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They had much to discuss, confessing to do, love to make, but for now, his arm around Phyllis, they went back inside to the distraught young college student standing on Phyllis’s front porch.
“Matt?” Sophie asked, her eyes locked on Matt’s arm around Phyllis’s waist.
“Let’s go back inside,” Matt said, throwing his free arm around Sophie’s shoulders, giving her no choice but to comply.
He had no idea what came next but felt confident that together, he and Phyllis would figure it out.
SOPHIE WANTED TO DIE. Wished she was alone so she could do just that.
“How could you?” she yelled at Matt. At Dr. Langford. At them. “Why did you invite me here if you two were just going to go behind my back…and want each other?”
“I didn’t realize we were going behind your back,” Dr. Langford said softly. “I had no idea the man you’d told me about was Matt”
She stared at the floor, wishing she could shrug off the guards flanking her, but too needy for their touch to do so. “Well, he knew,” she said in her meanest voice.
“Soph, you know I’ve never said or done anything that could lead you to believe I was interested in you romantically,” Matt was saying, his arm still around her as she sat sandwiched between him and Dr. Langford on the couch. Dr. Langford was holding her hand.
Humiliation worse than she’d ever known crept up her skin, making her feel light-headed, hot. And suddenly nothing mattered. Nothing. Not Matt. Not her appearance. Not the past or the future. Nothing.
And with the freedom that nothingness offered, all the weight she’d been carrying, the pretense, slid off her shoulders. She didn’t even care that she couldn’t hold back the gross-sounding sobs, or that her face looked like crap with tears streaming do
wn it.
“So all the praise was a lie,” she said, her voice devoid of caring. “I’m nothing special. Not to you, not to anyone.”
“Wrong.” Matt’s voice was forceful, more than she’d ever heard it. He squeezed her shoulder so tightly it almost hurt. “You are special. To me. But not romantically.”
Sophie felt a little bit pathetic at being so easily appeased. After all, what else could he say, considering the predicament he was in?
“I can attest to that,” Dr. Langford said, rubbing the top of Sophie’s hand lightly. “Matt’s spoken of you many times, told me how much you amaze him. He often talks about your artistic talent.”
She didn’t want to, but Sophie had to look at him then. “You do?”
He didn’t even blink, just stared her straight in the eye and nodded.
And that was when Sophie really fell apart. When she had to admit to herself, and then to her hosts, that maybe she wasn’t really in love with Matt. That what she needed was the belief that someone older and wiser, someone she respected, actually cared about her. Needed to think she had someone in the world she could turn to.
MATT SWALLOWED HARD as Sophie’s sobbing voice choked out the thin thread of words that told of a lost lonely girl searching for something that should have been hers unconditionally. The love and guidance that all children required from the people who were supposed to be raising them.
After more than an hour of listening, Phyllis managed to get the girl to admit that she had an eating disorder. She persuaded Sophie to let them help her, to let them care. And to be her friends.
By the time Phyllis got around to telling Sophie that she was pregnant, Sophie was claiming an exclusive on baby-sitting rights. She seemed almost relieved to have Phyllis filling the womanly place in Matt’s life, allowing Sophie to be a young adult, who could turn to him for guidance—no strings attached.
The day waned, and eventually they all made it back to the kitchen for seconds on dessert—which Sophie promised to hang on to this time. Matt couldn’t help thinking it had taken only one Christmas for him to know instinctively what life was all about. Love and friendship. After thirty-four years of searching, he’d found both.
EPILOGUE
AT THREE O’CLOCK on New Year’s Eve, in a chapel in Las Vegas, Matt Sheffield made Phyllis Langford his wife.
They didn’t stay in the city long. Just long enough to use it for what they needed—a wedding ceremony that would bind them together forever.
And then they were on a plane back to Phoenix. They had a party to attend. Friends to face.
“Do you think they’re going to be mad that we didn’t invite them?” Matt asked. Her friends were all people he’d known longer than she had, but he knew none of them even half as well.
“Of course not,” his wife assured him, beautiful in her white maternity suit, short red hair sassy as ever. Even after the tears she’d shed at their wedding, she looked impeccable. “Now that they’ll finally get to know you, they’re going to love you, Matt.”
“But still, they might’ve wanted to be included…”
