Page 7
Fuck.
Chapter Three
Ember
October 1st
I stood in the doorway of Sophie’s closet, dumbfounded. It was a complete disaster, but not in the way one would think for a seven-year-old. There weren’t clothes or toys on the floor. Instead, it was organized with military precision. She arranged the clothes on hangers, colour-coded all her wardrobe, and neatly paired and lined up her shoes. Even the drawers of her dresser were organized, complete with labels. Then, behind the neat rows of t-shirts and the pile of folded pajamas was a cardboard box that someone had shoved into the far back corner and covered with an extra pile of blankets.
I hadn’t been snooping. Sophie had asked me to find her green Velociraptor shirt. I had been digging around in the back of her closet when my hand hit the box.
“Don’t,” Sophie said from behind me.
I turned around to see her standing in the doorway of her walk-in closet, her arms crossed and her face tight.
“Don’t touch that. That is my private box.”
“Okay,” I said, pulling my hand back and standing up. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…”
“It’s just stuff. Old stuff.” The tone of the voice she used reminded me of when she’d said, “It’s just pumpkins.”
“Well, the good news is I found the Velociraptor shirt,” I said, seeing it on the shelf, grabbing it and holding it out to her.
“Thanks,” she ripped the shirt from my hand and ran to the bathroom to change.
I know I shouldn’t have, but while she was gone, I moved the blankets and peeked inside the box. Even though Sophie had taped the box shut with packing tape at one point, she had peeled it back and re-stuck it so many times that it barely held. She’d opened this box regularly, probably in secret.
Inside, right on top, lay a tangle of orange fairy lights, a hand-painted ceramic owl that had a chipped ear, and some garland. There was a small felt trick or treat bag with SOPHIE embroidered on it in gold thread. I shoved the bag to the side and saw dozens of decorations, some nested in tissue paper. There were handmade ones. A small clay handprint painted orange, a decorated popsicle frame around a photo of a woman holding a baby, smiling. Every decoration had a tag that was handwritten in careful script.
Mommy and Me, 2019.
Sophie’s first Halloween.
Our family…always.
I swallowed hard and fought back the tears that were threatening to fall as I put everything back. I pressed the tape down and slid the box back to its hiding spot, covering it with the blankets. When Sophie came out of her bathroom dressed in her green Velociraptor shirt, I was sitting on the edge of her bed looking at a book about dinosaurs of the ocean that had been on her nightstand.
“Ready for breakfast?” I asked.
“Are we having French toast?”
“If you’d like, sure.”
She looked at me. “With the thick bread? Not the thin kind?”
“Is there any other way?” I questioned.
“Okay,” she said, walking past me and then stopping. “Ember?”
“Yeah?”
She stood in her doorway, looking serious. “You didn’t look in my box, right?”
“Right.” I lied.
She nodded her head and then took off down the stairs.
I sat on her bed for a couple of seconds, trying to calm my breathing, and then I followed her.
