Chapter 14 - SOPHIE COMES BACK TO CEDAR RIDGE
Sophie returned to the lodge three weeks later.
Not permanently.
For one Saturday.
Dana Wells drove her.
Richard did not send an SUV.
Sophie noticed.
“Good.”
He pretended not to know what she meant.
Noah ran toward her.
Then stopped halfway.
“Can I hug you?”
Sophie smiled.
“Yes.”
He nearly knocked her over.
Mark and Claudia arrived an hour later for a supervised family session.
No photographers.
No foundation directors.
No birthday guests.
Just people in a lodge that suddenly felt too large.
Mark looked thinner.
Claudia had stopped wearing jewelry to every difficult conversation as though clothing could make her seem less wealthy.
It did not matter.
The counselor sat with them.
Mark apologized to Sophie for the mudroom.
Not for “everything.”
Specific.
“I held the door when you wanted out.”
“Yes.”
“I told myself I was keeping you from running away.”
“You were.”
Sophie looked at him.
“And I was still scared.”
Mark nodded.
“Yes.”
Claudia apologized for using shame as discipline.
Sophie said:
“You still do.”
Claudia started to defend herself.
Then stopped.
“Probably.”
Better.
Richard's turn was worse.
He looked at Sophie.
“When you were eight, your father wanted to bring you home from Cedar Brook and I told him not to.”
She stared.
“What?”
Mark looked at the floor.
Richard continued.
“I thought I was supporting your parents.”
“You kept me there?”
“I influenced the decision.”
Sophie turned toward Mark.
“You never told me.”
Mark said:
“I didn't want you to hate him.”
Richard almost laughed at the family consistency.
Sophie looked back at her grandfather.
“I kind of do right now.”
“You can.”
No defense.
The session did not end in hugging.
Good.
Afterward Noah took Sophie into Richard's workshop.
Supervised.
He showed her the birthday airplane.
She turned it over.
“You used Grandma's pattern.”
“Yeah.”
Then Richard brought out the old plane from Elaine's chest.
Sophie stared.
“That's weird.”
“What?”
“The same nose.”
Richard nodded.
“Your father made it.”
Sophie looked at Mark.
Mark frowned.
Then took the old plane.
Turned it over.
His expression changed.
“No.”
Richard looked at him.
“What?”
“This isn't mine.”
Silence.
Richard stepped closer.
“You said you made it.”
“I made one like it.”
Mark ran a thumb under the left wing.
“My plane had my initials burned underneath.”
Nothing.
He turned the old toy again.
A small piece of felt had been glued beneath the fuselage decades earlier.
Loose now.
Mark peeled one corner.
Richard almost stopped him.
Then saw letters beneath it.
Carved faintly into the wood.
S.H.
Everyone looked toward the old photograph.
Richard and Samuel.
Sophie whispered:
“Samuel.”
Richard stared at the plane.
Elaine had placed it beside Mark's file.
Everyone assumed it belonged to Mark because the design matched his.
What if it had been in the lodge long before Mark was born?
What if Mark's childhood plane had been copied from this one?
Richard's memory shifted.
His father in the workshop.
A pattern hanging on a nail.
Richard teaching Mark.
Not inventing anything.
Repeating.
Again.
Grace asked:
“Did your father teach you the pattern?”
Richard said:
“I think so.”
Then Noah picked up the old airplane carefully.
“There’s something inside.”
The adults looked at him.
“What?”
“It rattles.”
Richard took it.
Shook once.
May you like
A tiny sound came from inside the wooden body.
Something had been sealed inside Samuel's airplane for nearly sixty years.
