Sofia
1448 Words
Sofia ate with the focused seriousness of someone for whom dinner was important business.
She had chosen the seat directly across from Elena — not beside Dante, not at the end of the table, directly opposite, with the particular intentionality of a four year old who had decided something and was implementing it. She arranged her cutlery with care. She accepted the food Rosa put in front of her with a polite thank you that sounded practiced and genuine at the same time.
Then she looked at Elena.
"Daddy says you live here now," she said.
Dante made a sound. "Sofia—"
"I'm asking," Sofia said. With dignity.
Elena looked at her. At the enormous serious eyes and the dark hair and the particular quality of a child who had grown up in proximity to loss and had come out of it not fragile but careful.
"I do," Elena said. "For now."
Sofia considered this. "Do you like it?"
"Very much."
"Valentino's house is big." Sofia looked around the dining room with the assessment of someone conducting an inspection. "My house is smaller but we have a garden."
"I've heard good things about your garden," Elena said.
Sofia looked pleased. "I have a tomato plant. It has two tomatoes."
"Only two?"
"They're big tomatoes."
"That counts."
Sofia nodded seriously. Returned to her food. The matter apparently settled.
Dante caught Elena's eye across the table. Something in his face — gratitude and something warmer underneath it.
She smiled at him briefly.
At the end of the table Valentino was talking to Dante in the low voice he used for things that weren't for general hearing. But she noticed — she always noticed — the way his attention divided. The way part of him was always tracking the room. Tracking her.
She felt it like a warmth she had stopped trying to explain.
After dinner Sofia found the library.
Elena had been watching for it — had seen the moment the four year old's attention shifted from the dinner table to the hallway beyond the door and had known with the particular certainty of someone who had done the same thing at approximately the same age.
She followed.
Sofia was standing in the library doorway looking at the shelves with an expression of pure reverent calculation.
"There are a lot of books," she said.
"There are," Elena agreed. Coming to stand beside her.
"Have you read all of them?"
"Not yet. I'm working on it."
Sofia walked in. She moved along the lower shelves — the ones at her height — trailing her fingers along the spines with a lightness that suggested she understood about books. That they were handled carefully.
"My mama had books," she said. Matter of fact. The way children said true and heavy things — without weight, because they hadn't yet learned to put weight on them.
Elena kept her voice even. "What kind?"
"Stories." Sofia stopped at a particular shelf. "She read to me every night." She pulled out a slim book — one Elena recognized, a collection of illustrated stories, old enough that the spine was soft. "She did the voices."
"She sounds wonderful," Elena said quietly.
"She was." Sofia looked at the book. "Valentino reads to me sometimes. He doesn't do the voices."
Elena felt the corner of her mouth move. "No?"
"He says it's undignified." Sofia said it with perfect mimicry of a particular Valentino register that was so accurate Elena had to look away for a moment.
"He's wrong about that," Elena said when she had herself under control.
"I know." Sofia looked at her with those enormous eyes. "Will you read to me?"
Elena looked at her.
At four years old and her mother's books and a tomato plant with two big tomatoes and a father who had come home from somewhere terrible and a house that was smaller but had a garden.
"Yes," she said. "I will."
They sat together on the window seat — Sofia tucked into Elena's side with the complete unselfconscious trust of a small child who had decided — and Elena opened the book and read.
She did the voices.
Valentino found them twenty minutes later.
He stood in the doorway and looked at the window seat — at Sofia asleep against Elena's side, the book opened in Elena's lap, the fire burned low behind them — and something happened in his face that he made no effort to manage.
Elena looked up.
He looked at her.
She put her finger to her lips.
He nodded. Crossed the room quietly. Sat in his chair and looked at them both with an expression she had never seen on him before and suspected very few people ever would.
Completely undone. Completely present. Completely certain.
She looked back at the book.
Neither of them spoke.
The house was quiet around them.
Dante carried Sofia to the car at nine.
She had woken briefly — looked at Elena with sleepy confused eyes and said "you did the voices" with the satisfaction of someone whose assessment had been confirmed — and gone back to sleep against her father's shoulder.
Dante stood at the front door.
"Thank you," he said. Not to Valentino — to Elena. Directly and without qualification.
"She's extraordinary," Elena said.
"She is." He looked at her steadily. "She doesn't trust easily. She hasn't since—" He stopped. "Tonight was the first time in a year she fell asleep somewhere that wasn't home."
Elena felt that in her chest.
"Bring her back," she said. "Whenever she wants to come."
Dante looked at her for a moment.
Then he looked at Valentino.
Something passed between them — wordless, the communication of two people who had known each other long enough that language was optional.
Valentino nodded once.
Dante left.
They stood at the front door and watched the car go and then the door closed and the house was quiet again and Valentino looked at her.
"You did the voices," he said.
"Sofia told you."
"Sofia tells me everything." He tilted his head slightly. "She said you were better at it than me."
"She's right."
"I'm aware." He looked at her with that expression — the warm undone one that she was collecting like evidence. "You didn't have to do that."
"I wanted to."
"Elena—"
"I wanted to," she said simply. "She asked and I wanted to." She held his gaze. "Stop being surprised when I want things."
He looked at her for a long moment.
"I'm not surprised," he said quietly. "I'm—" He paused. Seemed to search for the word. "I'm grateful. There's a difference."
She held his gaze.
"Grateful for what specifically?" she said.
He reached out. Touched her face. Thumb along her cheekbone — the gesture so habitual now she felt its absence more than its presence.
"For the fact that you exist," he said. Simply. "And that you walked into that warehouse."
She felt that everywhere.
"You keep saying that," she said softly.
"Because it keeps being true."
She looked at him for a long moment.
Then she closed the distance and kissed him — unhurried and certain and completely present, the kind of kiss that had nowhere to be and no reason to rush.
He kissed her back the same way.
When they pulled apart the hallway was quiet around them.
"Ferro," she said against his jaw. "Wednesday."
"Yes."
"We handle it," she said.
"Yes."
"Together."
He pulled back slightly to look at her. Something moved in his eyes — complicated and warm and deeply decided.
"Together," he said.
She nodded.
Took his hand.
Led him back toward the library — toward the window seat and the fire and the book Sofia had fallen asleep against all the ordinary extraordinary things that had become their life in eighteen days.
He followed.
He always followed her now.
She suspected he had stopped minding.
Later — much later — when the fire had burned completely down and the city outside was deep in its quiet hours, she asked him something she had been holding for days.
"If you hadn't kept me," she said. "If you had let me go that first night. What do you think would have happened?"
He was quiet for a long time.
"I think," he said finally, "that I would have spent the rest of my life wondering about the woman who wasn't afraid of me."
She thought about that.
"And now?" she said.
He looked at her in the dark.
"Now," he said, "I don't have to wonder about anything."
She closed her eyes.
Held on.
Neither of them spoke again.
They didn't need to.
- Writer
