“It’s too late, honey,” Sophia told Jack, smoothing the lock of dark hair curling down his forehead. She pursed her lips to bite back the tears that threatened.
Jack looked as beautiful as the day she first laid eyes on him now twenty years past. His gray eyes caught the morning light and set off a firework display of gold and steel and slate that helped her, for a moment, forget she had to leave him.
“No.” He shook his head and furrowed his brow. The fine wrinkles along his forehead and around his eyes did not leave when he straightened his face. Somewhere over the years, Sophia and Jack grew up. Whatever happened going forward, she had won the lottery when she met Jack Porter.
“Your mother said they’ve been snooping around. Margaret Bell hired a private detective, Jack. It’s only a matter of time before they find me. Maybe it’s time.”
“Time for what?”
“Time for me to face the past.”
“You were a child for Christ’s sakes and innocent!” he muttered.
She fingered the gold heart suspended on a chain around her neck. Her mother had given it to her for her thirteenth birthday. The night Sophia fled her childhood home, her mother had tucked a tiny rose petal inside the locket.
“My mother has money, Sophia. She plays the pauper, but we know that’s not true. I’ll steal it if I have to.”
“No.” Sophia shook her head and clutched Jack’s hand to her mouth. “Don’t ruin anything with your mother, Jack. We need her now. The kids need her. And someday when I’m out, I need to show my face around there. Even if I’d rather not walk the grounds at the Porter estate ever again.”
Jack smiled and lifted a brow. “Not even the cedar grove?”
She laughed and flicked his ear. He pretended to howl with pain and fell into her lap.
The cedar grove that lay at the far north end of the estate was the place that Sophia and Jack first made love. She was sixteen and Jack was eighteen. They crept across the dewy grass beneath an eclipsing moon. A wool blanket tucked under one arm and Sophia snuggled beneath the other, Jack had guided them through the dark trees into a small clearing. Drunk on apricot wine and unexplored desire, they touched each other carefully and then ravenously. After they made love, they had lay curled together and listened to the night telling its stories.
“Maybe the cedar grove,” she murmured, leaning down and kissing his temple.
July 1955
“I’m not sure about this, Jack.”
Sophia sat on the edge of their bed, her suitcase open beside her. She’d done as he asked and packed only the necessities and a handful of nostalgic items: pictures, jewelry, baby blankets for all three of her children
“I am,” Jack said kneeling before her and looking earnestly into her face. “Soph, I will not let you go. You’re innocent and I won’t lose you to a witch hunt. What do we have here, anyway? This will be a new start. How exciting! You’ve never even left Michigan, honey. There are mountains in Colorado. There’s a whole unexplored world just waiting for us.”
Sophia touched his cheek and smiled.
When Jack first suggested they fake her death and move away, Sophia laughed at the notion, but he was relentless. He became so fixed on the idea it took on a life and now she too couldn’t seem to turn away from it.
“What about your mother? She’s accepted us leaving?”
“It was her idea, Sophia. She’s going to help, said she might even move out to Colorado in a year or two. She dotes on Hattie; she’ll follow us.”
“Great,” Sophia said trying not to roll her eyes and wishing she shared Jack’s faith in his mother.
He smiled and shook his head.
“I get it. She’s difficult, but she’s volunteered to help. She’ll pick you up here in the morning and take you to my dad’s hunting cabin. It’s rustic, but you’ll only be there for a week and I’ve stocked it with food. There’s a well out back and an outhouse.”
“I remember, Jack. I’ve been there in case you’ve forgotten. Our third child was conceived there, after all.”
Jack grinned and brushed a hand through his hair, a move so reminiscent of the boy she fell in love with, she nearly pulled him on top of her. And then the weight of the moment returned, and her breath caught in her diaphragm.
“I’m worried about the kids,” Sophia murmured, touching the gold locket at her neck. “Why do we have to tell them I’ve died? It’s going to traumatize them.”
Jack sighed and sat on the bed next to her.
“They’ll learn the truth a few days after, and we need them to act the part. If they don’t seem sad it will look suspicious. And think how happy they’ll be when they find out you’re alive. Jude and Peter will love it, they’re always pulling pranks.”
“I’d hardly call this a prank.”
“It’s a bid for your freedom, Sophia. There’s no lie I won’t tell to protect you.”
Sophia looked at Jack for a long time, and then pulled her wedding ring from her finger. She stared at the diamond, an heirloom that had belonged to Andrew’s mother, Jack’s grandmother. It had not been passed to Ruth because she insisted on a modern ring when Andrew proposed, but Sophia loved the platinum ring with its small diamond set in a bough of intertwining vines. She put the ring into a little velvet pouch and slid it into the compartment within the suitcase.
“You don’t have to take that off,” Jack said, reaching for the bag.
“Just in case,” she said. “It’s distinctive. Better if I’m as plain as possible.”
“Five days,” Jack said, eyes glittering. “Five days until our new life.”
Chapter 12
September 1965
Hattie
“Okay, where’s the fire?” Jude asked, walking into Hattie’s apartment without knocking.
Hattie frowned at her older sister but said nothing. Fighting with Jude about guest etiquette was the last thing she felt like doing.
“I don’t think Mama died in 1955,” Hattie let the words out in a rush.
She watched for Jude’s reaction, but Jude merely continued into the apartment running her hands over furniture and inspecting pictures.
“Love what you’ve done with the place,” she joked, gesturing to a stack of unpacked boxes taking up most of the living room floor.
“Did you hear me?” Hattie asked, annoyed. She and Jude had never been close. The age gap combined with different personalities, world views, and perceptions of reality put them at odds from the beginning. Hattie tried over the years to connect with Jude, but Jude always pushed her away. “I’m not your mother,” she’d say.
“Oh, Hattie,” Jude murmured inspecting the scarred coffee table in Hattie’s living room with a grimace. “I hope you’re not listening to ghosts again.”
“I’m serious, Jude,” Hattie said, fighting her growing upset. Somehow Jude always reduced her to tears, but today she would not allow it. She squared off against her older sister. Hattie stood over five inches taller than Jude, but she was like a reed and Jude an oak tree. “Listen to me, damn it!”
Jude turned to her in surprise.
She started to say something, likely a jab about Hattie’s dirty mouth, and then stopped. She took a seat at Hattie’s little kitchen table and patted the chair next to her.
“Okay, I surrender,” she told her, smiling. “Tell me, little sister.”
Hattie walked to the bureau by her door and lifted the first newspaper from the stack. Already folded to the article about her mother, she dropped it on the table in front of Jude. She watched Jude glance at the picture and then lift it toward her face for a closer look. Her eyes scanned the article. She pursed her lips, frown deepening, and returned the paper to the table.