What Happened to Sophie Wilder Read Online Free PDF Page A

and out of nervous habit she examined the books, one thing that could always give some comfort. She recognized few of the titles, most to do with religion, a topic about which Sophie knew almost nothing. The Belief of Catholics , The Seven Storey Mountain , Guide to Aquinas .
    â€œHow do you and Tom know each other?” Beth asked Sophie as Tom brought his things to his room.
    She resisted the urge to say that they didn’t.
    â€œWe take a philosophy course together,” she answered instead.
    â€œThat’s funny,” Beth said. “I didn’t know the subject interested Tom.”
    During the short tour of the house that followed, Beth caught Sophie looking at a framed photograph sitting on a side table, a picture of a smiling young woman—it might have been Beth herself—with an infant on her hip.
    â€œThat’s my sister,” Beth said. “Tom’s mom. She died when Tom was young.”
    In the photograph, the woman stood alone with her child.
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    That night at Beth’s house, Sophie waited for Tom to come down to her room. Driving her there and introducing her to what amounted to his family was more of an effort than most would make, and it seemed to entitle him to such a
visit. If he comes, she thought, I’ll do whatever he wants. As it was, he didn’t come.
    The next day Tom took Sophie into town, and they walked together along Main Street. Every few blocks a former teacher or the parent of an old classmate or a friend of Beth’s stopped them on the street. Each one gave Tom a hug and asked how college was treating him.
    â€œYou must be almost done by now?”
    â€œI graduate this spring,” Tom said.
    â€œAnd what’s next?”
    â€œI’m going to law school at Columbia.”
    â€œSounds like you didn’t do so hot at that college,” joked Tom’s high school baseball coach. Then he told Sophie what a star Tom had been on his team, their best pitcher, throwing a one-hit shutout in the county playoffs that people still talked about.
    Was life really like this for anyone?
    Sophie found herself happy for the first time in months, most of all because none of it had anything to do with her. This town was a place she couldn’t have imagined for herself, that had existed all this time without her knowing about it. She was happy most of all because the world that welcomed her now gave no sign that it had been waiting for her, or that it would notice when she was gone.
    Each night she prepared for him, as she prepared each day for an arm to find its way clumsily around her, or a hand to brush against her back. By the fourth night her surprise had turned to genuine disappointment. On the fifth night she went to him herself. He welcomed her, but anxiously, seeming only barely pleased. It took two more such nights before he settled himself, at which point she understood that all that week he had been terrified of her, terrified of his need for a girl he hardly knew. By then it was
time to go back to campus. When she and Tom returned two months later to spend Christmas with Beth, they were a couple, and Sophie still believed Tom’s father was dead.
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    She had never been inside St. Vincent’s Hospital, though she’d walked by it many times. At the reception desk she asked for William Crane and was sent to an upper floor, where she asked again for him.
    â€œI’m his daughter-in-law,” she explained to a nurse behind the counter. “I’m here to pick him up.”
    The nurse’s laugh seemed almost flirtatious.
    â€œHe’s quite a handful,” she said. “Tried to slip out on us twice. We nearly had to put him in restraints.”
    Sophie sat for a few minutes, until she felt a presence standing over her. When she looked up she found not the man she’d been expecting, some decaying echo of her husband, but a woman not much older than herself.
    â€œMrs. Crane?” the woman