Читать книгу The Charm Offensive - Cari Lynn Webb - Страница 14

CHAPTER FIVE

SOPHIE YANKED HER hair into a tight braid to keep from throwing her cell phone against the wall. Unfortunately, her older sister wouldn’t feel the impact. Tessa was thousands of miles away in India and only visible on Sophie’s phone screen thanks to modern technology and phone apps.

Sophie stared at her sister’s thin, tan face filling the screen. Tessa looked rested, relaxed, pretty even. Her lips were stained red like their mother’s, her eyes were sky blue like their mother’s and her auburn hair was full of effortless curls like their mother’s. And just like their mother, Tessa was a wanderer.

“My Yogi master suggested I stay for another six weeks to make sure I’ve fully committed to my new path.” Tessa traced her finger over one naturally arched eyebrow.

“You told me the same thing eight weeks ago.” Sophie tugged on her hair.

“No, I needed the last eight weeks to embrace my new path.” Tessa leaned into the camera. Her blue eyes were wide and clear and no longer haunted. “I need the next six weeks to commit.”

“What am I supposed to tell Ella?” Sophie asked. “I told her two months ago that you’d be coming home. It’s time to come home, Tessa.”

“I left so I could become a better mother.” Tessa leaned away, but Sophie caught the white of her teeth biting into her bottom lip. Her sister always did that when she was scared. She’d chewed her lip raw on their fateful bus ride to the city.

Tessa’s voice lowered, her words tumbling out in an urgent rush. “Mom’s voice is still too loud inside me. And you promised me that you wouldn’t let me become like Mom.”

Sophie had made that promise when Tessa had come home high and clutching a pregnancy test. But Sophie had long since stopped believing in empty words and put her faith in actions. Too often people claimed to be pet lovers, then threw away newborn kittens. Too often parents promised to return to their children, then continued moving on, sending an occasional postcard or making a quick phone call. Too often her sister said she’d put her family first and then disappeared.

But Tessa had booked her healing trip to India on her own. She’d made a plan for a new life. She’d asked for Sophie’s support. Now Sophie had to trust her sister would do the right thing.

“I need these last six weeks to become my best,” Tessa said. “You understand, right?”

“Of course.” Sophie wanted her sister to be home. To be healed. To be a parent. For once in Ella’s life, Sophie wanted Ella to have a real mother. Not a stand-in aunt, who covered for her absentee mother with constant assurances of how much Tessa still loved Ella, even after all these years. But her sister feared coming home. She couldn’t blame her. “No more after this, Tessa. You need to be here. There are decisions to be made about Ella’s next surgery. Her parent needs to sign those medical forms.”

“You have all the paperwork I signed before I left, Soph,” Tessa said. “You just have to submit it.”

“We aren’t talking about that paperwork.” That paperwork made Sophie more than Ella’s aunt. That paperwork relinquished Tessa of her parental rights. That paperwork she’d stashed in the bottom drawer of her dresser under keepsakes from Ella’s first year: hair from her first haircut, her pacifier and a milestone book of Ella’s first five years. Sophie hadn’t opened that drawer since Tessa had boarded the plane to India.

“Fine, but we need to talk about it sometime,” Tessa said. “For now, I’ll put the charges for the next six weeks on the credit card.”

Her sister wasn’t coming home and she expected Sophie to fund the extension. Sophie didn’t have the funds for the electric bill. She closed her eyes and saw only the image of her sister after she’d given birth on her supplier’s cold basement floor. Both mother and baby had barely been breathing. Sophie had vowed that night she’d do anything to keep her only family safe. She dropped her hair and let the braid unravel. “You’re supposed to be teaching classes to help cover your room and board.”

“I do teach,” Tessa said. “Just not regularly. I’ll pay you back. We talked about this before I left.”

They’d talked about many things, some irrelevant like the weather and some relevant like missing Ella’s ninth birthday. Sophie watched her sister wrap a silk scarf over her head. Ella’s tenth birthday was next month. Shouldn’t her sister remember her own daughter’s birthday? If her sister had grown as a person from her year of discovery in India, then Ella’s birthday should’ve mattered.

Sophie shook her head and prayed six more weeks was the answer to Tessa’s lack of parental inclination. “Put the charges on the credit card.”

Tessa kissed the phone screen. “I love you, little sister.”

“I love you, too.” Sophie meant those words and believed her sister did, too.

Sophie just wasn’t sure that love mattered. Love was empty without support and commitment and trust. That’s what made love a bond that lasted and endured. Sophie knew that love existed. She’d seen it with Ruthie’s parents who’d recently celebrated forty years of marriage, and now between Ruthie and Matt. It was rare and precious and magical. But only children believed in magic and fairy tales. And a childhood built on abandonment and dysfunction severed any belief in happily-ever-afters. Instead, Sophie strove for happy-for-nows.

“I have to run,” Tessa said. “Class begins in five.”

“Wait.” Sophie grabbed her phone. “Don’t you want to talk to Ella?”

“I will soon,” Tessa said. “It’s better if you tell her. You can hug her and make her smile after delivering the news. If I tell her, then we’ll all be in tears. That won’t be good for anyone. She already thinks I’m a huge disappointment.”

Tessa ended the call before Sophie could respond. Sophie stuffed her phone into her back pocket, checked the locks on the front doors of the Pampered Pooch and switched off the lights. She glanced at the boarded-up window. Brad hadn’t made it back to the store. It meant she’d get to see him again. She might’ve warmed to the idea if her sister hadn’t doused her with a cold bucket of broken promises.

The outside fire escape, with its sturdy thick wood stairs and reliable handrail connected the backyard to the third-floor apartment she shared with Ella. Sophie ran up the stairs, bypassing the empty second floor that would one day hopefully house a vet’s office. This staircase meant Ella and she never had to go outside on the front sidewalk to deal with the steel gate at their main apartment entrance and they could avoid the strangers at the bus stop four steps from their front door.

She wiped her shoes on the mat outside the back door and strode through the kitchen down the hallway. She’d planned to cook a marinara pasta dish with Ella, but her appetite had disappeared when Tessa had signed off. Just thinking about adding garlic to her too-sour stomach made her insides cramp even more.

She pressed her palm on her stomach before knocking on Ella’s bedroom door. “Hey, sweetie.”

Ella sat in the middle of a queen-size bed in a room painted pale lavender and decorated with fuzzy pillows, plump stuffed animals and a thick down comforter. It was the room Sophie and Tessa had never had as children. Ella had picked out everything to make her bedroom cozy. Sophie wished Tessa had been there. Sophie wished Tessa could see how accomplished her daughter had become. Sophie wished...

Ella pressed Pause on her CD player, drawing a smile from deep inside Sophie. These days she couldn’t order audiobooks fast enough for her niece.

“Do we have extra cotton balls?” Ella asked.

“In my bathroom.” The colored markers Sophie had found at the craft store last week covered Ella’s bed. Years ago, Sophie had taught Ella her colors through scent. Discovering scented markers had ignited Ella’s other passion besides books: art. “How many do you need?”

Ella pressed her palm against the upper corner of a poster board. “Enough to glue here for my clouds.” Then she frowned. “Or should the rainbow be above the clouds?”

“The rainbow can be anyplace you want it. So can the clouds.” Sophie touched the intricate braids that Ruthie had formed into her niece’s hair. She wanted so much for Ella to see how much she looked like a princess. “It’s your picture. Your art to create.”

“Do you think Mother will like it?” Ella asked.

Sophie’s heart stalled as if clogged by those extra cotton balls. “She’ll love it.”

“After we add the clouds and I finish the rainbow, you’ll help me write ‘welcome home,’ right?” Ella ran her hands over the rainbow arc she’d formed with thin, flexible wax strips.

The joy in Ella’s tone stole Sophie’s heart, and her throat swelled, feeling stuffed by another bunch of cotton balls. “Whenever you’re ready.”

“She’ll be home in nineteen days,” Ella said. “So I need to be ready soon.”

“About that.” Sophie sat on the bed. “I talked to your mother today.”

Ella’s hands stilled on her picture. “Is she excited to come home?”

A guardedness tightened Ella’s voice as if to protect the joy. Sophie swallowed her scream of anger. Her niece didn’t deserve this amount of pain. “She’s excited to see you.” Sophie hugged Ella, wanting the contact to be more comfort than her empty words, but knew it’d never be enough. “But she needs to stay a little while longer.”

“Then she isn’t excited to see me.” Ella dismantled her rainbow and her joy.

“Oh, sweetie, she wants to see you,” Sophie said. “She wants to be home, but she needs to finish her therapy.”

“She could do her therapy here.” Ella twisted the wax strips in her fingers.

Sophie resented that small kernel of hope in Ella’s voice. Sophie had had that same hope bubble when she was Ella’s age. Her grandmother would pop it with the harsh truth. Over the years, Sophie’s hope bubbles had shrunk in size until they were small enough for Sophie to hide in places her grandmother couldn’t poke.

Ella rushed on. “They have yoga here. I heard Taylor’s mom talking to another mom about their afternoon yoga class over on Market.”

She hated that she’d stomp on Ella’s hope now. She’d never wanted that for this precious girl. “It isn’t the same.”

How Sophie wanted it to be the same. To be that simple.

“It’s better.” Ella smashed the purple modeling clay in her fist. “Her family is here. I’m here. You’re here. There’s yoga here.”

And there was nothing else Sophie could say. She couldn’t promise Ella that Tessa would be home soon. Tessa always found a reason to delay. She’d tell Ella that her mother loved her as usual, but Sophie was too mad at her sister to spend the time to convince Ella it was true. Mothers weren’t supposed to break their daughters’ hearts. Her chest ached and her stomach tightened into knots no Yogi master could release. She’d tried to soften the hurt every time, but the pain was always there. “I’ll go get those cotton balls.”

“There’s no rush.” Ella pushed her drawing across the bed and picked up her headphones. “I’m going to finish my book.”

Ella rolled over onto her side, away from Sophie. Sophie ached. Ella ached, too. Yet no tears dampened either of their faces. But Sophie always dried Ella’s tears and teased away the disappointment. The tissues she’d shoved into her pocket before talking to Ella remained untouched. When had they stopped caring? Ella could see the truth better than most people with twenty-twenty vision. She could see better than her own mother. Sophie’s ache spread like a poison vine, strangling every bone, every vein, consuming her.

Sophie tapped Ella’s shoulder. “I’m going to change over the laundry, then we’ll figure out dinner.”

Ella nodded and covered her ears with her headphones.

Sophie carried Ella’s hamper down into the basement. She wasn’t sure if she smelled the lavender-scented detergent first before she splashed into the water. Or if the water ran into her shoes up to her ankles before the lavender coated every breath, failed to calm her and instead encouraged rage.

She did know that the ancient overflowing washing machine with soap bubbles everywhere and a waterfall streaming up and over the lid became the topper to her rotten day.

She sloshed through the water and kicked the appliance. “Clean underwear. That’s all I wanted.” She kicked the machine again. “That can’t be too much to ask.”

It was too much to ask for her father to tell Sophie about needing money. It was too much to ask for the gala sponsors to show professional courtesy and give Sophie more time before backing out. It was too much to ask for her sister to come home when she’d promised.

But clean underwear was not too much to ask.

Except, apparently, it was.

Water squished inside her shoes. The sound made something switch inside Sophie, as if she’d sprung a leak, too. Or more than a leak. A burst pipe. A broken water main. A knocked-over fire hydrant.

Ruthie had given Sophie a wooden baseball bat for protection when the Pooch had first opened. Sophie had bought one for every floor of the building as her tightened security plan met a limited budget. She grabbed the bat from the hook on the wall and descended on the washer.

Sophie had definitely had enough.

How much was one person expected to handle? She lifted the bat over her head like a club.

“Clean underwear. That’s all I requested.” She smacked the bat against the washing-machine lid. The impact vibrated up her arms, jolted through her shoulders, then splintered down each vertebra. But something aligned inside her or maybe some things finally aligned like the rage, despair, disgust and fear she felt. She smashed the lid again.

That pressure valve inside her twisted open another notch. Tears tangled with her eyelashes and splattered against her cheeks. Her attack on the washer continued.

A hit for her family’s betrayal. A crack for her pain. A series of smashes for Ella’s anguish.

Sophie hardly recognized herself, but she didn’t care. The corner of the washer crumpled beneath the bat’s assault.

“Why?” She slammed the bat against the top. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. Added one more swing, and shouted, “Why?”

Each breath was more ragged and unsteady than the last. She set her stance, readied the bat. One last hit. Sanity threatened, but she had one final shot inside her.

“You piece of crap.” She swung the baseball bat. The front paneling caved in. A control knob flipped through the air, plopped into the water and sank. Sophie’s anger slowed to a drip as if that valve had been twisted shut. Or maybe she’d used up her emotion and was like an empty well. Either way, clarity and reason finally spilled through her: she had to deal with the water. Now.

She tossed the bat aside and dropped to her hands and knees to search for the drain that was somewhere in the middle of the room. She’d replaced the plastic drain cover after it broke several months ago. Soapy water splashed her face. One more hit of cold reality.

How was she going to fix this? She had to fix this so she could have clean underwear on when she found her father. She needed clean underwear on when she walked into Beth Perkins’s corner cubicle at Pacific Bank and Trust and paid off her loan in full in less than four weeks.

She would not be defeated by an ancient washing machine or her father.

She crawled through the suds, skimming her hands over the cement floor, keeping her search for the drain in the forefront of her mind and the panic at bay.

Sophie had been in the fourth grade when her parents had abandoned her sister and Sophie to their one-room apartment. Sophie had returned from school and found a handwritten note taped to the refrigerator where schoolwork and kids’ drawings should have hung: “If you girls are wise and careful, you can make the groceries last two weeks until we return.”

Sophie had managed the two weeks without panicking. She’d panicked on day twenty-one when all of the food was gone and her parents still weren’t home. She’d panicked on the twenty-fourth day when Ms. Dormer, her fourth-grade teacher, had knocked on the apartment door after following the girls home from school. She’d been nervous when Ms. Dormer drove her to the pawn shop to sell her mother’s gold necklace to buy the bus tickets from Tahoe City to San Francisco. And she’d worried during the first hour of the bus ride that the authorities would separate her and her sister before they’d arrived at their grandmother’s house. She’d finally contained every molecule of anxiety when her grandmother had stepped out of that fog surrounding the bus station and wrapped one thin arm around Sophie’s small but stubborn shoulders.

Sophie hadn’t truly panicked since then.

She refused to panic now. A broken washer had nothing on her past.

She’d overcome this, too. She had to for another, more important child.