Page 45 of Wired Ghost

Chapter Thirty-Two

Sophie

Four days after rescue

Sophie layin bed and stared at the ceiling. The blackout drapes were drawn on another ridiculously beautiful Hilo day. The red beacon of the clock radio beside the bed informed her that it was noon.

Dr. Wilson had exhorted her to count good things in the morning; it wasn’t morning here, but itwas, somewhere else in the world.

One good thing Sophie could think of was that her father had been called back to Washington for some international crisis, and she had their suite at the Hilton to herself.

The second good thing was that Marcella had returned to Oahu; the FBI had only been able to spare her for two days.

The third good thing was that Raveaux was also on Oahu, and was giving Bix a full report. That meant she wouldn’t have to.

She was alone, at last, and she could wallow in the oily darkness of depression and grief for as long as it took for Jake to die once he was taken off life support.

And then, she could stay in bed until she had to take charge of Momi again, which wasn’t for another ten days.

The emptiness of time stretched before her like a desert with no water in sight.

Sophie glanced at the clock again. Eleven minutes past twelve.

They were unplugging Jake at one p.m., in forty-nine minutes. Janice Dunn had refused to listen to her pleas, or those of his sister Patty, to allow her to be there for herkun dii’s last moments.

The cruelty took her breath away; and yet, now that she was a mother, she understood it. Anyone who might cause her daughter harm aroused the deepest antipathy that she was capable of feeling. Janice blamed Sophie for Jake’s situation, and though Sophie wasn’t responsible for the eruption going on all over the east shore of the Big Island at this moment, shewasthe reason Jake had put himself in harm’s way, even to the point of sacrificing himself.

“How do I get through this?” She’d asked Dr. Wilson.

“You’ll get through it one second at a time, one minute at a time, one hour at a time, one day at a time,” the psychologist had said.

From where she lay, Sophie could see the black case on the vanity in the bathroom where her medications were stored. She had already taken her daily antidepressant, but she had more powerful things for when she had what she and Dr. Wilson now called “an episode.” There were sleeping pills and an anxiety reliever.

She could get up and go take the pills she had. Fall asleep, and dream the hours of his death away.

But that was cowardly. Jake deserved more from her—that she endure, with him, what must be endured, even if they were not together in physical space.

Sophie turned on her side and faced the clock, and watched the red numbers slowly merge from one to the next.

She breathed, and she waited. She would go on, because she had to. Because she was a mother, and her daughter needed her.

Sophie shut her eyes, remembered going to an outdoor concert at Ala Moana Beach Park with Armita and Momi, right before the two had left for Alika’s custody month on Kaua`i. Sophie had sat on the folding chair with Momi on her lap. Armita sat on her right, next to the “aisle” made by the rows of chairs set under one of the park’s spreading banyans.

The ukulele band they were listening to was performing on a little portable stage, backed by the half-moon of placid water where she and Raveaux liked to swim at night. In the late afternoon, a light wind ruffled the turquoise water and bent the leaves of the palms lining the sand, making them sway and dance against the blue sky and white cumulus clouds at the horizon.

Momi had mercifully fallen asleep; she was so active that events like this were usually spent chasing her around and extracting her from trouble. But this time, the concert had fallen during her nap time, and her stubborn daughter had succumbed.

Her chubby legs protruded from under her bright Hawaiian print dress as she straddled Sophie’s lap, her plump little feet limp in their sandals. Her face rested on Sophie’s chest, lips ajar as she snored, her glossy black curls damp around her face in the tropical heat.

Sophie stroked the little girl’s back, comforted by the warm, limp weight that seemed to anchor her to the chair. She’d shut her eyes, breathing in the tender baby smell Momi still had at age two-and-a-half, and had let the Hawaiian music and the beautiful setting lift her mood into something as close to joy as she ever got.

Momi needed her.

Not physically, perhaps, but emotionally. They shared a bond strong enough to endure distance and big enough to hold other people: Armita, her father Alika, her grandmother Esther, and a host of aunties, uncles, cousins on Kaua`i. Even her Uncle Connor and her Grampa Frank, too.

But only Sophie was Momi’s mother.

Having endured the wound of Pim Wat’s emotional distance as Sophie grew up, she knew for certain that no one could ever take her place in Momi’s heart.

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