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Collecting a Betrayal Fee
Yesterday afternoon, one of the big double doors to her father’s study had been slightly ajar, and Sophie Andros had slipped in and taken half a million dollars in bearer bonds from the wall safe.
Call it a betrayal fee, Daddy. For what you did to me and Mom. I just wish she were still around to enjoy this.
Sophie wasn’t sure she believed in God anymore, but she had to admit that the door being open yesterday suggested a force of some kind trying to tip things in her favor. Oh, she’d planned to do something if she ever got back into this house. Just what she didn’t know, but yesterday everything happened so naturally and so easily, and she hadn’t even had a plan!
To begin with, she’d shown up at the house for the first time in twenty-four years, and nobody had answered the front door.
OK, so I wasn’t expected until today. But see, I knew Aspen would be out. You could be taking your last breath, Daddy, but she wouldn’t miss her spa day, would she? And what the heck! Twenty-four years! I wanted to prowl around a bit.
She’d stood in the cavernous foyer for the longest time, taking in all the remembered sounds and smells.
Not the sights, though, Daddy. Not a thing here I remember ever seeing before. “Decorator Queen,” Mom used to call her. I can see why.
When there was still no response, she had walked around the wide, sweeping staircase and down a dark hallway to where a huge pair of oak doors with brass knobs in the shape of lions’ heads marked the entrance to Constantine Andros’s study. The door on the right was open, and she’d gone in.
And there you were, Daddy. In the same chair you were sitting in when Mom took me away that day. I was crying so hard. Mostly because I didn’t understand. All I knew was Aspen was in and Mom was out. Like trading in a car for a newer, shinier model. Do you even remember, Daddy? You didn’t know me yesterday, but then you don’t know anybody anymore, do you?
Constantine Andros had been sitting at his desk yesterday, his back to a fireplace scoured of its carbon and ashes. Like the rest of the study, it had a look, not of neglect, but of disuse. Like a no-touch diorama in a museum, where the curators had succeeded in capturing and holding a moment in time. Constantine was part of the display. No movement. An empty stare. Only the shallowest of breaths. He’d been placed in the chair by a curator of his own, a nurse who, as though to confirm Sophie’s sense of a mysterious, balancing force, was suffering from stomach cramps and had left the old man to goto the bathroom.
How I used to love that room! You let me go in there – the only one allowed to, because I was your favorite. You were my favorite too, Daddy. And it was such a room! All the books ... books from floor to ceiling, that big, ugly moose head over the mantel, and great big chairs. And the smells – leather and sherry, the fireplace. The bay window ... my spot! I’d lie there on the window seat with the morning sun in my face and watch the birds feeding in the gazebo. You knew the name of every bird, too, didn’t you? Do you know any of them now?
Sophie had walked slowly around the study, touching this, feeling that. She went over to the bay window and looked out, shaking her head slightly. The yard ... it had seemed so huge when she was little. Had it shrunk? Did backyards get smaller in twenty-four years? Her father had certainly shrunk. The strokes had seen to that.
You didn’t even move when I opened the safe, Daddy! Remember how you taught me? It was our secret! Left 27, right 14, left 45, right 6, right 20. I remembered it all these years. And you know, as soon as I saw the room, as soon as I saw it was the one spot in the house that Aspen didn’t touch, I knew the combination wouldn’t have changed either. So ...
She had left as undetected and unnoticed as she’d arrived and now Sophie was here again. This time for her expected, official visit. The nurse answered the door before she’d even put her finger to the chimes. Now Sophie stood in front of Constantine Andros’s study again. This time the double doors were closed. Sophie thought she heard voices inside, but couldn’t be sure, although she knew Aspen was in there, and Kimberley, the half-sister she’d seen only once, and the lawyer. Him she knew.
“Stavros the Mortician,” Mom always called him. He’s been around forever. Before Aspen, even before Mom. He’s the one I have to watch out for. If anybody knows the bonds are gone, it’s him. And if anybody is going to suspect me ... him again. Just be cool, Sophie. Remember, you haven’t been in this room in twenty-four years. Don’t give them any reason to think otherwise.
With one knuckle extended, Sophie tapped very timidly on the door.
“Come in! We’re waiting!” Stavros’s gravelly voice came through the doors.
Sophie tugged hard several times at the lion’s head on the left door.
“The other door!”
Good start! It’s obvious I don’t know which of the doors is used.
Greetings followed under a thin veil of politeness.
Aspen spoke. “It’s a wee bit late for it, but I was just about to make our afternoon tea, Sophia. May I include you?”
“Please.”
For heaven’s sake, don’t mumble! Be confident!
“Recognize anything, little Sophie?” Stavros asked.
Sophie bit her tongue. He was trying to be polite.
OK. Now be a bit overwhelmed. The memories are flooding back!
“The old moose ... is it still ...?” She turned almost a full circle. “Why, there it ... Was it always over the mantel? I thought it used to be ... no ... I’m not sure. This is so ... so strange.”
Keep looking around. Slowly, slowly. Stare a bit. Whatever you do, don’t stare at the A.Y. Jackson painting. The one that hides the wall safe.
“Ah, little Sophie, everything in here has been the same for thirty years or more. It’s got your father’s stamp.”
“Er ... where is my ... he?”
“Nurse is taking him out to the gazebo,” Kimberley explained.
“Nurse”! “Nurse” for heaven’s sake! As if this were a Victorian manor!
“We aren’t sure, but we think he still rather enjoys the birds.” The half-sister continued with more speculation on Constantine’s likes and dislikes, but Sophie wasn’t listening. As though she couldn’t resist the temptation, she went over to the bay window, perched sideways on the edge of the window seat and looked out to the gazebo, shading her eyes against the lowering sun to see better.
Yes, but does Nurse (“Nurse” ... gawd!) identify the birds for him. That’s what would make him really happy.
“...
