Sweetly (4 page)

“I’ll put your things in the stairwell for now,” Sophia says. Before I can stop her, she heaves my suitcase toward a door at the back of the shop, tucking it just behind the door frame. “What’d you pack, bricks?” she teases me.

“Books,” I say, and my cheeks flush. I started reading after my sister vanished because it made me feel as if I were her—as though she weren’t lost after all. But then it became something else; in someone else’s story, I could become a whole character instead of half a girl.

Our mom used to sneak up, watch me read. She’d always start to cry, and I would close the book to make the tears stop. She wasn’t really watching me. She was watching my sister.

I search for words, trying to find a less weighted explanation as to why I brought so many books with me, but Sophia is laughing, bright and happy. “A library’s worth of books, from the feel of it. Hey, Jed!” she shouts toward the screen door. “Don’t leave yet—I need to give you something!”

“Right, Miss Sophia,” I hear Jed call back. Sophia scans the shelves quickly, then snags a bag of chocolate candies and dashes out the door, past Ansel. He looks spellbound and holds the door open as he watches her run toward Jed. I glance at the empty spot on the shelf—pecan clusters, assorted. The remaining bags are full of round white, dark, and milk chocolate circles that look so perfect, I wonder how they can be real.

“Anyway,” Sophia says, jogging back in; I can hear the crunching of gravel as Jed backs out of the driveway. Sophia walks to the shelf with the pecan clusters and pulls the remaining bags to the front. Everything she does is intentional—beautiful, in a way. She is confident, and I am jealous, but at the same time I want to study her, copy her.

When I start over, I want to be like her—even though I’ve known her for only minutes.

“So, you run this shop alone?” My brother’s voice is soft, gentle, and even.

Sophia spins back to face us and nods. “Eh, it’s a big difference from being at the university, but it’s not
that
lonely,” she lies. I know it’s a lie—it’s the same lie I tell people when they comment on how I am quiet or never go to the movies or never talk about having friends. I lie because I’m scared. I’m scared for my sister, scared for Ansel, scared of the witch. But what—or whom—does Sophia need to lie for? I give her a reassuring smile.
It’s okay. I get it, really.

“Don’t you think it’s risky, though? Out here all alone?” Ansel asks.

Sophia shrugs. “It takes a lot to scare me. Besides, what’s left of Live Oak isn’t especially welcoming—how many dirty looks did you get in town?”

“A few dozen,” I admit.

“It wasn’t always like that here, I promise. When I was a little girl, I thought I lived in heaven.” She gives me a nostalgic look, then brushes her hair from her face and turns to walk through a set of doors just behind the glass cases. They’re shutterlike, something I’d expect to see in a Wild West saloon, and painted jade green. I can see over the top as Sophia opens an avocado-colored refrigerator, grabs three cans, then sweeps back through the saloon doors. After an endless sea of fast-food restaurants with surly employees, having someone like Sophia offer you a drink feels like a great kindness.

“I’ll be honest—I can’t pay you all that much. I mean, I
can
pay you, but—”

“That’s fine,” Ansel cuts her off. She nods at him, smiling sweetly. I’m not sure if it’s her beauty or hospitality that has Ansel so quick to work for cheap, but I suspect it’s some of both.

Sophia leads Ansel through the kitchen; there’s a loud clanking as he lifts, then drops, the toolbox—Sophia laughs. I hear a screen door squeal open, slam shut, then silence, broken apart only by the occasional muffled noise of Sophia and Ansel’s conversations.

The golden dog trots back in through the kitchen, panting; he stops to grab a rope toy before bounding over to me. He drops the toy and looks at me expectantly. A red leather collar is around his neck, with a silver name tag that says
LUXE
. I reach down and flip the name tag over. It reads
THE KELLY FAMILY
, followed by a phone number.
Does Sophia constitute the whole Kelly family?
I think just as she comes back inside and grins when she sees Luxe looking between me and the rope toy in anticipation. I toss it for him; he takes off after it gleefully, a clatter of nails on hardwood.

“He’s a lover, not a fighter,” she tells me, and I laugh. “I was just making some candied orange slices—want to come back here for some company that isn’t going to demand you play fetch?”

“I can help, if you want,” I offer, and follow Sophia into the kitchen. It’s brighter than the main shop area, with a huge window that opens out to the backyard. There’s a swing out there, and a shed with a padlocked door, not to mention more trees dripping with curling Spanish moss. I hear Ansel sawing away as Sophia opens the refrigerator and takes out a bowl of oranges, setting them down on an enormous stainless-steel counter. I take a seat on a bar stool on the other side. She grabs an orange and begins to peel it; I follow suit.

“I love making these, even though I end up eating more of them than I sell,” Sophia says absently, brushing the rinds into a little pile. “I swear, they’ve got magic powers or something. I can be having a terrible day, and I eat these and it feels like everything is right in the world.”

“You’ll have to sell some to Ansel and me later, then,” I joke back.

Sophia laughs. “I don’t know if my candy is powerful enough to fix a busted car, but it’s worth a try. Do you like almonds? You should try these. They’re my specialty,” Sophia says, pushing a tray of cooling chocolates toward me. They’re molded into little gingerbread men. “They’ve got gingerbread and caramel in them too,” Sophia adds.

I lift one of the gingerbread men and bite into it. It’s immediately clear why these are her specialty—they taste amazing. I feel light-headed almost, and the room gets warmer. The taste of gingerbread and chocolate spins through me and makes me feel… like before. I feel the excited, eager way we felt when we first set out into the forest, when we were on an adventure instead of running from a witch. When everything was happy and storybook and we were leaving a trail of candy in the leaves.

“So, what brought you two to Live Oak, anyway?” Sophia asks as I continue to feel as though I’m melting in front of her.

“Our stepmother threw us out because she couldn’t afford us anymore. Live Oak just happens to be where we ran out of money,” I say immediately.

“What’d you do to get thrown out?” she asks, surprised.

I shrug. “We exist? She never liked us. She just liked our dad, but he wasn’t really over our mother dying, and then
he
died—” I pause. Why am I telling her all this? I see Sophia’s eyes run over my multicolored hair and she shrugs, then starts peeling another orange.

“She sounds like a nut job. You and Ansel must be close, though, to hit the road together. Is it just the two of you?” she asks as I finish the chocolate. The almonds crunch and the warm feeling grows. Sophia picks up a knife and starts cutting an orange against the grain; the tart and lovely smell fills the room.

“It is now. I had a twin sister, but she vanished.”

Wait. Did I just say that? To a complete stranger?
I blink. Guilt swims over me, though I’m not sure why. She’s not secret. She’s just… gone.

Sophia looks at me, eyebrow raised. “Vanished?”

I speak without meaning to, as if the words are finding their own way past my lips. “In the forest. Something chased us, and when Ansel and I stopped, she was gone.”

Where’s your sister?

Words still want to spill from me—I slam my jaw shut to keep from letting everything out, all the memories, the search parties, the nothingness they found among the trees. It was as though the little girl who was half of me never existed at all, as if my family had just been seeing double all these years instead of actually having twins.

“That’s so sad,” Sophia says, and her voice cracks a little. She hurries over to the sink and pours a glass of water, but I can tell it’s mostly to busy her hands and hide her eyes. It’s not strange for people to cry for my sister, but Sophia barely knows me. “When was that? Recently?” she asks over her shoulder.

“No. We were just kids, but it didn’t stop people from blaming us for her disappearing. My sister and I were six, Ansel was seven. Twelve years ago, I guess.”

Sophia’s hands freeze; her eyes jump up, find mine. “You’re eighteen?” She walks back over to me.

I nod. “My birthday was a few weeks ago. That’s why our stepmother threw us out—she can finally do it legally. She hated us. Dad married her a year after Mom died. I think he just wanted to start everything over again.”

Sophia slides the glass of water toward me quickly, as if it’s a lifeline. She looks alarmed, and I feel my cheeks heating up over telling this near stranger my family history in detail. I take a gulp of water and it cools the warmth that was building inside me. I feel as though I’m just waking up, as if the words spilling from me moments ago were just the result of some kind of stupor.

“I’m sorry,” I mutter. “I don’t know why I told you all that.”

“It’s okay,” Sophia answers hurriedly, smiling—although her smile has a certain sort of nervousness around the edges. “People say I’m easy to open up to.”

“Right.” I nod, taking another drink of water. I’ve hardly had a bite of chocolate since my sister—usually all I can think of when I’m around it is little yellow candies on the forest floor. Is this how it’s supposed to make you feel? As if you’re happy, as if you’re safe?

Sophia drops the orange slices into a cooking pot before speaking. “My dad is gone too. That’s why I came back here, actually, to run the chocolatier after he… left.” Her final word is heavy, but she looks away so fast that I can tell she doesn’t want to talk about whatever the truth about her family is—and I understand entirely. I move on.

“Where did you come back from?”

“College. I was studying philosophy,” she says, teasing herself a little in the phrase. “Big money in that, you know. I’m the only one in twenty-three years to leave Live Oak and come back.” She pauses to pull a glass jar of sugar from a wooden cabinet and proceeds to sprinkle half the jar over the oranges, then looks up at me. Her eyes look the same way they did earlier outside—as though she thinks I can help her, as if she’s desperate for me to help her. “It’s hard, losing your parents. Right when you think it’s getting better, it starts to hurt again,” she says softly, her voice wounded.

I smile a little. “I know. I understand.”

Sophia’s eyes fill with water and gratitude almost instantly. She sniffs and nods at me. “You know what it’s like.” I don’t say anything as Sophia takes a moment and collects herself, staring intently at the stove as she does so. When she looks back up at me, she’s grinning, all signs of sadness gone. “But at least I can make some badass candy oranges,” she says.

The afternoon passes quickly—Ansel hauling heavy things by the open door, poking his head in to ask Sophia little questions, dropping in compliments here and there. It doesn’t exactly bother me, but it is interesting to watch my brother act this way over a girl—I guess I just never thought of him like this. Sophia and I seem to have somehow instantly bonded over our shared lost parents. She tells jokes and funny stories about her father and we laugh as though we’re old friends; it makes me feel grounded, as if in this moment, Ansel isn’t my only rock, isn’t the only thing keeping me from vanishing. Sophia has a plate of sandwiches ready for dinner when Ansel trudges inside, long after the sun has dropped into the horizon.

“I have to admit, I’m impressed,” Sophia says with a grin as she pours him water from an amber pitcher. She hands him the glass and rustles through a flour jar before emerging with a ragged hundred-dollar bill.

“That enough?” she says, passing the money to me. I fumble to accept it mid–sandwich bite.

“Sure, of course,” Ansel says quickly. “I don’t suppose you’d give us a ride out to our car, by the way? It’s still on the interstate. I think this is enough to get us towed.”

“Um…” Sophia sways a little, lets her dress twirl around her knees. “I was wondering if you guys would mind staying here tonight? I just realized I’ve got a few other things you could do tomorrow, if you don’t mind…”

“Stay here?” I ask, surprised, but the pink tint around Ansel’s ears doesn’t escape me.

“No, no, we couldn’t,” Ansel says quickly.

“It’s no big deal, I swear,” Sophia insists. “Besides, the hotel in Live Oak closed a million years ago. Unless you want to camp out in your car, you’ll have to practically make it all the way to the beach before you get to one that’s open.”

Ansel looks at a loss for words, floundering in the lack of a plan for us.

“Come on. I’ve got a spare bedroom and a couch,” Sophia tempts us. “Please? I never have company. It’ll be fun.” Her voice seems almost desperate, and I feel a wave of pity for her. I don’t have friends, not really—who am I to turn down someone who wants to be mine?

You’re starting over, remember?

“I don’t—” Ansel begins.

“Come on, Ansel, you’re starting to offend me,” Sophia says, folding her arms, but I catch the glimmer of a smile on the corners of her mouth.

“Sorry,” Ansel says quickly. “Sorry. It’s just always been me and Gretchen and I don’t…” He stops. I know what he means, and to my surprise, Sophia seems to know as well: Close your circle long enough, and you forget how to open it back up again.

“Okay. For tonight,” he says, giving in. He sends Sophia an appreciative look and plucks a peanut butter and jelly sandwich off the plate.

An hour or so later Sophia leads us through the storefront to a thin stairwell that creaks loudly as we make our way up. There are pictures on the walls: the chocolate shop in what looks like the twenties, then the fifties or so, the eighties maybe, and the most recent one. In each picture there’s a person standing out front—Sophia is in the final shot, so I presume it’s her father and grandmother in the ones preceding. Our family has nothing like this, and I find myself wondering what it’s like to be locked into a life, a profession, a place, even. It can’t be the worst thing in the world—I mean, how bad could working in a candy store be?