Page 64 of Take the Sub and Run

Colette clicked her tongue. “Sofie. Pay attention and start talking.”

Landon, seated with Colette on the couch across from Sofie and Andrei, chuckled as he took a sip from his bottle.

Sofie opened her mouth, closed it, then took a sip of her water. “I’ve never told anyone my story before. I guess I've never had anyone to tell.”

Colette’s face twisted. “I'm so sorry that I wasn't a good enough friend to you.”

“You're my best friend,” Sofie said simply.

“Exactly. That's why I should have known. I should have realized that there was more going on.”

Sofie dipped her head, embarrassed, though she couldn't say why.

After another sip of water, she'd gathered her thoughts enough to begin.

“I was adopted when I was either six or seven. They weren't sure when I was born, so they had to guess.”

Landon raised his brows in question, though didn’t actually ask a question.

“Oh, you're wondering where I'm from? I used to think in French. Sometimes even now, I will hear something in French and have this almost memory moment. But I don't remember enough about the French to help narrow down where I learned it. I was left at an orphanage outside Maastricht as a toddler.”

“A toddler? Not an infant?” Colette asked.

“A toddler.” Sofie had spent more time than she cared to think about imagining what had been happening in her parents’ life that leaving her on the steps of a church was the solution. Paintings of mother and child were hard for her because of it.

Unless of course it was a medieval piece with a homuncular Jesus.

“I could walk, but not talk well enough to tell them my name. At least that's what I was told.”

It was almost unnerving, having the attention of three such intense people. Landon and Colette were both looking at her, but Andrei was still reclined, head on the back of the couch, eyes closed. Despite that, she knew he was listening. Focused not just on her words but on her.

Had he sat up and turned to face her, she might not have been able to go on, and part of her wondered if he knew that.

“I told the agent downstairs I don’t remember anything from my childhood, but I do remember some. I remember getting in trouble because I would leave the orphanage, go across the graveyard behind the new church to the old church. It was nothing grand. Not a cathedral. But there was beautiful stained glass, and the altarpiece was…”

To this day, she found it hard to describe the feeling she got when she saw beautiful art.

“It was the light. Not just the light from the windows in the church but the light that the artist depicted in the altarpiece. I didn’t understand who the sad people were, but I understood the light in the sky, and the way the light made some colors bright, and some dark. I remember getting yelled at for climbing up on the altar to try and look behind the altarpiece. To see if there was a window or a lamp behind that illuminated it.”

Sofie looked out at the landscape before her. It was dusk once more, the setting sun painting one half of the skyline a hazy color somewhere between yellow and blue. People rarely thought of the light of sunset as having green in it, but there was green in gold. The tones were there, if one looked closely enough.

Her mind’s eye flashed up image after image. This view. This moment in time, unique unto itself, never having happened before or to happen again, rendered in a dozen different styles. The stark realism and luminosity of the Dutch Masters, the saturated colors of the Renaissance, the thick strokes of impressionism.

“One of the nuns gave me a sketchbook, and this little briefcase of art supplies—she figured out what I loved about the old church. There were colored pencils, charcoal, pastels, and even a little row of oil paints.”

“They gave you that as a child?” Colette asked softly.

“I don't think it was a children's art set, and I’ve never been able to figure out if that was on purpose. If she deliberately gave me something more than crayons.” She’d turned to Colette to answer the question, but now looked back at the window. “I never stopped getting in trouble for going over to the church, but once they brought me back and slapped my hands, they’d say no dinner for me, but sit me down with paper and my supplies and I’d try and do what I saw in that altarpiece.”

The view shifted as she tried to render the paintings she was imagining with more detail, colors brightening and darkening, shifting and changing.

“Try to capture the very soul of darkness and light.”

Sofie felt herself blushing. She was an artist, but words weren’t her medium, and she felt deeply embarrassed by having waxed poetic.

“I understand,” Colette said softly.

She shot her friend a grateful smile. Looking over at Andrei, she expected to see him with his eyes still closed, but he was looking at her with something akin to wonder.

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