SEPTEMBER 2, 2018
ASHFORD: Abby told you she’d stolen the bird.
SOPHIA: She told me that you’d hidden it from her.
ASHFORD: It was for her own protection.
Sophia looks unconvinced.
SOPHIA: You took her and Miranda in after their parents were killed. You raised them. I imagine you got to know them pretty well in that time.
ASHFORD: What is your point?
SOPHIA: How exactly did you think that forbidding Abby from going to that island, and refusing to tell her why, would play out? Of course she went.
ASHFORD: I hoped that she would trust me.
Sophia sits back. Her gaze is cool, unimpressed with this declaration.
SOPHIA: And should she have trusted you, Dr. Ashford? Or was she right to question?
Ashford doesn’t answer. He folds his hands.
ASHFORD: Do you know how Abby and her sister came to be in my care, Ms. Novak?
SOPHIA: Their parents died.
ASHFORD: Their parents were torn apart. I was already pursuing the creature responsible, but I was too late. I found the girls on the road, screaming for help. By the time I got to the house, there was little left. Their father had to be identified through DNA. I did everything I could to keep them safe, but the Beast found them again. Killed Miranda. So perhaps you can understand why I might have been a bit overprotective of my other—
SOPHIA: Daughter?
Her voice is soft, not cowed but kind.
ASHFORD: Charge.
SOPHIA: Except you weren’t just protecting her. Maybe it started that way. But by the time Miranda gave you that bird, you’d been lying to protect her so long that you had to keep lying. You had to lie to protect yourself. Because if she found out the truth, she would never trust you again.