Sweet Misfortune: A Novel (10 page)

Chapter 14

Sharing too much of yourself with loved ones
can have dire consequences.

N
INETEEN DAYS BEFORE THE WEDDING, GARRETT GOT A
call late at night from the disc jockey he’d hired to do the music at the wedding reception. The man was calling to inform him that, due to “a whole lot o’ messed-up crap,” he wouldn’t be able to make the wedding. Moreover, DJ Danny-B was going out of business and would be unable to refund the deposit for his services.

“You’re joking, right?” Garrett said into the phone, his voice cracking nervously. “Tell me you’re joking—please.”

“Ummm…”

“Wait! Before you say anything else, I want you to understand that the only thing I had to do for this wedding all on my own was find someone to do the music, which I did. I put my faith and trust in
you
, DJ Danny, so please… tell me you’re joking.”

“Sorry, boss man. No jokes tonight.”

The wedding preparations had worn both Garrett and Sophie thin; emotionally he was too spent right then to deal with this kind of a snafu. He groaned audibly, and then started yelling. “You’re telling me I’ve got to find a new DJ for a wedding that’s less than three weeks away?
Plus
I’m out five hundred bucks? That’s highway robbery!”

“I feel ya,” said DJ Danny unremorsefully. “But hey, if it’s any consolation, the dude having a bar mitzvah the day after your wedding is out nearly a grand. Later, bro.”

The phone went dead.

The next day, Sophie and Garrett spent five hours flipping through the yellow pages and searching the Internet for someone to replace Danny-B. It wasn’t easy finding a qualified DJ who wasn’t already booked, and when they did finally stumble across one who was available, his fees were nearly double the standard going rate.

To Garrett, DJ Diddy Dan’s voice sounded an awful lot like Danny-B on the phone. “Supply and demand, bro. Take it or leave it.”

He took it but wasn’t happy about it. Garrett wondered if this was some sort of a racket by DJ Danny to increase revenues—take the deposit money and run, then jack up the price when they find you under a different name. Sophie calmly reminded him that there are much worse things that can go wrong with a wedding—
like the bride not showing up
, she teased—so he let it go.

After closing the deal with the DJ and taking care of a few other odds and ends, they drove up to 13 Coins, a restaurant in Seattle known for its live jazz and blues music. It was the place Sophie had chosen for the rehearsal dinner, on account of its Room Thirteen, a large hall that offered private dining in a space perfectly suited for the number of guests that were invited, and with ambience to boot. The manager of 13 Coins wanted them to come in once more to confirm the entrée selections and taste the planned dessert offerings.

By the time they were finished sampling imported custards and fresh tarts, the nearly-weds were ready for something slightly more filling. Garrett punched a series of buttons on his GPS to find a listing of different cuisines to choose from in the area. “What are you in the mood for, Soph?”

“You decide. I’m up for anything.”

“You sure?”

She put her hand on his leg, squeezing just above the knee. “Positive. Surprise me.” She paused and smiled. “Just no blindfolds.”

“You got it.” He pushed a couple more buttons, found a restaurant, and started driving.

The female voice gave periodic instructions, easily navigating the one-way roads, lane changes, and a series of unintuitive turns to a Japanese restaurant exactly six-point-three miles away.

“I know this place,” whispered Sophie, half to herself, as she climbed out of the car.

“Oh yeah? Have you been here before?”

She bit her lip nervously as memories flooded her mind. “A long time ago,” she said, her voice trailing off.

The restaurant was hibachi-style, with several highly skilled chefs who cooked the meals on the table right in front of the customers. Garrett thought it would be fun to try, but he could tell by Sophie’s demeanor that something wasn’t right.

After the hostess sat them at a table with a group of four other people, he quietly asked her what was wrong.

“This is the place,” she confided, looking around at the walls and ceiling. “It hasn’t changed a bit.”

“What place?”

Picking up her chopsticks, Sophie tugged until they pulled apart. “It’s where my parents took me for my ninth birthday. We had our last meal together here.” She turned and pointed to another large table where a chef was busy dousing a pile of chicken with teriyaki sauce. “At that table there.”

Garrett rubbed her back lightly. “You want to go somewhere else?”

She let herself smile. “You’re sweet. No, I’m fine,” she said, looking around the room again. “Actually, it feels kind of good coming here. Maybe I shouldn’t have avoided it for so long.”

Their chef came a few minutes later and began his culinary show. It was entertaining, but the food wasn’t as good as Sophie had remembered. “Maybe they’re under new management,” she told Garrett. “After all, it’s been almost twenty years.”

At the end of the meal, the hostess returned with a fortune cookie for everyone at the table. She started with the other four guests, going one by one as they chose a cookie from a stainless bowl. “I thought fortune cookies were Chinese,” remarked Garrett, as he took the final cookie.

The hostess bowed her head politely. “
Asian
fortune cookie,” she said in a thick Japanese accent. “China like cookie… Japan like fortune.”

Garrett laughed. “I see. I’ll have to remember that. And here I always thought they were just a Chinese thing.”

The hostess snickered, and then leaned closer and spoke again, only without any accent at all. “Actually,” she said, whispering, so as not to blow her cover with the other guests, “fortune cookies were invented by American immigrants in the early nineteen hundreds. They started off as biblical passages rather than fortunes, then after World War Two they morphed into a marketing tool by US restaurant owners. China and Japan had nothing to do with them.”

“Seriously?” Sophie asked, intrigued by the history lesson.

“I may be faking the accent,” the woman whispered with a wink, “but I don’t fake the facts.” Then she turned on the faux accent again and spoke more loudly so everyone could hear. “Asia share good fortune with you! Come again!” She bowed dramatically, and then left to tend another table.

Garrett was still laughing and imitating the hostess when they got back into his car. Sophie was more contemplative.

“Before we go home,” she said, “do you mind if we head up this street a little ways?”

“Sure. What’s up?”

She raised her eyebrows nervously. “Just something I want to show you.”

Several blocks farther up the road, Sophie directed him to turn left onto a busy, four-lane arterial street, which they continued on for another mile. She stiffened as they passed her mother’s favorite chocolate shop, the one she’d been so adamant about stopping at on her ninth birthday. Sophie clenched her teeth.
Nineteen years
, she thought,
and I still haven’t gone in there to buy candy
.

A hundred yards beyond the candy shop she told Garrett to slow down and get into the far right lane. She saw the fire hydrant that she’d sat next to in the rain; it was approaching quickly along the sidewalk.

“Slow down!” she instructed. “We’re here.”

“Soph, if I go any slower I’ll cause an accident. Where is
here
?”

She hesitated before answering, keeping her gaze on the yellow hydrant. “The accident.”

There was no place to pull over, but Garrett tapped his brakes anyway and slowed to a crawl. Vehicles in the other lane continued to fly past on the left, while a few of the cars stuck behind him began honking. He turned on his hazard lights and waved them around as they continued inching forward.

“Right here?” he asked. Not only was he genuinely interested, Sophie could tell that he appreciated her opening up to him about it.

“I sat right here next to the fire hydrant for quite a while, just watching everything happen around me. The row of ambulances was down there, and our car was in the middle of the road, over there,” she said, pointing. “I remember there was a UPS truck right up here, and the driver was just ahead of it on the ground.” She kept talking as they moved slowly up the block. Garrett remained silent as she shared all the details she could remember—the number of fire trucks and ambulances, the pattern of flares along the road, how far the traffic was backed up, the police officers waving cars around the pileup.

When she stopped talking, Garrett was still quietly looking out at the road. “Garrett?” He turned to look at her. “What are you thinking?”

“Just… wow,” he said softly. “That must have really been something.” He kept looking at her. “I’m sorry you had to go through that, Sophie.”

She smiled softly and touched his arm. “Let’s go home.”

Chapter 15

Your doubts about the future are easily explained:
you’re paranoid.

Y
OU ALL RIGHT
?”
SOPHIE ASKED GARRETT AFTER KISSING
him good night. “You haven’t been very talkative since we left the restaurant.”

“Just tired, I suppose.”

Sophie thought she saw a hint of something else flash across his face. “You sure? You’re not having doubts, are you?”

He smiled faintly and wrapped his arms around her in a tight embrace. “No. It’s just—seeing where your parents died. It’s very sobering. Before tonight you hadn’t talked much about it, and I guess seeing where it happened helped me visualize what it must have been like for you, and that touched a nerve. Makes me sad that you’ve carried those memories with you all these years.”

Sophie kept him in the embrace, afraid that if she pulled back right then he might see in her eyes that there were worse things about the accident that she’d carried with her, which she hadn’t shared with him. “Thank you,” she whispered.

When they let go of each other, Garrett gave Sophie another little kiss. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Soph,” he said, and then went and got in his car.

W
HILE DRIVING TO
his own house in Tacoma, so many thoughts were running through Garrett’s mind that he missed his exit. After passing it, he told himself he could just as easily take the next exit a mile farther, but he drove past that one, too. After all the Tacoma exits were distant blurs in his rearview mirror he stopped kidding himself.

Garrett wasn’t going home.
Not yet.

E
LLEN WAS ALREADY
drifting off to sleep when she heard the doorbell ring. She sat straight up in bed and listened. The three-chime ringer sounded again from the hallway a few seconds later. Jumping out of bed, she scrambled to throw on a robe, then poked her head into the hallway and yelled, “Knock once if friend, twice if foe.”

There was no knock in response, only the chimes again from the doorbell. Ellen grabbed her holster and gun from her nightstand and carried it with her to the door, just in case.

“Hello?” she asked cautiously before unlocking anything. “Who’s there?”

“It’s Garrett Black,” came the reply. “I’m sorry to bother you at this hour, Ellen, but I need to talk.”

Garrett was the last person Ellen expected to show up late at night uninvited. The fact that it was less than two weeks from his wedding and that he sounded worried didn’t give her a good feeling. She quickly unbolted the door and let him in.

“What’s going on, Garrett?” she asked after she’d relocked the door. His face looked even more worried than his voice had sounded. “Is everything okay?”

“It’s fine,” he said, but his fragile smile said otherwise. “I really am sorry to bother you but… Sophie took me by the accident site tonight—the place where her parents died.”

Ellen watched him briefly before speaking. “I see. I guess she must really love you as much as she says she does. She hardly talks about the accident, and has never—
ever
—taken anyone there. Not even Evalynn.”

“I know,” he said softly.

“So what’s wrong?”

“Even while we were there, Soph didn’t give me a lot of details, just a few mental images that she’s kept locked away. But I’d like to get a better sense of what she actually went through.” He paused momentarily. “I know it’s too hard for her to talk about, but I want to know more about it, so I can support her more, and share the emotional burden a little bit. Does that make sense?”

Ellen smiled. “It makes perfect sense,” she said. “And frankly, I’m relieved. It sounds like you care for her as much as she does for you.”

He nodded. “I do. Ellen, I know you were there that night. Can you share what you remember?”

“I can do better than that. If you promise not to tell anyone, I’ll let you see a copy of the police report from that night. I made a copy of it way back in the day. It’s got every detail imaginable.”

“Has Sophie read it?”

She shook her head. “I made a copy in case she ever came looking for details, but in all these years she’s never asked. She doesn’t even know I have it.” She motioned to the sofa. “Have a seat. It’ll take me a few minutes to find it.”

Garrett did as instructed, but after she left he got up to look at the pictures on the wall. He’d been to Ellen’s on several previous occasions but had never really had a chance to study them. Most were of Sophie and Evalynn growing up—school pictures, prom, graduation. But a small one, higher up on the wall, was of a young black couple holding hands. He recognized the woman as Ellen and guessed the man was her husband. Garrett knew that Ellen had been married, and that her husband had died, but that was all he’d been told.

While he was looking at it, Ellen came back in the room. “Found it,” she announced.

Garrett turned. He didn’t want to pry, but he knew she’d already seen him look at the picture. “Ellen, is this…?”

“My husband, Rick. Yes, that’s him.”

“He was a policeman too, right?”

She quietly nodded.

“Sophie said he was killed in the line of duty.”

Ellen moved her head again, only it wasn’t a nod. Nor was it a shake, but something in between the two. “That’s… about right.”

Garrett didn’t want to intrude on her past any more than he already had, so he didn’t say anything else. But Ellen could tell by his expression that he wanted to know more.

“He was off duty,” she continued. “I’ve never told the girls exactly how it happened, because I didn’t want them to worry about their own safety. Whenever they asked, I’d just say, ‘He was a brave man, and he died doing his job.’ ”

He gave her a questioning look. “Why wouldn’t they have felt safe?”

She exhaled. “Come have a seat.” When they were both sitting down she continued. “Has Sophie ever told you what I used to tell her about there being purpose in everything, even the bad things?”

“Yes, she’s mentioned it. Though to be honest, I don’t think she shares your view.”

“I know. Someday, I hope she will. Being a mother to Sophie and Evalynn has been such a blessing to me. But honestly, I’d have probably never known the joy of it, if I hadn’t lost Rick. Sophie was my silver lining.”

“Why is that?”

“It’s… complicated. Do you have time?”

He nodded.

“Okay. Well, I guess I’ll start with Rick. He and I met in the police academy, then we got hired on to the same precinct as rookies. We were both twenty-one at the time. We got married a year after we met, and then two years later, when we decided it was time to start a family…” She hesitated. “I found out that I couldn’t. Apparently I’m not plumbed correctly for bearing children. Anyway, it was a huge disappointment. We went to specialist after specialist but were finally told there was no chance. So we weighed our options. We knew adoption was one route, and we seriously considered it. But because of our jobs we also knew that good, safe foster homes were in high demand. After a lot of talking and praying about it, we really felt that we could offer the foster system a great place to bring kids that needed a little extra love. We were in the process of getting qualified when Rick died.”

Garrett looked at her curiously. “How does that relate to there being purpose in tragedy?”

Ellen’s eyes dropped to the ground. Then she raised them slowly back up to meet his. “Some people might chalk it up to random coincidence, but I see more than everyday chance in the fact that Sophie became an orphan on my first night back on the job after becoming a widow. I believe it was meant to be.”

He cleared his throat. “How so?”

Ellen grimaced. “Well I’d been on leave for two full months grieving, just trying to cope. It was hard losing him. I’d been working a double shift, covering for someone, so Rick had already left the precinct and gone home while I was still out on the beat. Near the end of my second shift I was listening to the radio chatter, and there was a call for all available units to an address in Seattle where an off-duty officer had been shot.” Ellen paused and stared at Garrett. “It was
my
address.”

Garrett gasped. “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry, Ellen.”

She smiled stoically. “I got there as fast as I could, but it didn’t matter. He was already dead. Turns out he’d arrested a gangbanger earlier that evening, one of a handful that had robbed a store. The gang’s sign was carved in our front door when I showed up. I guess one of the kids that got away at the store was waiting outside the police station when Rick left work, and followed him home. Shot him right in the doorway when he opened up, unarmed.”

That explains Ellen’s nervousness about answering the door,
Garrett thought. “Geez. I don’t know what to say. And I don’t know how you’re able to find a silver lining in that.”

She shrugged. “After the initial trauma of losing him, and after I’d found a new place to live, I decided I still wanted to go through with being a foster mom. Rick had only wanted to take in boys, and so that’s what we would have done if he hadn’t died. But during my time off from work I decided a girl might be a better fit for a single mom. With that thought in mind I went back to work, and that very night I met a little girl who needed a mom more than anyone. During the months following Sophie’s accident I kept making calls about her, letting the state know I was willing and able to care for her if the need should arise. Then one of her other foster situations fell apart when the husband died of a heart attack, and lo and behold, Social Service brought my silver lining right to my doorstep.” She paused, and Garrett thought her eyes were getting moist. “I lost Rick, but I gained Sophie, and later Evalynn. I know that may not seem like a silver lining to them, but it’s been everything to me.”

Garrett exhaled slowly, taking it all in. “How come you’ve never told them what happened to Rick?”

She sighed again. “Mostly, I didn’t want the girls to worry that someday a thug might show up at the door with a gun. But also, I was heartbroken over what those girls had to go through, and I didn’t feel like it was fair telling them that their greatest sorrows turned into my greatest joys. I feel guilty even thinking it, let alone telling them.”

Garrett nodded that he understood, but he didn’t say anything.

After a few moments of quiet, Ellen handed Garrett the police report. “Sorry, I’m talking your ear off. You still interested in this?”

In listening to Ellen’s tale, he’d almost forgotten about it. “Oh. Yes.” He flipped open the manila folder. It contained a ten-page report that included statements from eyewitnesses, details about the cars involved and the damage they’d sustained, names and ages of the people in each car, and an assessment of fault that said simply, “inclement weather, slippery roads, poor visibility.”

Running his fingers quickly from one paragraph to the next, Garrett skimmed through the first few pages in under a minute. Then he slowed down, giving his full attention to the remaining pages, reading each sentence very carefully. He felt his face going flush and hoped that Ellen didn’t notice. When he was done, he closed the folder and handed it back to her.

She tipped her head slightly. “You feel like you have a better sense of things now.”

He nodded. “Yes. Thanks. And thanks for sharing about your husband. Sophie really is lucky to have you. I hope someday she recognizes what a great thing it was that your paths crossed.” He stood up. “I better get going now so you can get some sleep.”

She walked him to the door. “Good night, Garrett.”

He turned and looked at her, and a strange sadness filled his face. “Good-bye, Ellen.”