Sweetly (13 page)

“I’ll get them,” Ansel says quickly, and before we can stop him, he’s out the door. Sophia and I manage to wait until he’s out of earshot to giggle at each other over his enthusiasm to help her. I grab the box Sophia dropped and take a few others out of her hands.

I read a mailing label as we move to the kitchen. “From Brazil?”

Sophia grabs two pairs of scissors from a drawer, and we go to work opening the boxes. “Most of what I put in the truffles has to be ordered. You can’t find it in Live Oak.”

I tear open the box I was holding—Brazil nuts—and then unpack containers of anise, Madagascar vanilla, pear brandy from Oregon, chilies from Venezuela.

“I try to make more exotic things for the festival,” Sophia says with a shrug, opening a packet of huckleberries. “Everyone wants to get out of Live Oak… I think they like having things they can’t normally find here.”

“How…” I shake my head, then look at her. “How do you afford all this, Sophia? No offense,” I say, motioning toward a bottle of raspberry Chambord.

Sophia frowns. “I admit, I’m kind of draining my inheritance down to zero—I can’t believe how much I’ve burned through in three years. It’s just… it’s just money. There are things that are more important.” She shakes off the sadness I see beginning to creep over her.

“If it helps,” I say, “I’m pretty sure Ansel will work for free forever, if you want him to.”

Sophia laughs and shakes her head. “He asked if I’d go to a movie with him, earlier today. While you were gone.”

“There’s a movie theater in Live Oak?” I ask, surprised, thinking of the run-down drive-in.

“Sort of—there are three screens. And most of the seats are covered in duct tape. But it exists,” she says. “And there are a few in Lake City, anyhow.” She pauses, chews her lip. “Is it okay with you still? That I go out with your brother?”

“Yes,” I answer, faster than I expected. “As long as you two remember I exist,” I tease.

Sophia laughs. “I promise. And thank god you said yes—I’ve been living in fear that I’m going to get so desperate, I start dating Live Oak guys again. That’s how it starts—you get a boyfriend here, then one of you can’t or won’t leave, so you get married, and then suddenly you’re fifty and you’ve barely left the state.”

“But… if you were that scared of getting stuck in Live Oak, why take over the shop? You could just close it, sell it, that kind of thing, right?”

“It’s what I’m good at. I need the chocolatier, and it needs me.”

“But it’s not what you want?”

Sophia shrugs. “I’ll never have what I really want, Gretchen. So I might as well have what I can do well.” She says it with a sense of finality, but I’m too curious to stop there.

“What do you mean?”

“Hmm?” Sophia says, looking up at me.

“You can’t have what you really want?”

Sophia looks at me a long time, and I can almost see her deliberating between giving me a carefree, fake answer and the real one. “I want things back the way they were before my dad died, I guess. Back to when things were easier.”

My heart pangs and I feel guilty for my question. Of course, I know exactly how she feels. I want my dad back too. I want it back to the way it was not only before he died, but before Mom died, before my sister was taken. When everything was simple and beautiful.

Or at least, that’s what I used to want. But I can’t go back to that day in the trees; I can’t go back in time and hold on to my sister’s hand tighter, I now realize. And so I want to fast-forward. To a future where I know how to shoot, how to kill them. How to keep myself and other girls from vanishing.

What would Sophia fast-forward to?

I change the subject, ripping open a package loudly to break the heavy silence in the room. “Did you ever date Live Oak guys then? When you were younger?”

Sophia shrugs, and the happy version of her pops back into place. “A few, I guess. Most of them were actually Lake City boys, though. I’ve mostly lost track of them.”

I pause, but I have to ask. “Did you ever date a guy named Samuel? Samuel Reynolds?” Maybe that’s why he hates her so much—she broke his heart.

Sophia’s eyes rocket to mine fast, so fast that I momentarily think she’s going to yell at me. Instead, she shakes her head rapidly. “No, not at all. Why do you ask?”

“Someone at the grocery store mentioned him,” I say, trying to be casual enough that Sophia will relax. Her face softens a little, but the tension remains.

“Samuel Reynolds isn’t from Live Oak—he showed up a few years ago and started dating this girl. She left him after my festival. He’s one of the people who thinks it’s my fault—though I guess he isn’t exactly on the side of those old ladies in town either. He kind of has a reputation for being the town lunatic.”

“Lunatic? Why?” I’m unable to entirely process the idea of Samuel Reynolds in love—that doesn’t exactly seem like an emotion he frequents.

Sophia shrugs, but her voice sounds odd—nervous, almost? No, that’s not it. Hesitant? “After his girlfriend left him, he stumbled into a bar drunk, started talking crazy. I don’t know. I tried to stay out of it.”

“What was her name?” I ask, crushing an empty box with my foot.

“Layla,” Sophia answers with a shrug.

Layla.

Layla. Emily. Whitney. Jillian. Danielle. Allie. Rachel. Taylor. Layla was the girl with the dark hair and the Spanish eyes. Chipped nail polish. Last seen on Main Street.

I swallow. No wonder he’s angry at the world. He knows what really happened to the girl he loved. I can feel my face paling and am immensely grateful when the mail truck pulls up and interrupts the concerned expression on Sophia’s face.

“Oh, yay, mail time!” Sophia says excitedly. Luxe bounds out the back screen door while Sophia rubs her hands on her apron and springs into the storefront. She grabs a bag of milk chocolate mouse-shaped truffles as she cuts through the shop and onto the porch.

I can hear only her half of the conversation with the mailman: “For Jenny! I know—she said she loved the kitty-shaped ones so I thought I’d give these a go with her. Oh, yes! Thanks, Paul. Have a good afternoon!”

Sophia walks back in, flipping through the mail in her hands. I lean against the glass cases and take a long drink of lemonade. “How many?” I ask.

Sophia blushes. “Three. Just three…” She sticks them up on the RSVP board beside the others. Sophia gazes at them. She runs her hand across them and I see a flicker of unhappiness cross her face before she steps away. Yet another secret Sophia keeps that I still don’t understand.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

W
hen I come downstairs the next morning, Sophia and Ansel are bowed over the sink. The water is on full blast.

“Why didn’t you take it off?” she scolds him.

“Because I never take it off! And didn’t think I’d need to—you’re going to rip the skin off my knuckle if you keep doing that. Twist it or something.”

“I can’t twist it—your finger is too fat.” Sophia laughs.

“And who’s the one handing me candy all the time—”

“What’s going on?” I interrupt. Sophia and Ansel turn to me; the front of her apron is soaked. The scent of lemon dish soap drifts to my nose.

“My class ring,” Ansel says, nodding to his finger. “It’s stuck.” Sophia has one hand wrapped firmly around my brother’s wrist and tugs on the enormous ring with the other.

“Maybe lay off the chocolate-covered potato chips,” I tease him, trying to ignore the fact that he looks a little less than pleased that I interrupted them. I pour myself a cup of coffee as Sophia and Ansel continue to wrestle. Finally, with a yelp from my brother and a victorious cry from Sophia, the ring slides off.

Ansel rubs his swollen finger while Sophia cuts off the water, then turns to me. “I made eggs!” she proclaims, pointing to a frying pan of scrambled eggs that look overcooked. I raise my eyebrows. “Don’t judge me.” She pouts. “Candy is different from real food.”

“So if you could douse eggs in chocolate, you’d be golden?”

“Probably so. We’re going to a movie today, to a Lake City theater. Want to come? Tuesday matinees are cheap!”

She seems genuine. I think she really wouldn’t mind if I went with them and crashed their date. But I don’t even have to look at my brother’s eyes to know he’ll do anything for me to say no, to guarantee him alone time with Sophia.

“I’ll stay here,” I say with a shrug. “Driving from Washington to South Carolina was enough of a road trip to keep me away from long car rides for a few years.”

“Okay, but I was thinking that I could teach you to make that Coca-Cola gingerbread later tonight? Or tomorrow, maybe?” Sophia says.

“I’d like that,” I say, and she grins.

“It’s a secret family recipe. Seriously secret. People used to come from Lake City to buy it from my grandmother—I think it has some sort of ‘come and get me’ magic power. You have to promise you won’t let anyone in Live Oak know I shared it.”

“Then why share it with me?” I ask. “And how much do you think they’d pay for it?”

She laughs. “A lot, probably. I don’t know—I don’t have any other family in Live Oak. You’re all I’ve got,” she teases, poking me in the ribs. It’s such a quick phrase—it bounces from her lips as though it’s nothing—but I smile. We are family now, I suppose, in the oddest way. Sophia is like my sister.

Well. My
other
sister.

A few hours later I watch Ansel and Sophia drive away; Luxe chases their car down the drive. I lock the door behind them and convince myself to read a few pages of one of Sophia’s books while waiting for two o’clock to roll around for lesson number two. My second and last lesson. I haven’t learned much, but I guess it’s better than nothing.

Not even
Little Women
can keep me engaged enough to ignore my anxiety for the upcoming lesson. I look at the time. I’ll walk slowly—I have to get out, have to move; the excitement is too overwhelming for me to sit still. I tie my hair up, lock Luxe inside the house, and trot down the front steps. My mind races through everything I learned yesterday.

As I get close to the field, I’m surprised to see Samuel is already there; I’m sure I’m early. I wave slightly as I approach, but he hardly acknowledges it and begins speaking as soon as I’m within talking distance.

“We’ll do the same thing as yesterday,” Samuel says without looking up. “Only this time, I won’t tell you what to do.”

“I can handle that,” I say, hoping to sound more confident than I feel.

Samuel hands me a rifle, and I go through a mental checklist, flip the safety on, and begin dropping rounds into it. Samuel watches me carefully—he doesn’t seem quite as imposing today. Something about the light makes the shadows under his eyes disappear. I realize that when you’re a part of the task at hand instead of getting in his way, he doesn’t seem nearly as irritated with you. I close the chamber and look up at him for approval.

Samuel nods. “So,” he says, waving at the rifle, “do you actually have a gun?”

“Well… no,” I say. “Not exactly. But… I thought I could get one eventually. When I have money—I don’t have any at the moment. And if not, there’s one over the mantel at Sophia’s. It was her dad’s, so I don’t think I could really practice with it, but… it’s there.”

“Better than nothing,” Samuel says, though he looks annoyed that I didn’t mention this before. He pauses. “Then again, they don’t go into houses. Not here, anyway—unless you count Sophia’s father.”

“You think werewolves got him?” I hadn’t questioned the story about the wild dogs and now feel stupid for not making the connection.

Samuel shrugs. “I’m not sure what to think. It doesn’t make sense that they would go into Sophia’s house, kill a man, and never come back. I can’t explain it. I think it really might have just been a freak accident.”

I bite my lip, aim, and fire. “Why come here, then? If they aren’t going to attack people unless they tromp through the woods looking for them?”

Samuel stares at the target ahead as though he’s reading off cue cards. “I have a theory.”

He pauses until I put a hand on my hip.

“I think they wait. Until after Sophia’s chocolate festival. Girls go and get the idea to leave town—I don’t know if they get it on their own, or if those people in town are right and she convinces them—but either way, they sneak off in the night after the festival and in the nights following… and the wolves pick them off as they leave town, one by one.”

It’s suddenly very quiet, as if everything has stilled for my curiosity, my pity. I lower the gun to look at Samuel. “So you think that’s what happened to Layla? She was last seen on Main Street—she was leaving town, and they…”

Samuel’s face darkens and the world’s noises pick back up, flocks of crows and grasshoppers screeching in discord. “Who told you about Layla?” he demands, with the same forceful tone he used with me the first time we met.

I swallow. “Sophia—”

“You told Kelly about us?” he snaps.

“Calm down!” I answer defensively. “I didn’t. I just thought maybe you two had dated and had a bad breakup or something, so I mentioned your name. She said you blame her for Layla and went into some bar drunk…” I drift off, unsure what kind of answers I want from him.