“You okay?” Sophie asks and gently places a mud-splattered hand on my shoulder.
I change tack, shove the confused thoughts away. “I’m good.” My voice squeaks with the lie.
Joey’s frown deepens, and Sophie looks at me quizzically.
But Elena squawks. “Clearly.” She gives me an ironic thumbs-up, but she doesn’t ask what’s wrong. None of them do. They think I will tell them what’s wrong when I’m ready to. They trust me enough to do that.
But, for the first time, I’m not sure they should.
We resume our positions, and I try to forget about my dad, about how I’m feeling. I smile as genuinely as I can, and they seem relieved. We refocus.
Sophie starts the illusion spell, and I surrender to the magic as it fills me. This time it seems to be working. It feels familiar, like liquid sunlight tumbling through my veins. It’s hot and bright and fast. And then I’m a tiny cup under a gushing tap. The magic spills over, making me open my eyes. We all do. Sophie drops to her knees, and we lean in. This is the part when we can see the spell in action, and, despite it all, it’s still amazing.
The book opens on its own, and a page that was blank before suddenly fills and fills with words. This is how the magic always works. Our presence in this aspen grove turns on the tap, then we concentrate on the spell, and the pages of the blank book begin to fill. We read from the page to set the spell in motion. Once it’s done, the words disappear again.
Before us, crimson letters creep across the page, as if written by a pen dipped in blood by some invisible hand. We’re mesmerized.
Somewhere close by, there is a sudden revving sound that makes us all jump. It sounds like a dirt bike.
I whip my face around, jaw clenched in fear. The bike sounds far too close. Joey and Elena and Sophie have heard it too. For a second, it seems like it’s coming toward us, but then the sound stops abruptly. We wait for it to come back, but nothing happens. The aspen trees are silent, slim, and watchful. Tender young saplings crowd the space at their feet. All is quiet.
Sophie takes a deep breath, realigning our attention back to the book. “Right,” she says. “Here we go,” and she starts to read.
10Sophie
Sophie didn’t tell her dad she was coming.
It’s not that she was afraid to say anything; it was more that she wasn’t sure what she could say.“I’m coming home because a friend needs me, even though I haven’t been to see you in fifteen years. Oh, and I’m not bringing your granddaughter.”
Just because Sophie hasn’t been to Whisper Ridge doesn’t mean her dad hasn’t been to see his grandbaby as often as possible. Otto Stringer has been to Denver plenty. He’s made the four-hour drive five times in the last year alone, including once during a pretty treacherous snowstorm. It warms Sophie’s heart to know that he loves her family so much he’s willing to overlook her lack of effort. She hasn’t stepped foot in this town since she was a teenager, and he’s never once made her feel bad about it. Not on purpose anyway.
But here she is, stepping foot. She wonders how this is going to go, being inside her childhood home. She puts her bag down and knocks.
While she waits for him to answer, she rocks back and forth between her sneakered feet, and her thoughts stray to Joey again. She’s worriedabout her. Really worried. That murder wall, with all the pictures and the strings. And her claim about the whispering trees…
Joey texted the group chat a few minutes after she left the bar, letting both Sophie and Elena know she was planning to go to Barbara’s tomorrow morning to talk to her about Tom. Sophie replied as soon as she was off the phone with her family. Regardless of what she believes is true, she doesn’t think Joey should be alone. It’s loneliness, she realizes, that probably dragged Joey into this delusional pseudo-investigation in the first place.
And then, before she has another thought, she sees her dad, on the other side of the open door, standing in his socks and sweatpants. He blinks when he sees her.
“Hi,” she says and gives him a wave.
He pretends to stagger backward, steadying himself on the hall table. Then he says, deadpan, “No thanks, we don’t want any,” and closes the door.
Sophie shakes her head and waits. In less than three seconds, he flings open the door again with the biggest grin she’s ever seen. Reflexive tears spring to her eyes. “You’re here,” he says, but she can’t reply because he pulls her in for a lung-crushing hug.
***
“Frozen pizza or grilled cheese?” he calls from the kitchen.
Sophie’s in her childhood bedroom. It’s exactly the same. Not exactly the same, actually, because it’s clean, which was never the case when she lived here. But her bed is still covered in the lavender floral bedspread she remembers. The walls are still the same buttery yellow, but they look fresh. She wonders if he repainted it recently.
Three different collages—all tacked with pictures of Sophie, Quinn, Joey, and Elena—line the far wall next to the window. One for each year of high school. There isn’t one for senior year, of course. After whathappened to Quinn, Sophie did what she had to do to graduate early. She was gone, working at a museum in Denver to pay her rent, by New Year’s Eve. Standing here, she knows what drove her away, but what kept her away—that isn’t possible to capture in a collage.
“Never mind,” her dad calls out again. “Grilled cheese it is. This pizza expired in 2007.”
Sophie drops her bag to the floor and takes out her phone. When Sophie told Talia she was going to Whisper Ridge, she asked if it was because of her dad, and Sophie, for some reason, didn’t say no. Seeing Quinn’s name in Joey’s message unnerved her. She hadn’t seen or heard it in so long, and somehow, she could sense that this was Joey’s version of a cry for help. She could have told Talia this, of course, because Talia was her wife. She knew about Quinn’s tragic death. But Sophie had never told her about the magic. She let Talia think it was an issue with her dad so she didn’t have to explain, surprised at how excited she was just at the thought of speaking about it again with Joey and Elena.
She sends a quick check-in text. It’s the dinner-bath-bedtime hour, so Sophie’s not expecting a response, but she stares at the phone anyway, hoping to see Leah in her little cat jammies. She realizes she forgot to tell Talia about the chicken defrosting in the fridge and the carrots she bought yesterday that she meant to make for dinner today, and a moment of panic seizes her. She hopes Talia remembers to help Leah brush her teethafterher last glass of milk, and—oh my god—she left Teddy in the dryer this morning.
