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My fingers ache from the delivery and the death grip on my phone, so I switch hands and shake it out, checking the time she left the second message saying she made it. And then there’s a third message that she left around eleven fifteen. She sounds tired.
“Hey, it’s me. I hope you’re getting these messages. I’m gonna sleep. It just all hit me about half an hour ago. I love you, Theo.”
I play the last message five times in a row.
What just hit her?That she’s tired? Or is it everything she told me this morning? That she doesn’t want to be with me anymore?
What hit her at ten forty-five, more than a couple of hours ago now, when I didn’t even fucking know that she was out of the state?
I fall back on the bed and Fred comes over and licks my hand. When I don’t scratch his ears like I usually do, he gives me another lick and then lies down next to me, giving up.
Makes two of us, buddy.
No. I refuse to let history repeat itself.
I lean over and grab my phone, hitting redial without second-guessing myself. When it’s her voicemail, my heart drops, but I grip the phone and say what I need to say.
“Sofie. I love you. Please come home to me.”
The phone drops next to me as I hang up. And despite thinking I won’t be able to sleep at all until I know what’s going on, exhaustion takes over and I crash hard.
Dreams of Sofie collide, one after the other. There are times I tell myself to wake up,please, wake up, but it doesn’t work, each dream feeling as if the events are taking place in real time.
I see her house through her eyes, watching her dad do the awful things she described on her mom’s last day on earth. I run after the three of them in the field far past the stables, never able to move fast enough to reach them.
We’re in my bedroom at the Summit House, her body undulating over mine, holding me captive in the dream as much as it did the times we spent together in that bed. Except her skin changes from the pale, flawless way I remember it to black and blue bruises all over her body. Her face changing from pleasure to pain and despair.
We’re five. Seven. Twelve. Fifteen. Sixteen. Barely eighteen. And all the cracks of time between.
I reach up to clasp my chest when I see her the way she looks now, reassured that we’re together, in the present.This is not a dream, I tell myself, but I can’t lift my arm or head, my body weighed down with sleep.
I chase her, running and running and running until I can’t breathe, and never catch up.
The night is endless and when I wake up, gasping for air, the sheets damp with sweat, at first, I don’t think I’ve slept at all. Until I realize my phone is ringing and the clock next to my bed says it’s eight. I blindly push on my screen, answering the call as I scramble to sit up.
“Sof?” My voice is hoarse, and I rub my eyes when I hear my brother Sutton on the other end.
Fred’s nails tap on the floor as he does his happy dance that I’m awake.
“Hardly.” Sutton laughs for a second and then stops abruptly. “Hey, wait. What’s going on? You okay? Is Sofie all right?”
“She’s gone.” My voice comes out flat, and Sutton says a few sentences that don’t even register. It’s quiet before I snap out of it long enough to ask what he just said.
“What can I do to help?” Sutton says, his deep, authoritative voice more tentative than usual.
“I wish I knew.”
I frown when I hear another phone ringing and I get up, searching for my other phone.
“I’m getting a work call,” I tell him when I find my phone. “I’ll call you back.”
“I have a slow day. I’ll come over, okay?”
I manage to hang up and catch the other call. It’s Mr. Doherty wanting me to come check on his cow Molly again. She’s been better since the last time I was out, but she’s acting strange again and he wants me to check her out to be sure she’s okay.
I agree to come and when I get off the phone, I feed Fred and take a shower before heading to the Doherty farm.
There’s no word from Sofie, but I have to trust that she’s working through this the way she needs to, and she’ll come back to me.
