Chapter 7 - The Second Thing Sophie Remembered
Children remember through fragments.
Sophie did not suddenly deliver a perfect timeline.
She remembered colors.
Rooms.
Phrases.
Smells.
Dr. Meyers helped without leading her.
One afternoon, Sophie drew our old living room.
Three people.
Me.
Her.
Natalie.
And a black rectangle beside Natalie.
“What’s that?” Dr. Meyers asked.
“Her bag.”
“What was happening?”
“Natalie was looking for Mommy.”
That phrasing confused us.
“What does looking for Mommy mean?”
Sophie shrugged.
“Her papers.”
The event was from nearly a year earlier.
I had been upstairs taking a work call.
Natalie apparently opened the cabinet where Claire’s old tax and estate documents were stored.
Sophie asked what she was doing.
Natalie said:
“Helping Daddy clean.”
Then:
“Did Mommy have work papers?”
Sophie said yes.
Natalie asked where.
Sophie pointed toward my office.
I remembered coming downstairs and finding Natalie near the cabinet.
She told me she was organizing insurance documents.
I thanked her.
Again.
The pattern of my gratitude was becoming unbearable.
Then Sophie remembered another moment.
Natalie holding a photograph of Claire in the kitchen.
“What photograph?”
Sophie described:
Mommy wearing a black jacket.
Standing beside “an old man.”
My stomach tightened.
The photograph from the envelope?
Maybe.
Or another similar one.
“What did Natalie do?”
“She said bad word.”
“What word?”
Sophie whispered:
“Shit.”
Then giggled.
Dr. Meyers did not.
Neither did I.
Natalie had seen evidence of Claire’s connection to Vincent before the wedding.
That explained why she knew to look.
But not necessarily why she knew about the blue box.
Then I remembered something from Claire’s funeral.
A blue lacquer box had sat on a side table in our bedroom.
Visitors came through the house.
Family.
Friends.
Colleagues.
I had barely noticed who touched what.
Natalie was not in my life then.
Was she at the funeral?
I checked the guest book.
No Natalie Rhodes.
No Natalie Vale.
Then Marcus gave me another lead.
During the original investigation, Claire used a blue lacquer document box for interview notes.
Not Sophie’s keepsake box necessarily.
“Blue?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“She carried one everywhere. Japanese lacquer style.”
My skin prickled.
Claire owned two.
One larger professional document box.
One smaller matching box.
The larger one disappeared after we moved houses years before Claire died.
I assumed it was discarded.
Sophie’s small box remained.
Natalie may have remembered Claire carrying a blue lacquer box during the investigation.
When she saw Sophie’s, she believed it might contain the old records.
That was why she kept asking.
That was why the wedding triggered panic.
Natalie did not know whether the small box was the same one.
May you like
She knew it looked like it.
And seven years after sitting across from Claire, she still feared what might be inside.
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