Sophie

I lean my cheek against my hand and drum my fingers on the table. My eyes scan the walls, a wry smile touching my lips at the sight of the picture frames. I’ve hung everything. Pictures from birthday parties, her first underwater photo, doodles she used to bring me before I took her in, everything. I'm glad I did it, even if they only make me cry now. Lying on the table in front of me is a small photo frame. The one from my nightstand. Her secondary* graduation photo. One of the few times I could convince her to dress up. Not that it mattered, she always looked pretty. I trace my finger along the outline of the photo. The two of us are in it. I’ve got my arm wrapped around her and her straightened hairs is beginning to fall into her face. She’s laughing. I can’t remember why, but she looks really happy. I'm glad she was, considering she didn’t want to go. The night before she’d spent hours crying. She’d hoped her mother would come, but of course; Roxanne had refused. I used to consider her my friend when we were young, but we had a falling out when she abandoned Katie. I hated her for doing it; she never deserved to be a mother. Especially not to a child so perfect. I sniff and rub at my nose.

A knock on the door startles me out of my thoughts.

“Sophie?” I hear Lewis call from the other side of the door. He knocks again. “Sophie, come on, open the door. Look, I know you're hurting. We all miss her too, but the park needs tending to. This was Katie’s home too; don’t let it fall into disrepair. Come out.” There’s a pause and I don’t bother to give him a response. The last thing I want to think about is work. Lewis and the others can manage just fine without me. “Sophie? I'm coming in alright?” I hear the lock click and mentally curse telling him where I hid the spare key. Lewis opens the door and pokes his head in, his shaggy blond hair is slick with sweat. He walks over and sits down in the chair beside me. “Are you okay?”

I shake my head and cover my mouth to stifle a sob. Lewis wraps his arm around me.

“Don’t cry. It’s going to be okay. I miss her too, Soph.”

“Please,” I whisper. “Just go away. Leave me be.”

Lewis shakes his head. “No, not until I see you eat something and then you need to get out of this apartment.

“Don’t defy me, I'm your boss,” I argue weakly.

Lewis chuckles. “Don’t play the boss card with me Sophie. What are you going to do, fire me? Go ahead. We’ve been friends since this place opened. I’m worried about you, I'm not leaving.”

I pick up the picture and hug it to my chest. “I really miss her,” I say softly. “I tried to set a second place at the dinner table last night, this morning I knocked on her door for five minutes telling her she was going to be late for school before I realized what I was doing.”

Lewis rubs my back. “I know. We all miss her too. She was a good kid.”

“She was perfect,” I state, staring at my hands. “Absolutely perfect. Why, out of all the people on this planet, why did it have to be her?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t. It shouldn’t have been her, but we can’t change the past. Come on,” he drags me to my feet. “Go get cleaned up and come back. It’s okay if you aren’t up for working, but you at least need to get outside and out of this apartment before you go crazy.”

I nod. “Okay.” I walk down the hall to the bathroom. “Lewis? Thanks.”

He nods and then makes a shooing motion. I close the door behind me and sigh. I shower and work through the tangles of my unkempt hair, before pulling it back. I hesitate at the door. I'm not ready to face the outside world yet. I gather my courage and leave the bathroom. Lewis is gone, but I know he’s likely waiting outside the door, so I slip on a pair of sandals and leave the apartment. Sure enough, Lewis is waiting for me out in the hall, his back is pressed up against the seashell wallpaper.

“Hey,” he greets. I offer him half a smile and take a deep breath.

“So, what did you need me for?” I ask.

“You’ve been inside for a week, I was concerned about you. That and you’ve got about a half-dozen reports to fill out,” he says. “But don’t worry about them right now. I’ve had Jackson forward temporary replies to everything; letting them know you’ve taken a short leave of absence. You can get to those later. I just thought you needed a walk in the fresh air and scorching sun,” he states.

“Thanks,” I reply. “About the reports. I appreciate it.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“How is everything else doing here? What about your work?”

“Fine, everything is running pretty smoothly. One of the sea otters took to being sick, but I got it all cleared up.”

I nod and pause at one of the tanks. I lean against the rail and watch the seals below. Boon, the largest male, has pulled himself up onto one of the small rock structures and is flopped, belly up, in the sun. Jared and Cory are swimming below. “I remember when she was little. She used to love to come down here with her father and help feed the otters and seals,” I can’t help but chuckle. “And she used to be terrified of the dolphins. Loved the sharks, but you couldn’t get her within ten feet of the dolphin tank for anything.”

“She outgrew that though.”

“Well, once she started living here and was around them more often, she got over her fear. I'm not even sure if she knew why she was scared of them.”

I take a deep breath. My heart is tearing in two now that I'm talking about her, but it also feels pretty good to be able to look back on all the old memories that didn’t seem so important before.

“Excuse me,” a voice startles me out of my daze. “Are you Miss Brooks?” I turn to face a woman. Black hair is pulled up in a bun and her brown eyes are focused on me.

“Yes,” I reply. “How did you get in here, the park is closed today.”

“Front gate, security let me in. We need to talk.”

“What about?”

“Katherine,” the woman replies. I feel my heart clench. “I work with the police force in charge of finding the driver.”

I shake my head. “I already told your people that I’m not interested in pressing charges. I just want to mourn Katie in peace, not get dragged into a lawsuit. She never would have wanted that.”

“I understand that,” the woman replies. “But we still need to talk. We found the guy and we found something else too, something you will be interested in.”

I sigh and turn to Lewis. “Can you give me a moment?”

He nods. “Sure, I'm supposed to be getting a shipment of vaccines for the otters today anyways, so I’ll just go do some prep work and get to stocking,” he says. I watch him walk off before I return my gaze to the woman in front of me.

“What do you need?” I ask, not in the mood for pleasantries.

The woman bends down and opens up the large black bag she had been carrying. “It turns out that the man who hit your daughter wasn’t drunk. He was a thief who robbed the mall down the street. He was trying to escape before the police showed up. We got a confession and the truth out of him. He hadn’t meant to hit her, but he was speeding and couldn’t stop in time. He did get out and try to see if she was alright. But when he found her already dead he panicked, tried to take her ID to give himself time to get away. He had grabbed this and I thought you might want it back.” She pulls out a worn, brown knapsack. Katie’s bag. “It seems fully intact. Her wallet and ID are inside, along with her cellphone, a change of clothes, and forty dollars. We had to go through it for evidence, but it’s been cleared and you can have it back.”

My hands shake as I reach out and accept the bag. I bury my face in it. Her hair was wet when she left and this still smells of her shampoo. “Thank you,” I whisper.

“There’s more,” the woman says. She pulls out another little bag. One stuffed with purple tissue paper, a green envelope sticking out. The bag itself is white, with ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY’ in big colorful bubble letters. “We didn’t open the card or anything and it’s addressed to you. Do you recognize the handwriting?”

I pull out the card and examine my name written on the front. “Yes, it’s Katie’s.”

The woman nods. “Just making sure. If there’s anything inside that doesn’t look like it would be from her, any threat or hidden message, be sure to report it alright?”

“I understand. Thank you,” I reply.

“I know this is the last thing you want to here, but I'm really sorry for your loss. I was in charge of going through her social media, not that there was much, because we always have to find out more about the victim. Determine if she may have been a target, or possibly even suicidal. She was neither. She seemed like a really great kid, and I'm sorry that you lost her.”

I nod. “Thank you. Now I'm sorry, but I’d really just like some time with all of this.”

The woman holds up her hands. “I understand. I have to get back anyways.” She doesn’t offer up anything else as she gathers her bag and walks away.

I sink down on the bench next to me and set the gift bag down. I turn the card over and over in my hands. This could quite possibly be the last thing Katie wrote and I’m not sure if I'm ready to open it. I take a deep breath, decide, and carefully ease the envelope open. The card inside is white, a glittery cursive designing the front; Happy Birthday to the Most Beloved Mother. I take another deep breath and flip it open;

Happy Birthday Sophie, hope you had another great year.

Wow, I can’t believe how much time has flown by since that first night. I still remember it. It was late and very soon after my father’s death. Roxanne had packed my suitcase, phoned ahead, and left me at the gates of the park in my pajamas. You made me hot chocolate and toast and let me sleep in your bed. I was, what? Eight maybe. Now I'm sixteen and you're thirty-nine. And there has never been a day that you haven’t tried to do anything you possibly could for me. I want you to know that I appreciate everything you’ve ever done for me and I would do anything for you too.

I can’t think of a single life-changing special memory of mine that doesn’t revolve around you. You were the one who lit the candles on every birthday cake since I was nine. You were the one who encouraged me to follow my dreams, got me my first camera, stayed up with me if I had a nightmare… The list goes on forever really. If I had to pick one specific memory to recall though, it would have to be the night before my twelfth birthday. I had been desperately hoping that my mother would come for it. I was foolish and of course she had refused. I felt so abandoned and unloved. I remember you found me, curled up behind my bed, sobbing. I’d said something stupid. I’d asked why you bothered? Why you cared? You weren’t my mother and I wasn’t your daughter. We weren’t flesh and blood, so why did you throw me parties when my mother couldn’t even bother to show up. It had taken you all of half a second to hug me and tell me that it was because you loved me. You told me that it didn’t matter that I wasn’t related to you by blood, I was better than that, because instead of being the family you were born with, I’m the family you choose to love. I’ve never forgotten those words. They mean everything to me…

You know, people are fools. The doctors told you that you were broken inside, that you could never have children. And the agency told you that you could never adopt because your work posed to many threats to the child. Wild animals and drowning possibilities and such. They told you that you couldn’t be a mother. That maybe you weren’t meant to be. They were wrong. I was wrong too when I was younger.

I was wrong for believing that my mother was coming back for me, for believing that she was even my mother at all. Because she isn’t. You are. And you always will be. I love you, and that’s a choice I made.

Happy Birthday Mom.

Wet splotches appear at the bottom of the card, smearing the last few letters. I close the card and rub at my eyes. It doesn’t help cease the flow of tears. What did I do to deserve such a perfect child? She didn’t deserve to be ripped from the world like this. Not when she only ever offered people kindness. I slip the card back into its envelope and tuck it safely into her knapsack. I push my hand through the tissue paper and pull out a white box the size of my palm. I don’t recognize the label on the front, but I assume it’s some sort of jewelry store. I lift the lid and feel my heart stop.

Nestled in the protective cushioning of the box is a locket. I carefully lift it out to examine it properly. There’s a little dolphin hanging below the locket. I pop it open to see one of the spaces already filled. It’s a photo of the two of us. Katie has her arms around my neck, her head on my shoulder. The both of us are laughing. I think it was the day we got the new sea turtle. I was supposed to pose in front of the tank for an ad campaign and Katie had dropped in unannounced. Sure enough, I can see a small green blur in the water behind us. A flipper. I stroke her face with my pinky and sigh, hugging the gift against my chest. The gift can’t have been cheap, the chain and locket both being gold, and I may have scolded her for spending so much if she were here, but the gift is so perfect I wouldn’t dream of thinking poorly of her choice now. I close the locket, intending to hang it on my neck when I notice the etching. In the sunlight earlier, I had failed to notice the engraving on the front. I examine it closer now. The family I choose to love. My chest tightens and suddenly it doesn’t matter that any of the employees could see. I pull my knees up, hug them, and begin to sob.