Sweet Misfortune: A Novel (17 page)

Evalynn shot her a confused glance. “Of course. In a car accident.”

“I know, but do you have any idea what caused it?”

Another questioning look. “The weather, right?”

“Have you ever talked with Ellen about it in private?”

“Maybe. Probably.”

“Well did she ever mention that something
…
or someone, was partially to blame for what happened?”

“No. Sophie, what are you getting at?”

Sophie glanced down at her clenched fist. In her mind, she recalled having clutched the paper like that once before. “I want to tell you something, but you have to swear not to ever tell anyone else.”

“I promise.”

“Not even your hubby?”

Evalynn looked back over her shoulder and whispered, “Trust me, there’s plenty that Justin doesn’t know.”

Sophie took a deep breath. She’d wanted to share her secret with Evalynn for years, but had never built up the nerve. Knowing that she would need her foster sister’s help to figure out why the old fortune had mysteriously shown up in the mail—and who had sent it—she decided it was time to share her burden. For the next twenty minutes Sophie retold, in terrifying detail, the sequence of events on the night of her ninth birthday that led up to the deaths of her mother, father, and grandmother.

Evalynn sat mesmerized, at times looking like she might burst into tears herself.

Sophie gave extra attention to her own role in the birthday nightmare, explaining how silly she’d been for believing that the fortune would come true.

When she was done, Evalynn scooted over and put her arms around Sophie in a giant hug. “You can’t blame yourself for what happened. There’s a reason that they’re called accidents. It wasn’t your fault, Sophie.” She pulled back. “If you’ve held this inside for so long, why are you telling me now?”

Sophie pursed her lips. “Because,” she replied slowly, staring once more at her hand, “even though it was an accident, I
do
own most of the blame.” She let her fingers fall open. “And somebody out there knows it.”

Evalynn took the fortune from Sophie’s hand and read the message.
“Happiness is a gift that shines within you. The wish of your heart will soon come true.”
She looked up. “It was twenty years ago—how can you even remember it? Maybe your message was just similar. Besides, they print these things by the thousands. This could just be a coincidence.”

Sophie rolled her eyes. “The only thing coincidental is that it got back to me by way of Garrett’s stupid happiness want ad. But the creepy part is that it really is my fortune from that night. Not just the same message.
It’s the same piece of paper!
”

Evalynn gave Sophie a look of doubt. “How can you be sure?”

“Flip it over,” Sophie said, her voice ringing with dread.

Evalynn gasped so hard when she saw what was written on the back that she nearly choked. In faded pencil were the words,
Sophia Maria Jones, September 21, 1989
. “No! This is some sort of a joke! It has to be.”

“If it is, I don’t see the humor.”

“The only person you told was Ellen?”

“That’s all I remember. Well, maybe I told the shrink about it when I was a kid, but no one else.”

“So you think Ellen had something to do with sending this to you?” Evalynn asked.

Sophie shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, I’d like to think that she wouldn’t, but she did dig in your past to get that letter sent from Carly, so who knows?” Sophie hesitated, trying to sort it out in her mind. “Still
…
something doesn’t add up.”

“What?”

“I threw it away! I wadded it up and threw it away, and Ellen was right there with me and watched it float away.”

“Exactly,” Evi replied. “She was there, and she was the only person who even knew you had it. Plus, it came to your
PO box, and only a few of us knew the responses were coming to you. So she must have something to do with this.” Evalynn checked her watch, then grabbed Sophie by the hand and stood up. “C’mon, Sophie.”

“Where are we going?”

“For your sanity, I think we need to go pay Ellen a little visit.”

“But it’s after ten o’clock,” Sophie protested. “It’ll be eleven before we get there, and she goes to bed early.”

Evalynn gave Sophie her
Don’t argue with me
look. She asked if Sophie thought either of them would be able to sleep until they got a little more information.

Sophie sighed. “Probably not.”

“Well if we can’t sleep tonight, then our dear foster mom shouldn’t get to sleep, either.”

Chapter 25

Happiness rightly eludes you.

Y
OU OKAY?” EVALYNN ASKED, AS SHE AND SOPHIE GOT
out of Evi’s car in front of Ellen’s apartment on the outskirts of Seattle’s east side.

It was ten minutes to eleven, and the cold evening wind was starting to whip around. Sophie zipped up her jacket to just below the chin and nodded, but kept her eyes fixed on the four-story building. It looked as beat-up and run-down as ever. The bricks that covered the exterior of the first two floors were dirty and worn, with small vines creeping in and out of the cracks and fissures in the mortar joints. The top two floors were solid concrete, painted a bland color that approximated the gray of the mortar. Large patches of paint were peeling off, especially near the top of the west end, where a broken gutter had allowed excess water to run down the side of the building for the majority of the previous fall and winter.

Sophie had always wondered why her foster mother chose to live there when she could have afforded something a little nicer, especially after Sophie and Evalynn moved out. When Sophie asked about it a few years back, Ellen explained that all her best memories were there. “My little chicks may have flown the coop,” she added, “but the coop still suits me fine.”

“Welcome home,” Evalynn whispered softly, leading the way through the building’s exterior door.

The inside of the complex wasn’t as dilapidated as the outside, simply because the tenants cared enough to keep it up. Whereas nobody, including the landlord, wanted to cough up the big bucks for new bricks or paint on the outside, the building dwellers didn’t mind spending a few dollars here and there to keep the hallways neat and clean.

Both Sophie and Evalynn had keys to apartment number 309, but since the clock was encroaching on Ellen’s typical sleep schedule, they chose to ring the bell.

There was a small delay before a faint, “Who is it?” came from one of the back rooms. “Knock once if friend, twice if foe.” That was Ellen’s standard response whenever someone rang the doorbell or knocked unexpectedly. Sophie and Evalynn both knew that was just her way of stalling to make sure her firearm was nearby.

Sophie knocked three times.

“Evalynn? Is that you? Or is it Sophie?”

Evalynn and Sophie exchanged brief glances as they listened to the sound of footsteps moving quickly from the kitchen, across the main room, and up to the door. The deadbolt clicked as it was twisted, and then the door flew open.

“Both of my chickadees!” Ellen nearly leapt out of her police boots, which she still wore following an extended shift at the precinct downtown. She grabbed Sophie in a giant hug and pulled her into the apartment, then did the same with Evalynn. “What on earth are you girls doing here so late at night? Never mind. When was the last time we were all in this apartment at the same time? Seems like a year or more. What a treat!” She gave Sophie another little squeeze, but as she did so Ellen couldn’t help noticing that neither of her visitors were as excited as she was.

The three women moved together through the living room to the kitchen and took seats around the small, circular dining table. Ellen glanced nervously between Sophie and Evalynn, as though she sensed that the news they’d come to share so late at night was not good.

Sophie ran her hand along the table’s wooden surface. She could still make out engraved letters and words from where she and Evalynn had pressed too hard with their pens while doing homework as teenagers. Following the contour of her own name in the surface of the wood with her index finger, she looked up at Ellen and forced a smile, but didn’t speak.

“I had fun going through all that mail last night,” said Ellen softly, as soon as the silence became uncomfortable. “Have you found any good ones yet?”

“A couple,” Sophie replied.

As more silence ensued, Sophie’s eyes walked around the room that she’d spent so much time in during her youth. It felt smaller than it had when she was little. Even though the family room was the biggest space in the apartment, the kitchen had always been their gathering place. They ate there, talked there, studied there, and watched TV there, and sometimes they managed to do all of those things there at the same time. Sophie wondered how many hours of her childhood had been spent sitting in the very chair she now occupied.

Invariably, thoughts of her youth rewound all the way back to the day she first arrived at the home of Officer Ellen Monroe. Sophie recalled how hard it was raining outside; even harder than the night she’d first met Ellen on the side of the road in Seattle. The water fell in heavy sheets that day, pelting the side of the apartment building at a forty-five-degree angle. The social worker had an umbrella for herself, but didn’t offer to share, so by the time Sophie dragged her suitcase from the back-seat of the social worker’s car to the front door of the apartment building, she was drenched from head to toe, her blonde curls plastered like wet noodles against her forehead.

Sophie remembered the reluctance with which she carried her suitcase up the stairs to the third floor. The social worker was in a bit of a hurry, but Sophie took her time. It was already her fourth trip to a new foster home in the short span of five months, and she was in no hurry to meet her next “family.”

The first home she’d been placed in was intentionally brief; just a week or so to allow her caseworker time to find a good, long-term match, perhaps even an adoptive situation. When no such match was found, Sophie was moved to the home of a single mom named Marion Mason, who was taking in children as a way to milk the state for a little extra cash. Social Services eventually figured out that the woman was using the money to support a drug habit, so seven weeks after arriving there, Sophie and another foster child, plus the woman’s own biological daughter—a precocious little girl named Evalynn—were picked up in a white van and delivered to new locations throughout northern Washington.

Sophie’s stop was the last of the day, way up north in Everett. She landed with some very nice empty-nesters, the Bards, who took in children from time to time out of the goodness of their hearts, simply because they knew there was a need. Unfortunately for Sophie, the husband’s heart was good only in the metaphorical sense; Mr. Bard suffered a major heart attack right around the two-month anniversary of Sophie’s arrival. Sophie watched in horror from a stool in the kitchen as emergency workers used a defibrillator in the middle of the living room to try to jump-start his heart before they wheeled him away. Mrs. Bard was crying hysterically. Nobody ever came right out and said how Mr. Bard’s trip to the hospital ended up, but based on the fact that nobody ever said, Sophie assumed the worst.

Later that night, in the middle of a rainstorm, Sophie’s caseworker showed up and told her to pack her things. They drove south for a while along the interstate, took a Seattle exit, and eventually pulled up in front of Ellen’s building. After a brief walk in the drowning din, followed by a slow climb to the third floor, a dripping, shivering Sophie knocked for the first time on door 309.

“Knock once if friend, twice if foe,” called a friendly voice from within. Sophie looked up at the caseworker, puzzled, and shrugged. The woman told her to knock once. A moment later the door peeled open, and there, to Sophie’s very pleasant surprise, was a familiar face staring back at her. Ellen, the police officer who’d first approached her in the aftermath of the accident, and the same woman who had showed her kindness at her parents’ funeral, was standing in the doorway, beaming. She had her arms open wide, and scooped Sophie up in a giant hug. With Ellen’s big, black arms around her, Sophie’s heart felt warmer than it had in months.

“I have a secret,” Ellen said, smiling, as she squatted down to Sophie’s level. “Don’t tell anyone, but it’s three knocks for family. Okay? If you ever have to knock, that’s your number now.” Sophie nodded as Ellen hugged her again and pulled her the rest of the way into the apartment.

Evalynn arrived about a month later, right after her mom was sent to prison on multiple drug and fraud charges. The state had approached Ellen about taking in a second child because she and Sophie were so close in age. It was supposed to be a short-term deal, six months at most, but Evalynn’s mother kept running into problems, and eventually it became a permanent situation. Since then, the black woman, white girl, and half-white Latina had been, in principle, a family.

“Sophie?”

The question from the other side of the table drew Sophie back to the present. She tilted her head and tried to smile. “Huh?”

Ellen smirked nervously. “You seem troubled, Sweets. Was there something you wanted to talk about?”

Sophie nodded, but didn’t say anything further.

Ellen shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “You found out, didn’t you?”

Evalynn and Sophie responded in unison. “Found out what?”

“That I called Channel Two about the want ad?”

“You!” exclaimed Sophie. “Why on earth would you do that?”

“Because,” she said carefully, “I wanted you to have that date with Garrett, Sweets. Whatever else happens, I think you need to hear what he has to say. He wouldn’t just show up after a year, unless it was important. You know me—I’m nosy. I want to know what he has to say as much as anyone, so I went to the news hoping to help the process along. But heavens, I couldn’t have imagined the kind of response it’s received.” She hesitated. “Is that why you came?”

Sophie shook her head emphatically.

Ellen looked puzzled. “What then? You can tell me anything, Sophie. You know that, right?” She redirected her focus to Evalynn. “Is it serious? Does it involve both of you?”

“Not me,” Evalynn responded. “I’m just the designated driver.” She turned to Sophie. “You need to show her, Soph.”

Nodding again, Sophie unzipped her purse and pulled out the envelope from Bellevue. “Ellen,” she started, sliding the envelope across the table. “Do you recognize this address?”

Ellen squinted at the print. “Downtown Tacoma. Your PO box, right?”

“No, the return address. Who lives in Bellevue, Ellen?” Sophie was curter than she wanted to be with the woman who had done so much for her over the years, but she couldn’t help it.

A look of confusion settled in Ellen’s features. “Bellevue? I don’t know anyone in Bellevue. Why? What is this, Sophie?”

“Open it up.”

Ellen slid two fingers into the already-torn envelope and let the small paper fall out. It landed upside down, such that the handwritten words were facing up. “What the—?” she said, as she read the name and date. There was no questioning that she knew what day that was. A lightbulb seemed to flip on in her mind, like she’d just figured out what she was holding. She turned the paper over quickly and gasped. “Sophie,” she said, looking a little ill. “I swear to you, I don’t know anything about this.”

Something inside Sophie broke loose. She pounded her fist on the table. “Then who? You were the only one, Ellen! The only one who knew about that fortune! Other than my parents, but they sure as hell didn’t send it to me!”

“I don’t… I mean… I’m just as surprised by this…” Ellen was caught off guard by Sophie’s outburst and was fumbling for the right thing to say.

“Who did you tell? Just one person, or were there more? Did you tell people about the ad as well?”

Ellen was deeply hurt by the accusation. Her eyes got moist, just like they had on the first night she’d found Sophie sitting along the side of the road. “Sophie, I’ve
never
mentioned that fortune to a single soul. I can’t begin to imagine how it ended up in your mail, let alone coming to the PO box, but I swear to you, I had nothing to do with it.”

A moment of silence gave Evalynn an opportunity to speak up. She wanted to turn the conversation around before Sophie said something she might regret later. “Thanks, Ellen. It’s good to hear it straight from you.”

Neither Sophie nor Ellen spoke.

“I know I’m the odd man out here,” Evalynn continued, “seeing as I didn’t find out about any of this until tonight, but I think we should—”

“You told her?” Ellen interrupted.

Sophie nodded. “I needed to tell someone. And I needed to find out if she’d already heard it from you.”

“Good. I’ve told you for years: the more you share your burdens, the lighter they become. But I
never
told anyone, Sophie. I promise you that.”

Evalynn spoke again. “I believe you, Ellen. Soph?”

Sophie’s eyes darted between Evalynn and Ellen. Then she whispered, “Me too.”

“Okay,” Evalynn continued, breathing a sigh of relief. “Now that that’s settled, I think the key is to figure out who sent it, and how they got it. Personally, I was kind of hoping that Ellen did have something to do with it. At least that would explain things. But now? It’s sort of spooky.”

Ellen picked up the envelope again. “I agree, Ev. And I think that’s something I can help with. Give me a few minutes to make some calls.” She stood up and left the kitchen.

“You okay?” Evalynn asked, once Ellen was out of the room.

“I’m fine,” she replied, chuckling sardonically. “I haven’t yelled at Ellen like that since she did a background check on Tom Potter before the homecoming dance our sophomore year.”