THIRTY-NINE

Kori handed me a plate of pancakes with a blueberry happy face on top. “What time is your mom getting home?”

“Two, I think.”

“Well, good. We can have a leisurely breakfast then.” She dipped a triangular piece of pancake into a little cup she’d microwaved with her syrup and butter mixed together.

“Your dad’s syrup is the best. He gave us enough to last until the little girls are in college.”

“Did you ever watch him make it?”

“Oh yeah, every year. He was a really good friend, not just to me and Sue but to the kids.”

“Did he have other friends?”

“That’s a tricky question. He wasn’t one to go out and seek friendships, but he was well regarded in Vermont. Beloved, even.”

Beloved.

“And, he was instrumental in Sonnet’s progress when she first came. That’s how we got to be close.”

“What do you mean?”

“When Sue and I first bought the store, we only had Haily and James. They were little, under ten. We’d filed to become adoptive parents, then social services called one day and asked if we could foster an emergency placement. Sonnet came that night, barely six. I’ll never forget. She was in a pink dress and half the lace around the bottom was ripped. She had different shoes on each foot, those huge brown eyes, and no voice.”

“She couldn’t talk?”

Kori shook her head. “The night before she came, she was sitting in a booth at a Denny’s and watched her father out the window getting carted away by the police after a drug deal. There’d been a lot of commotion, so one noticed her for a long time. She still freezes when she hears a siren, and she won’t go near fireworks. CPS said the lack of speaking would be temporary, until she felt safe again, so we went about the business of making that happen. We put all three kids in bed with us every night, kept her with us night and day. The first time he saw her, your dad was smitten. He stopped by every day to check on her, and told her stories about a little princess named Magnolia Grace.”

“About me?”

She nodded. “He drew pictures for her, too. It fascinated Sonnet to watch his hands. I turned around one day and she was sitting on the floor with crayons everywhere. She’d gotten a box off the shelf and was coloring the wood.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. That’s when she started carrying crayons around in her pockets all the time. Now it’s a pencil. Then one day your dad didn’t show up. Deacon told us he’d gone for some treatments in a hospital. We tried to explain to Sonnet, but she shut down, so we gave her stacks of paper and all the crayons in the store. She colored frantically and constantly, and saved everything in a shoe box.”

“Do you still have them?”

“She has a few. Your dad looked different when he came back. He’d put on some weight and his energy felt lighter, easier, more peaceful. When Sonnet saw him, she got that shoe box and gave it to him. Then she smiled really big, and you know what happened?”

Kori hesitated, trying to find her voice. I waited, silently.

“She spoke for the first time since she’d come to us. She handed him her pictures and said ‘Magnolia Grace,’ plain as day. Her first words were your name.”

Everything I thought I knew about Sonnet changed in that second. Her silence, her frantic sketching, the way she kept her distance from me but told Aspen and Jane I was brave. It all made sense.

“I never thought she liked me.”

Kori laid her hand over mine. “She doesn’t dislike you, Maggs. She still struggles to speak. Your dad taught her to use art to help with her anxiety. They had a special bond. Not like you and he would have had, but for Sonnet, it was a saving grace.”

She watched me carefully.

“Do you think she doesn’t like me being here?”

“I think you came so soon after the accident, and you look so much like him, it’s been hard for her. But even if her distress feels directed at you, it’s not. It’s about what she lost.”

Before I left, Kori handed me a brown bag with some presents in it for Mama and me to open the next morning.

“One last thing,” she said. “The same way Sonnet’s grief isn’t about you, neither is yours truly about your mother. Think about that before she gets home.”