SOPHIA
Since the hail had destroyed four windows in our house and Jules had the entire structure boarded up, we were stuck at Simon’s. Well, I was stuck there. Jules was having the time of her life floating around like the queen Simon made her to be.
They had long since retired for the evening to Simon’s bedroom, leaving me to the strange loneliness of a guest room on the first floor with a flashlight, although its dim glow faded with each attempt at ignition. The enormous window facing Simon’s backyard had been covered with wooden planks to prevent debris from shattering the glass, but my sullen gaze squeezed between the planks to catch a dangerous view of the water, which reflected the violent lightning tearing through the sky.
It was useless to try to sleep. The thunder wouldn’t stop. Normally, I could sleep through any sort of rain, but this thunder was competing in ferocity with the aching pain inside my chest.
After two hours of lying like a dying turtle on my back, I climbed from the king-size bed and stumbled out of the room toward the kitchen with the flashlight that struggled to glow. Why are we still here if the weather service told us to leave? We’re literally sitting ducks.
I flipped the hall light switch, nowhere near comfortable navigating Simon’s house in the dark. Super. The power is out. And my flashlight barely works.
Guided by the pulsating glow of light from the explosive lightning that fluttered through the spaces between the sheets of plywood covering the windows and my dying flashlight, I tried to find my way through his house. I think the kitchen is to the left. I opened a door, feeling around a little and quickly realized my hand was on the tank of a toilet. Definitely not the kitchen.
A little further down the hall, I opened the door to a room that, thanks to the chronic finale of firework lightning flashing through cracks in the window coverings, was certainly not the kitchen. However, it was so much more interesting.
As I inched inside the space, having securely closed the door behind me and giving my flashlight a few taps, I realized I was standing in the center of Simon’s study; the same room in which he and Judge Kerry met privately on Sunday.
Hmmm…biting my lip to steady my nerves, I delicately searched the organized piles on his desk. It looked like mostly bills and things that weren’t relevant to me. Then again, I didn’t know what I was snooping for or if there was anything worth snooping.
The flashlight flickered, but continued to illuminate my stealthy operation, guiding my hand to a large brown envelope with Simon’s name intricately written on the front. Something about the manuscript tugged at my curiosity, demanding an inquisitive glance. I took the envelope and my flashlight to the window, hoping proximity to the gaps in the coverings would emit enough light before electrocuting me.
Kneeling, I emptied the contents before me. There were two handwritten letters, some weird document that looked like a transcript…and some photographs. Of me. Jules and me. Me. I turned the photos over, squinting to read the date and details handwritten on the back. These were all from the last six weeks. One picture of me was from Oregon.
My hands began to tremble, my heart threatening its release from captivity within my chest when I realized Simon had a perversely scrutinizing file on me…and then the picture of Jameson fell out. Wait. I held it to my face, swallowing the nerves that accompanied looking at the boy who broke my heart, making sure it was him, because the backside had no mention of Jameson. Gabriel Dolen. At age nineteen.
The photo and dying flashlight fell from my hands, searing my skin with panic. My chest was throbbing, my stomach churning as bewilderment swept over me in the haunting room now lit only by my fear.
With confusion wrapping its suffocating hold around me, I shoved everything into the envelope and stood, trembling, my limited vision blurred by tears. I flew from Simon’s office, clenching the envelope in my protection, running in the dark to the guest bedroom. Oregon Sophia would have kept this safely hidden under her mattress or in piles of hoarded junk within the bowels of her closet, but Florida Sophia was different. She blindly threw on clothes, swallowed the fear consuming her, and found the only accessible door before marching out of Simon’s house like the fearless warrior this life had turned her into. That was me. I was her. We needed answers.
I found myself shaking in the pouring rain, hovering like a coward outside of Jameson’s house. Counting and taking deep breaths didn’t help my panic subside. I was now afraid of dying in the hurricane.
The envelope adhered to me from the rain, and my clothes sagged with saturated gravity. I ran around the yard, hoping for a sign of life in any of the gaps between window coverings. I needed something to tell me where he was. I watched lights flicker off along one side of the house, jealous they still had power. Scanning the row of covered windows on the second floor, my eyes paused at the broken sheet of plywood dangling from a glass door. The panel of wood shook in the wind, its existence limply adhering to the mutilated fastenings that once secured it to the house. I would have done the same thing, and I had been, stubbornly refusing to be contained within a storm. I knew it was Jameson’s balcony door when the soft glow of light inside illuminated a halo around the hauntingly familiar silhouette.
Swallowing all my nerves, and feeling the lump gliding down my body, I began looking around for something to throw at his balcony door. The same anger I had from his unforgivable absence, the pathetic behavior…it was gone, replaced with a new vigor of rage. I only hoped to seek an answer for why Simon had an envelope with pictures of Gabriel and me.
My hood fell over my head, knocking me down in surprise as I struggled to stand, fumbling and falling, while fighting against the sheets of water and violent wind that tore across my body and everything else in path of the storm. My knees stung from the gravel, making it even more challenging to get up.
Gravel.
It was with impulse that I picked up a handful, throwing them at Jameson’s balcony door one by one until I watched his face press against the glass. His face. I couldn’t stop to process the hurt it caused to see Jameson’s face. I was running on desperation. He disappeared before I could collect anymore chunks of gravel.
“What the hell are you doing out here?” His fierce tone demanded, pulling my body up from the ground while his fingers wrapped around my soaking arms.
“You’re asking to die out here, Soph,” he snapped, tugging me along with him back into the house.
I couldn’t speak, my brain fumbling over words as it processed the fact Jameson was actually with me. I struggled to keep up as he swiftly pulled me up a flight of stairs toward a quiet room. Words refused to form, my lungs were struggling to keep a breath with his stride.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded of me again. “It’s a hurricane out there, Soph. Literally. You’re insane!” Ouch.
“Who is Gabriel?” I inquired, tapping the wet envelope in my palm. “And why does Simon have pictures of him and me?”
Jameson’s tanned face blanched, all blood draining as he stared at me. His eyes darkened, a disturbed frenzy stirring around his pupils, and the muscles of his jaw tightened as he clenched his teeth, most likely in preparation to tear me to shreds. For the first time with him, I felt fear. I still hadn’t caught my breath and my heart was frantic within my chest. I slowly took a step back, my limbs aching in trepidation as Jameson glared at me.
“What did you just say?” Jameson’s words were dark, forced through his tightly bound mouth as he continued to glower. His nostrils flared as he sustained his stare while I waited for my brain and lungs to connect. Breathe.
“I asked you who Gabriel is,” I repeated, stepping back once more, raising my hand to the brass doorknob behind me. “And why Simon has Gabriel’s picture.”
“You really have no idea what you just did, Sophia.”
The warning in his tone was bitter as he again used my first name in its entirety. I swallowed the lump of fear in my throat and turned the knob.
“It was just two questions,” I muttered through a shaky breath. My nerves fired and I quickly opened the door, whizzing around to shut it behind me. I was at least six steps ahead of Jameson, skipping what I could as I flew down the staircase, when I heard his feet pound across the floorboards in his attempt to catch me.
My feet felt like they carried bags of cement as I struggled to escape. I don’t know why I was afraid; it wasn’t Jameson, it was whatever I had exposed, but I refused to remain around long enough to be disciplined for it.
The front door resisted with a tremendous force, and I couldn’t decide if it was the universe or the hurricane trying to keep me locked inside with him, but I heaved and pulled it open with a power that left me weary as I stumbled into the yard.
The winds outside were wicked; blowing me faster and farther than I could keep pace. My knees were lifting toward my waist while I imagined each fragment of bone chipping from my shins. My heart was so elevated into my chest that I could taste blood. The rough grass of the Kerrys’ back lawn was ending, fading into the gravel of the neighborhood marina. I had to make it to the fence where I could run along the pier and hide.
The rain is too heavy. I can’t move.
As I glided along the gravel, my knees beginning to burn, I noticed some boat slips that weren’t fenced in. I jumped from the small retaining wall and landed, not so gracefully, onto a floating slip. It bobbed, and I almost lost my traction. I didn’t stop to think about Jameson; I kept going.
I slipped by three boats and saw a small sandy inlet twenty feet away. I could get there and figure out my plan. I shouldn’t have looked back. I should have kept going. If I hadn’t looked back to see Jameson still running behind me, I would have seen the halyard stretched at a forty-degree angle right in front of me.
My shoe caught and I dropped against the side of a sailboat that was violently rocking in the breakwater. It crashed against the slip, despite its restraining halyards, and shoved me between itself and the slip, but I couldn’t hold anything. My hands were numb, my legs stopped moving. Everything was too heavy.
The waves were building, growing in ferocity as they claimed me. My head went under, above, under…I told myself to raise my arms, to cling to the boat, but it was too slippery, and my hands were too weak to reach above the white caps. Each muscle fell limp with exhaustion, including my heart.
I couldn’t hear the thunder anymore, or even the muffled roar of the waves once I was beneath the water. My eyes stayed open, fixated on the figure approaching me beneath the waves as my body floated limply. I could hear my mom singing to me. I could see her. She was reaching out to me with the most beautiful smile on her face. My hands moved toward her, allowing her to pull me into a hug so tight I could smell her perfume. She smelled like honey. Her lips parted to speak to me, but something viciously pulled my body, tearing me away from her.
My nightmare repeated; I lost her again.
Everything went black.
Black.
I could still hear her singing to me, something tender in French about her sweet daughter. She started screaming my name, shouting at me, and she began to squish my cheeks while shaking my chin. It felt too aggressive. It hurt. She kissed my lips and started yelling at me again. This wasn’t my mom. She wouldn’t treat me like this.
My lungs throbbed and I could feel the pulsating sensation of vomit building in my stomach. With a violent gasp of air, my eyes tore open and the salt water poured from my mouth onto the wet slip. I blinked repeatedly, clearing the saltwater and rain from my burning eyes as the storm continued to pound against my writhing body.
“Sophia,” he screamed at me. “Sophia! Come on!”
“Jamie,” another voice demanded, “keep her on her side! Help her cough.”
“Sophia!” He continued pounding my back and squeezing my cheeks with his hand. “Don’t you do this, Sophia!”
“Let me see,” his companion moaned beneath the sheets of rain pelting us on the pier.
I couldn’t see them. I could only feel and hear. I was looking for my mom. If I closed my eyes, maybe she would come back. Where is she?
“Keep your eyes open!” the companion voice hollered at me, but I couldn’t acknowledge their demand. I was exhausted.
My heart sunk against the pier, straight through my ribs, and into the storming Gulf with the memory of my mom.
***
A weight against my body pushed me back to consciousness; a warm weight that added to the comforting pressure around me. My eyes remained closed as I began returning to a confusing state of limbo. I had seen my mom. She was so beautiful, just as lovely as I remembered. My fingers wiggled at my side, touching the heavy fabric layered around me. I was cocooned inside a blanket…on a couch…
“She knows,” I heard Jameson mumble in the distance, his attempt to whisper failing. The clinking of ice in a glass preceded his companion’s voice.
“You know what this means,” the companion sighed, taking a sip from his glass. “This changes everything.”
A raw burn painfully tickled across my eyes as I opened them into a squint.
“No, it doesn’t,” a woman’s voice continued. “Jameson obviously cares for her, otherwise he would have left her out there. Thomas, just calm down and think about this rationally.”
“You’re kidding, Elizabeth. Jameson’s friend, who just found out about his identity, almost died tonight. You’re telling me to calm down and think rationally?”
“She’s not just my friend.”
Judge Kerry and Elizabeth turned in unison, facing Jameson. Judge Kerry’s expression was disbelief, dangerously close to exploding on Jameson. Elizabeth’s mouth curled into a pleased smile, but her eyes radiated dejection. Their reactions were utterly confusing. This conversation was confusing; keeping me on topic, while feet away, and discussing ominously forbidden ideas beyond my control.
“Jameson,” Elizabeth sighed, lowering her hands in a knot at her waist. “You weren’t supposed to let anyone in. I know this must be frightening for you, but really, sweetheart. This is bigger than you think.”
Her words seemed to align more with Judge Kerry’s initial feelings. Wait. Not just his friend?
“You don’t think I know that, Elizabeth?” Jameson snarled, a tone that frightened me while I came to. “You think I wanted to fall for someone? You think I tried to make friends and have a life? I can’t help any of that. You two seem to forget one very important thing in this entire dynamic. I am a victim.”
“Jameson,” Judge Kerry groaned. “…Elizabeth?”
“Honey, I know you care for her. Thomas understands too, but now she is part of this.”
“Part of what?” I coughed as I attempted to sit, entirely aware of their conversation as I clung to the blanket wrapped around me.
The three spun so quickly in my direction, it was as if a machine operated them to do so. Jameson’s arms were crossed, confining himself within his own stupor. Elizabeth looked at Jameson and Judge Kerry, accepting neither was able to move, and joined me on the couch. Her thin hand rested on my knee after she adjusted the hem of her skirt.
“Sophia,” she began, peeking at our companions before returning her eyes to mine. “What exactly do you remember from before your fall?”
“I’m not an idiot. I’m not going to tell anyone anything. Please just let me go home.”
Elizabeth stood, glancing again at Jameson and Judge Kerry. The judge stormed away from Jameson, pulling Elizabeth with him. His energy contaminated the room, filling it with tangible hostility.
I swallowed, anxiously waiting for Jameson to say something, anything at all. As the rain violently pelted the window coverings of the room, I thought back to running away from Jameson earlier and the feeling of seeing my mom again as I could no longer fight the waves. His hands clenched my thighs for stability as he knelt before me, pulling me back to the present.