A few minutes later, I have my answers.
Sofia lives in a one-bedroom apartment in Hoboken, maybe a forty-five minute train ride from here. Two years ago, she took over ownership of A-1 Investigations, a small PI firm in Jersey City, and has been running it all on her own since then. She’s single, never married, and according to the rental documents from the leasing office, she doesn’t have any pets.
A little more searching tells me her mom lived in Queens up until five years ago, when she passed away unexpectedly from a massive aneurysm. Now Sofia’s closest family is her aunt, who lives all the way across the country in Arizona.
Is she all alone, then?
Does she have any friends to come stay with her in the hospital?
Or is she lying awake in her darkened hospital room, jolting at unfamiliar noises and imagining monsters emerging from shadows?
I close the laptop harder than I intended to and stand back up.
I shouldn’t care. But shit, I do.
I don’t like the idea of her alone and scared.
I don’t like knowing that the men who hurt her are still out there.
I don’t like the feelings that seeing her again roiled up inside me.
Crossing the room to the nightstand, I snatch my phone from the charger. After a quick search, I locate the number for Sofia’s floor at the hospital and call it.
The woman who answers sounds like the same one I told about Sofia needing more pain medication. And when I tell her that I was just there visiting Sofia, not an hour before, she replies cheerfully, “Oh, yes. I remember you. Did you need something?”
“I was wondering if anyone else came to visit Sofia,” I say. “Or if the police sent anyone to stay with her.”
There’s a brief pause. “No visitors aside from you. And no police.” Then another pause. “Do you think it might be dangerous, having her here?”
Dangerous to the nurse? Probably not. But to Sofia? Possibly.
“I’m sure it’s fine,” I lie. “I was just wondering.”
“Well, she seems okay,” the nurse says. “I can’t give out medical information, obviously, but I can tell you I just checked on her. She’s finally sleeping, poor thing.”
“Poor thing?”
“Well, after everything that happened to her, of course. And I think she was upset when you left.”
My hand tightens on the phone. “Upset?”
“Yeah.” Sympathy softens her voice. “She was crying after you left.” For a moment, silence hangs. “Shoot. Can you forget I said that?”
My molars flare with pain. “Yes,” I reply through a gritted jaw. “Absolutely.”
But I can’t forget about it.
Sofia wascrying?
She never used to cry.
She worried it would make her look weak. That it would make her overworked mom worry. She insisted that if she wanted to be a successful FBI agent, which was her dream career, she needed to be able to hide her emotions, so she wouldn’t get upset by some of the terrible crimes she’d inevitably see.
Why was Sofia crying? Because she was in pain? Or because of me?
“How late are your visiting hours?” I ask.
“You can come any time,” the nurse replies. “The hospital shifted over to twenty-four-hour availability for visitors recently. You’ll have to be extra quiet, given how late it is, but she’s still alone in her room, so that’ll help.”
