Sophia squeezed his hand. “I’m alright, Dad. Don’t worry.”
Together, the two of them stood on the front porch while police officers came in and out of the main house and her apartment, pausing now and again to take their statements. When Darren came up to her, his face etched in concern, Sophia’s heart gave an odd little dip.
“Are you okay?”
Sophia nodded, and her fingers moved to the blanket around her shoulders. “I honestly think he’s in worse shape than I am.”
“She hit him with the baseball bat,” Stu said with a proud lift of his chin. “It’s a good thing, too.”
Darren glanced between the two of them, the hint of a smile hovering on his lips. “Yeah, I wouldn’t want to mess with Sophia either.”
With one final look in her direction, Darren disappeared into the house.
Ian came back out, his face covered in a thin sheen of sweat, his shirt on upside down, and his sweatpants looking wrinkledunderneath the fluorescent lighting. “Okay, so the good news is, it doesn’t look like he took anything. Other than the damage to the window in the hallway connecting the main house to the apartment, nothing else was affected.”
Sophia breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. I’m not even sure why he broke in. We don’t have much.”
Ian took a notebook out of his pocket and clicked on his pen. “There’s been a string of robberies lately, all over the neighborhood. So far, there’s nothing connecting them, but I think you’d better keep a close eye out in case he tries to come back.”
Their father rose to his feet, his hair in tufts on top of his head and his bloodshot eyes widening slightly. “Is there anything we can do to prevent him from coming back? I don’t think he’ll be too happy once he realizes he’s wasted his time.”
Ian wrote something down and glanced up at him. “I can have an alarm system set up for you by tomorrow, and I’ll call in a favor with a buddy of mine to have a squad car keep an eye out. At least for a couple of days.”
Stu glanced over at Sophia and then back at Ian. “Okay, what else can we do?”
Ian put away his notebook and his pen. “Look, Pop, I know this is going to be hard to hear, but there’s nothing else you can do. Once we’re done sweeping the place, you two should get some sleep, and tomorrow morning, I’ll check in. In the meantime, if there’s anything else either of you can remember, that would be great.”
Stu paused, a shudder moving through him. “I didn’t get a good look at him.”
Ian nodded and squeezed his dad’s shoulders. “It’s okay. We’ll get him eventually, Pop.”
When Ian was called away, Sophia stood and drew her dad to her. She draped the blanket over both of their shoulders andtried not to dwell on what had happened. Yet, she kept replaying the scene in her mind, and the terror she’d felt at realizing she wasn’t alone lingered.
As did the realization that her mother had died under very similar circumstances—a robbery gone wrong.
Was Sophia going to suffer the same fate, or was it just a blood-chilling coincidence?
In a daze, she answered a few more questions and clung to her blanket. By the time everyone cleared out, there was a dull ringing in her ears, and the bile in the back of her throat had gotten worse. In spite of his objections, Sophia helped her father get ready for bed and went to her own apartment. After lingering outside her door and pacing the entire length of the hallway a few times, she went back into the main house.
There, she sat on the couch, threw a blanket over her legs, and stared at the empty fireplace. When she lifted her gaze up to the frames spread out over the mantle, her eyes lingered on the pictures of her mother, and she burst into tears. She clamped a hand over her mouth as her body shook, and the swell of emotion within her grew stronger.
Over and over, she replayed the robbery in her head, the sinking feeling in her stomach only growing worse as she realized how close she’d come to being another sad story on the local news. By the time she calmed down, her tears had stopped, and the tremors had subsided.
Exhausted, Sophia stumbled into her old room and flicked on the lights.
Everything looked the same, from the pink wallpaper to the posters on the wall and the lingering smell of strawberry shower gel in her bathroom. With a sniff, Sophia left the blanket in a heap on her desk chair and crawled onto the bed. She brought her arms up behind her head and studied the ceiling, smiling when she spotted a few of the glow-in-the-dark stars she’dbegged her dad to hang up when she was six. A few of them even still glowed.
Gingerly, she stood up, flicked off the lights, and felt her way through the dark. After switching on the night lamp, which cast long shadows across the walls, she crawled in between the clean sheets and curled her hands into fists at her side. Then she curled into a ball on her side and stared at the window.
Was the robber still out there, plotting his revenge?
Had she hit him hard enough that she left a mark, forcing him to remember her?
A chill raced up her spine as Sophia threw the covers off and padded over to the window. Lit up beneath the soft glow of the moon, the backyard was quiet and untouched, the old swing moving gently with the night breeze. Sophia swallowed, pulled the curtains shut, and hurried back to the bed.
She spent the night tossing and turning, chasing sleep.
In the morning, when the doorbell rang, Sophia jolted awake and reached for her phone. In the living room, she grabbed the fire poker and held it up over her head. Then she pressed her face to the peephole, relief and surprise rising up within her when she recognized Darren’s back, already dressed in his firefighter uniform.
