Page 31 of Bad Luck Vampire

Sophie shrugged. “I’m not really unhappy, it’s just not what I trained for. I thought I’d be writing code and developing programs and such.”

“Then why stay at the insurance company?” Alasdair asked reasonably.

Sophie grimaced at him for the logical question. It was one she’d asked herself several times in the past. Sighing, she said, “It’s complicated.”

She’d meant to leave it at that, but found herself admitting, “Mr. and Mrs. Tomlinson are the closest thing I have to parents, and their children, Megan and Bobby, are my best friends and like siblings to me. It’s a family business and I’m fortunate enough that they consider me part of that family.”

“You feel like you would be throwing that relationship in their face if you left and do not want to hurt, and possibly lose, them by leaving,” Alasdair said solemnly, understanding more than she’d expected.

Sophie let out the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding and nodded. “Yeah.”

“And your real family?” Alasdair asked.

Sophie shrugged and picked up her drink. “I think I mentioned last night that my parents died in a house fire when I was eleven.”

“No brothers or sisters?”

“I was an only child,” she said, and took a drink of her iced tea.

“I’m sorry.”

Sophie’s eyes shifted quickly to him. She wanted to say it had happened a long time ago and it was fine, but suddenly had a lump in her throat, so she merely nodded.

“What happened after your parents died?” Alasdair asked. “Did the Tomlinsons raise you? Is that why they are like family to you?”

Sophie shook her head. “We were neighbors. Megan was my best friend growing up, and we were having a sleepover at their house the night of the fire. That’s the only reason I wasn’t home when our house burned down.”

She fell silent for a minute, remembering waking in Megan’s room that night. She could see her best friend standing by the open window, silhouetted by the light coming through the window from the fire next door. She’d heard the scream of sirens in the distance and had stumbled out of bed to join her at the window. Just in time to see Mr. and Mrs. Tomlinson running to the house next door in their pajamas, shouting for her parents.

“So, if not them, who raised you after your parents died?” Alasdair asked.

Blinking away her memories, Sophie set her glass back on the table. “I went to a group home for the next three years.”

“You didn’t have family that could have taken you in?” Alasdair asked with a frown.

Sophie shrugged. “My father had a big family, but they apparently turned their back on him when he married my mother. She was half Filipino and they were racist, didn’t consider her good enough for him,” she said dryly. “When social services contacted them after the fire, their stance was that they had no son and weren’t interested in his ‘foreign brat.’”

“Ouch,” Alasdair said with a wince.

Sophie smiled faintly at his expression. “They were strangers, so I wasn’t bothered,” she told him, and it was the same thing she’d told herself at the time, and in the years since, but—

“And your mother? Did she have family?” Alasdair asked, interrupting her thoughts.

Sophie shook her head. “Her parents both died before she married my father. And there was only a sister on her side, my aunt, who was a single mother of three kids already and said she couldn’t afford to take me in. So, it was the group home for me,” Sophie said with a shrug, and then added, “But I wasn’t there long. Three years and a bit.”

“What happened then?” Alasdair asked.

“High school,” she said with a grin. “I ended up going to the same high school as Megan.” She chuckled as happier memories began flooding her mind. She distinctly recalled Megan’s excitement and happiness as well as her own. “We picked up where we’d left off before the fire, and were BFFs again.”

“BFFs?” Alasdair asked uncertainly.

“Best friends forever,” she explained with a smile. “You know, hanging out, giggling over boys, sleepovers. Best friend stuff.”

“And her parents adopted you?” Alasdair guessed. “That’s why you were no longer at the group home.”

“They fostered me,” she corrected. “And it didn’t happen right away. There were some hoops for them to jump through. Mr. and Mrs. Tomlinson had to do some training, and home study, and had to be screened by the police and whatnot, but they did it.”

Absently turning her glass on the tabletop, she added, “My caseworker said that both George and Deb, the Tomlinsons, took weeks off work to get through the preservice training and home study more quickly. They wanted me out of the group home as quickly as possible.”

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