Page 96 of Saving Sophia

I couldn’t bring myself to look at his face, even though his words were on my side. What could he possibly be thinking of me?

“Brad thought Sophia was you.” Hayden’s face remained calm, neutral, even when Callie snorted.

“Right, because there’s such a resemblance.” Callie threw a hand back and forth between her platinum blond locks and my own dark brown. “This is bullshit.”

My vision darkened and my breathing hitched. I didn’t want any of this. I didn’t ask to see that jerk shoot that other jerk. I just didn’t want to lose the only job I could get. I wanted to stand on my own and not be the disappointment my parents knew I was.

Daddy squeezed my hand under the table. “You have an eyewitness, Hayden,” he insisted.

“Yes.” Hayden tapped the pen against the pad again like he was trying to regain order. “And I’ll take her statement. I just want you to know what you’re up against. If Sophia goes through with this, it could be dangerous. And if it goes to trial, these are the things Roscoe’s lawyers would say.”

“Sophia?” Daddy’s voice was strong and firm beside me. “What do you think?”

My mouth was numb like it was full of Novocain, refusing to work. The room went quiet, except for the soft click of Callie’s chair as she rocked it back and forth. The weight of their stares sat heavy on me.

“It wasn’t her … and it wasn’t Brad … I don’t know how, but … it wasn’t,” I whispered, forcing myself not to say anything else about the moon-faced man, or my shoes, or anything else that made me sound crazy.

My tummy roiled with the stress of speaking. Maybe I could finish this awful meeting off by throwing up in front of everybody. It certainly couldn’t get much worse.

Hayden slid his open hand across the table toward me, a placating gesture that drew my attention back to the awful pity on his face. “Let’s get your statement down and see where you want to go from there.”

My eyes burned and my nose stung. What would I even say? Somehow, he had real evidence pointing to another suspect. It was my word against reality.

I wanted to curl up and fade away, shrink into a tiny box tucked under a baseboard of an abandoned house. And then, because coincidence really is a big meanie, a ringtone both dreaded and familiar called out from my purse.

My fingers slid up to clutch at the locket around my throat.

My father.

* * *

I stepped out of the conference room and wandered past boxes and half set-up desks to take the call. I ended up in front of a door with the name Ethan Abbott newly etched into the frosted glass. His office.

I leaned against the door, my hand squeezing the life out of my phone at the sound of my father’s voice, sharp and unyielding as a blade.

“I’ve called to tell you to stop being childish and come home.” My father skipped over the niceties and got straight to cutting me into pieces. “Your mother has a symposium at the end of the month, and you need to be there.”

“She does?” It was all I could squeeze out of my throat as I closed my eyes, imagining my mother lecturing at a podium in a tastefully understated tuxedo suit in shades of cream, giving a keynote speech to subdued but ardent applause.

“You may not care about anything other than your toys.” I flinched at the acid in his tone, biting my tongue numb as he continued. “But your mother and I have our professional reputations to protect. People know we have a daughter. It’s expected that you be there. We can say you’re back in school after taking an experiential year. That will explain why you haven’t accomplished anything.”

An unfamiliar slice of anger cut through the fog of humiliation in my head. “Are you more concerned that I haven’t accomplished anything, or that they know about me at all?”

A deadly beat of silence spun across the line between us. I was shocked the words came out of my mouth, but even more shocked to discover the ever-present apology wasn’t there.

When I didn’t beg forgiveness, his fury flared. “Don’t test me, Sophia. You’re coming home. Today. I’ll not have you ruining the life we’ve worked so hard to build.”

I swallowed hard and lay my cheek against the cool glass of the door. His door. “Dad … there’s a lot going on. I was assaulted. I have to?—”

“Assaulted? Were you raped?” His voice was icy.

“No, but he?—”

“Honestly, are you surprised?” He interrupted, apparently relieved about one less scandal. “You surround yourself with trash, you can’t be shocked when you’re treated like trash.” A sigh of annoyance came through the phone. “All the more reason you’re coming home. We will not waste the resources bailing you out of whatever self-inflicted situation you find yourself in. We have worked too hard.”

My throat closed up, and my breath evaporated. Shame. Misery. Pain. My whole body burned with it. Never good enough.

In desperation, my fingers traced the lines of Daddy’s name in the glass, the thick font grounding me.

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