Page 37 of One Last Step

“No, he just found it odd that you were here.”

“Odd or frightening?”

I think back to yesterday morning in the lobby.I remember how Lukas's hands shook and how he paled again when I mentioned the Museum's finances.I've been so thrown off by the appearance of a woman who could be my sister's daughter that I completely forgot about it.

"Actually… Quite frightening.I mentioned that as long as your investigation didn't have anything to do with the Museum's finances, he had no reason to fear.I meant it as a joke, but he reacted very strongly to that as well."

Claudia raises her eyebrow.“Hmm.Do you know where Mr.Meyer lives?”

“No.I only see him when he brings Luc to visit.”

“How interesting.”She smiles at me.“Mary, this is excellent information.I believe I’ll get started on it right away.”

She turns to leave, and I grab her arm.“Claudia, please be gentle.Luc is a sweet boy, and he’s good friends with Sophie.I would hate for her friendship to be affected by this.”

She gives me another smile, but this one is a sad one.“I’ll do my best, but this is the sort of thing that affects friendships no matter how hard you try to prevent it.”

I knew that would be her answer, but it still hurts to hear it.Poor Sophie.And poor Luc.

I release her and return an equally sad smile.“I know.I suppose I just didn’t want to admit it.”

“People don’t live in a vacuum,” she says.“Our decisions affect others.Even when we desperately wish they wouldn’t.”She squeezes my arm briefly, then walks off.

I think of all of the decisions I’ve made, all the decisions Annie made.I think of the pain I’ve suffered for the past thirty years, all of the pain that Annie suffered that drove her to leave us.I wonder if I could have done something different when I was younger that might have led her to stay.

Maybe, maybe not.Time has moved so far ahead of that event that I can’t imagine what life would have looked like if things had turned out differently.

It's not until Claudia is gone for several minutes that I realize I didn't ask her about Annie.That opportunity, like so many others, passed me by before I realized it.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“Mary?Do you ever wonder if everything we do is already decided?Like, we think we have a choice, but we really don’t?”

I turn to Sophie with a little surprise.I’ve just been wondering almost the same thing.

The two of us are in the schoolroom.It's after lunch, and lessons for the day are finished.She's completing her assignments before I release her for the day.

“Well, I believe that we always decide how we react to events and circumstances.We can’t control how other people react, and we can’t control our circumstances completely, but we have control over our own actions.”

“Yes, but if you think about like, all of time, then so many people have already made choices, and those choices make circumstances, and those circumstances affect everyone.So yeah, I guess you could choose to dress like a clown and eat bubble gum until you die, but except for being crazy, you really only have a few choices because all of the other choices have been made for you.Like, someone else built this house, someone else built the roads outside, someone else invented the food we eat… I mean, youcando other things, but it’s very hard.So are we just stuck walking this path that’s already been decided for us?”

I smile at her.“You’re a very wise little girl, did you know that?”

She chuckles.“Sometimes I wish I wasn’t.Life would be easier if I didn’t know anything but what I was told.”

That reminds me of an argument Annie and I once had.“You have it so easy,”she tells me.“All you have to do is read a self-help book and follow the steps.I wish it was that easy for me to be happy.”

She was wrong about me, of course, but not entirely.To an extent, I did choose an easier life, for a long time, anyway.She chose freedom, but the more I learned about her life after leaving Boston, the more I wondered if the hardship she faced was worth it.

“You’re right,” I tell Sophie.“Itisvery hard.The advantage of walking the path others have trod is that… well, others have trod it.The dangers are known.There are clear signs that say ‘go this way,’ ‘don’t go that way,’ ‘stop here.’And for some people, that’s enough.Some people can do the same thing every day—walk the same streets, eat the same food, watch the same television programs, go to the same parks, and so on—and be perfectly content.And others can’t.”

“But how do you know?”she asks.“How do you know whether you’ll be happier staying on the path or leaving it?”

The simple, blunt, and in many ways cruel answer is that you don't.You take a risk, or you don't, and you can't know until after the choice is made if that risk will pay off or not.But she is only ten years old.She's precocious for her age, but she’s still a child, and I don’t want to ruin her hope for the future just yet.Besides, just because my life has brought me tragedy doesn’t mean hers will.

“That’s something you have to figure out for yourself,” I tell her.“But don’t think too seriously about it.You’re still young.Enjoy being a child for as long as you can.”

She smiles.“In that case, I choose to finish the rest of these assignments tomorrow so I can go play video games right now.”

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