?”

  “Uh-huh,” she murmured with only a tip of her head. She couldn’t take her eyes off his. Something monumental was happening to her and for the first time in her life she didn’t want to stop it, slow it down or change course. She wanted to meet it head on. Fling herself over the waterfall and see if she survived.

  Her gaze dropped to his lips. She felt hers trembling. She wasn’t afraid of the thunder like Frenchie, but the storm inside her heart terrified her.

  She’d kissed him before.

  But now, things were different. She was different. What if Jack wasn’t feeling the spark she felt? What if he chose his own guilt, his prejudices, over her?

  And if he did, could she live with that? What would she do? Her grandmother always told her that once she’d tasted paradise, she’d never be satisfied with life on earth. Now Sophie knew exactly what she meant. Jack held the key to heaven for her. She felt it. Knew it in her heart and soul.

  She put her hand over his. “Jack, we should go downstairs.”

  “We should do a lot of things. But we won’t.”

  His kiss was more explosive than the thunder outside. Sophie had felt safety and gentleness the first time their lips had touched, but this...this was powerful and meant to be shattering. He slipped one hand to the nape of her neck while the other clung to the back of her dress, pressing her closer to him.

  Sophie allowed the kiss to take her to another world where there was no party downstairs, no obligations to anyone. Just the sea of longing and desire she was floating on. This universe had been built solely for Jack and Sophie. She’d never explored it before. She sensed, but couldn’t be certain, that he hadn’t, either.

  Sophie’s muscles had dissolved to molten lava and her bones barely held her upright. She sagged against Jack and when she did, his strong arms reeled her to his hard chest. She held his arms for the longest time, but as the kiss lingered, she wrapped her arms around his neck and surrendered to his embrace.

  Sophie, who had spent her life cherishing her family, who only felt comfortable living in the town where she’d been raised, realized her definition of “home” had been lacking.

  Kissing Jack and feeling his arms around her showed her that there were many places where the heart could dwell. Jack was offering her a home unlike any she’d experienced before.

  When Jack finally broke the kiss, he pressed his forehead to hers. She admired his long lashes, which she’d forgotten about. She hadn’t studied his face so closely since she nursed him in the hospital.

  “I’ve wanted to do that for a long time,” he whispered.

  “You have?”

  “Yes. Since the first night I saw you. I thought...” He stopped himself and tilted his head back. “Well, it doesn’t matter what I thought. I was pretty out of it.”

  “You were.”

  With a gleam in his eye, he smiled. “I also wanted to show you I could kiss better than you.”

  “Oh, you did, did you?” Was that a challenge? “Well, it wasn’t a fair competition, then. When I kissed you, it was on impulse.”

  He loosened his hold on her, his expression still mischievous. “Oh, and this was premeditated?”

  “It sure sounds like it,” she countered.

  His dark eyebrows knitted together. “I suppose I drummed up that rainstorm all on my own. Made sure we were both soaking wet and then finagled a way to get you up here all alone.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Then what did you mean?”

  “That you thought a lot about kissing me ever since the other day at Mrs. Beabots’s house.”

  He put his hands on his hips. “Of course I did! Didn’t you?”

  She started to shake her head. He put both hands on either side of her face.

  “Be honest.”

  She bit her lip. There were some things in life that were good to deny. Ice cream was one. But to deny Jack right now might be the biggest mistake of her life. She still didn’t know his true feelings. He could be playing games with her, much like she’d played with men all her life. Karmic payback was never pretty.

  She looked into his eyes and made her decision. “I thought about it.”

  “Good answer. My next question is the kicker,” he said with a distinct crack in his voice.

  Was he nervous?

  “Go ahead and ask,” she taunted him. “Nothing has ever held you back from speaking your mind before.”

  His dark gaze pulled her in as surely as if he was the lighthouse and she was a ship headed to rocky shores. “Would you kiss me again?”

  Her breath froze in her lungs. Her heart stopped. She felt as if he were asking her to commit for the rest of her life. She knew he wasn’t. All he’d asked was if she would consent to a kiss.

  But she felt that cosmic train rushing past her and knew that if she didn’t flag it down, demand to get on, that the rest of her life would pass her by and all she’d have to show for her days on earth was regret.

  Sophie didn’t give Jack an answer.

  All she did was pull him close and kiss him like he was the last man on earth.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  SOPHIE DROVE ALONG Maple Boulevard on her way to the Salvation Army shelter. Eleanor had instructed her to make unannounced visits to check on Jeremy, and she hoped to see him today. When they were living on the street or in shelters, addicts
had few people to whom they owed any responsibility. That allowed them to convince themselves that no one cared if they used. No one would ever know. Sophie’s presence in his life, both scheduled and unscheduled, was much like normal family relationships, especially to a person like Jeremy who had started using so young that his emotional and social development had been affected. Jeremy reacted to people and situations like a child in many ways.

  She glanced at Austin and Katia’s house as she drove by, and her thoughts of Jeremy faded.

  She’d never be able to pass that house again without remembering that it was the place where she’d had the first heart-stopping, mind-blowing kiss of her life.

  Since Katia’s wedding, Jack had called her three times and had started texting her regularly with silly comments about work, his runs or adorable Frenchie. She saved one selfie of Jack and Frenchie to her albums.

  In her previous relationships—no, flings—with men, she’d seldom talked about ordinary things. She’d never shared her feelings about her family or disclosed her guilty pleasures like ice cream or extra foam on Maddie’s cappuccinos. But she felt like she could talk about anything with Jack. And she wanted to. They compared their personal running styles. He asked her to be his tennis partner against Katia and Austin after they returned from their honeymoon. Sophie didn’t play tennis, so Jack offered to teach her. What she didn’t tell him was that her mother had always warned her about taking any kind of lessons from a man she was in love with.

  And that’s when it had hit her. Sophie had realized she was falling in love with Jack.

  She’d tried to tell herself that though kisses like the one they’d shared were unique, they didn’t always mean love.

  But the more they talked, the more common ground they discovered, the more certain she became that it wasn’t just the kiss making her feel this way.

  At the end of each of their calls, Jack had mentioned Katia’s wedding and being caught in the rain together. He’d told her he liked kissing her and hoped they could try it again soon.

  It had only been three days since their kiss and Sophie found her lips missing his more than she liked to admit.

  Sophie parked near the shelter and went inside to the reception desk, where a slender young man wearing a sleeveless shirt, obviously to display his extensive tattoos, greeted her. Though he couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, his head was bald in that way that suggested chemotherapy rather than a preferred style.

  “Hi, I’m here to see Jeremy Hawthorne.”

  “Sure,” he replied with a closed-mouth smile. He consulted his computer screen. After a moment, he said, “Jeremy isn’t a resident anymore.”

  Sophie didn’t do well hiding her surprise. She felt ambushed. And betrayed. “When did he move out? Does it say?”

  “Uh, two days ago.”

  “Did he leave a forwarding address?” she asked, desperation in her voice.

  He shook his head and said knowingly, “They never do.”

  “Gotcha. Thanks, anyway.”

  Sophie turned and went back to her car, feeling a growing emptiness inside her. It had only been a little over a month since she’d brought him here. She’d bought him nicer clothes so he would feel better about himself. She’d called him on her breaks to let him know she was thinking about him, even though most times she’d had to leave a message. Jeremy didn’t have a cell phone and her only connection to him was at the shelter. Each of the residents had a phone in their rooms and three times she’d caught him there and had a pleasant conversation.

  Naively, she’d been encouraged by what she saw as progress.

  She pounded the steering wheel and dropped her head into her arms. She’d barely begun working with Jeremy and she was failing already. Eleanor’s warnings raced through her mind. She’d been told not to blame herself when there was a setback.

  Sophie couldn’t help it.

  Eleanor told her to strike “betrayal” from her vocabulary.

  Sophie didn’t know how.

  All she could think was that she had to find him. But she had no idea where to begin.

  She started the engine and pointed the car toward town. Jeremy could have walked to Michigan by now. If he was ignoring her, there was nothing to keep him in Indian Lake. Was there?

  He’d left his home and family in Phoenix. He’d left every other town and city he’d stopped in before coming here. Why wouldn’t he continue that pattern?

  Obviously, Jeremy hadn’t cared or trusted her enough to tell her about his plans to move. Maybe she was wrong to have spent so much energy and emotion on him. She thought they were building a rapport and didn’t understand why he’d leave without a word. But she knew addicts didn’t think like she did.

  She was just as Jeremy had said: she was normal.

  She gripped the steering wheel as she braked at the light at Main and Maple. The corner of Jack’s office building.

  Jack. She needed his advice, reassurance and comfort. They’d been exploring a new side of their relationship since their kiss, and she hadn’t wanted to broach the subject of addicts and drugs in case it brought them back to Aleah. But now she wished he could be there for her.

  What she wouldn’t give for a moon roof. She could look up and see the windows. See if he felt her presence. See if he knew she was close.

  She turned the corner and pulled up outside the Alliance. She needed to tell Eleanor that Jeremy was gone, but she also needed her counsel.

  A group session had just broken up and the clients were standing around chatting. Eleanor was pouring coffee into a Styrofoam cup in the back.

  “Sophie, hi.” Confusion crossed her face. “Did we have an appointment? I misplaced my calendar over the weekend and I’m lost without it.” She chuckled.

  “No, but do you have a few minutes?” Sophie asked. “I need your help.”

  Eleanor’s expression became concerned. “It’s Jeremy, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. He left the shelter and didn’t tell anyone where he was going. He didn’t tell me.”

  “I expected this.”

  “You did?” Sophie asked with a jolt of surprise. “Because I’m shocked. I thought he and I had bonded. That I was getting through to him.”

  “He let you think he trusted you.”

  Sophie nodded.

  Eleanor turned. “Let’s go into my office.”

  Sophie followed her into the cubbyhole of a room that served as her office. Someday, Sophie hoped there would be money for a build-out, maybe even a larger facility. But that was down the road. Way down the road.

  Sophie listened attentively as Eleanor reiterated much of what she’d told Sophie in the beginning. “You must remember, Sophie, that this is all on Jeremy. He has to want recovery. In my talks with him, he hasn’t even come close to surrendering to a higher power. In fact, he’s quite resistant.”

  “Maybe I should have set a specific meeting with him each week. Maybe once a week isn’t enough.”

  “Remember, he has to reach out to you. You can’t do the work for him. Once he’s made the overture, then you can guide him.”

  “I understand. Well, I guess I have to wait for him to show up again. If he’s even in town.”

  Eleanor smiled knowingly. “I’ll bet he’s around.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “He’s been in town over a month. That’s enough time for him to get the lay of the land. He knows we have food here. There are several soup kitchens and two churches in town offer free dinners. He can go back to the shelter anytime.”

  “But if that’s true, why would he leave?”

  Frowning, Eleanor replied, “He found somebody. Either a girlfriend who’s taken him in or a buddy he’s bunking with. What we have to hope is that they aren’t into drugs, that they’ll help him stay clean.”


  Sophie peered into Eleanor’s wise and experienced eyes. “But you’re not optimistic.”

  “I do try to have hope. But no, I’m not optimistic. Sorry. I’ve been there too many times.”

  Sophie’s eyes stung and though she tried, she couldn’t stop her tears.

  What was going on with her? Sophie had never cried easily. Not that she didn’t cry at all, it was just that with years of nursing behind her, she’d learned to deal with disappointment. Lately, just about every new experience was touching her emotionally. Jack. Jeremy. Even Frenchie.

  Sophie rose. “Thanks for your help, Eleanor. I guess I have to wait.”

  “If I hear anything, Sophie—anything—I’ll let you know immediately.”

  Sophie let herself out and returned to her car. She was just about to get in when she heard her name.

  “Sophie! Sophie!” Eleanor called, vigorously waving her arm. “Come back!”

  Sophie locked the car and sprinted back to Eleanor. “What is it?”

  “He’s on the phone! Jeremy. I told him you were here. He sounds really down, but he asked for you.”

  “Thank God.” Sophie rushed toward her, overcome with relief.

  Back in Eleanor’s office, Sophie picked up the phone. “Jeremy? How are you?”

  “Okay. Not good. Bad. Real bad.”

  “Talk to me.”

  There was a long pause. “You’re a cool dude, Sophie. I know you wanted to help, but I couldn’t stay at that shelter. Too many do-gooders. Not in a good way.”

  “How do you mean?” she asked.

  “Sophie, I have a lot of problems. I’m a heroin addict. I’m also bipolar, and for a long time I took medicine for that. It didn’t help, so I stopped.”

  “It’s not good to drop your medication without supervision. I could take you to the county clinic and a doctor—”

  He cut her off. “Look, Sophie. You don’t want to help me. Nobody does. I’m not worth it. See? That’s the thing. I’m just going to use again and you’d get stuck in my black hole. It’s like being a ghost. You don’t go anywhere. No up or down. No escape. And you’re too nice of a person. You need to spend your time with someone who’s good for you. Someone like Jack—and Frenchie.”