Morning was distinguished from night by Ginger licking her face again—the drapes cut the light so completely there was no way to distinguish the two. Sophie rolled to look at the glowing red numbers of her bedside digital clock: 10:00 a.m.
“Oh, girl.” She tossed the covers aside. “You need to go out.” Ginger whined in agreement.
The depression she’d struggled with on and off since her late teens had swept Sophie under. Every movement felt forced and sluggish, like swimming through tar. Sophie walked through the apartment naked, as was her habit. She put the teapot on to boil water and took out a ceramic teapot, her body remembering the habitual movements of the morning ritual.
She would take one day to indulge in the depression. Really wallow.
After all, she didn’t have anywhere to be today.
Or any day.
She was unemployed.
The thought made Sophie bow inward, hunching around the pain. The kettle dropped from her nerveless fingers into the elegant oval steel sink.
Tea wouldn’t help. Nothing would help. She just needed to take the dog out. Then she could go back to bed and stay there until she felt better. If she felt better. The murk was so thick that ever feeling different seemed impossible.
Sophie dressed in running clothes and took Ginger outside into a bright Honolulu day. Mynahs chattered in the blooming rainbow shower trees on her block, colored petals fell like confetti in the warm breeze. Doves cooed and danced courtship to each other on the sidewalk as Ginger did her business on the scrap of lawn. Sophie’s eyes registered it all, unseeing.
Ginger tugged and whined, looking down the sunny street with its swishing traffic, waving palms, and busy walkers. Sophie usually ran with the dog on her days off. Ginger wanted to do what they usually did, and bathe in all the glorious smells.
“No.” Sophie twitched the leash and headed back into her building.
Ginger frolicked in the lobby, bouncing and cheerful and way too energetic without exercise. Possessed by that deep exhaustion, Sophie walked Ginger to security and left her there to be picked up by the Doggie Daycare service that usually took care of her during the day.
She was too flattened even to feel guilty about neglecting her dog as she got back into bed and shut herself into the dark.
Dealing with Ginger and her needs were the only activities Sophie engaged in for the next two days.
Sophie slept, or she simply lay in her room staring at the ceiling.
Hello, darkness, my old friend.
She reviewed her life, hopelessness sapping her energy as her thoughts cycled through negative, repetitive patterns. She’d fought hard to escape from the disastrous marriage to sadistic businessman Assan Ang. She’d also fought hard to build her career in the FBI. She’d created DAVID and tried to make the world a better place.
All for nothing.
Of course she still had a copy of DAVID’s software, stored on a hard drive in a safe hidden in the apartment—she was too smart to let the FBI take it from her. But the fight ahead just felt too difficult right now.
She should get up. Exercise. Call her father, or her friend Lei on Maui, or Marcella. Eat. But she did none of those things.
The depression wasn’t passive. It felt powerful and destructive, a fierce predator that held her in its jaws, shaking the very life out of her.
Sophie stared at the blackness of the bedroom ceiling, her eyes wide open. They were dry and unseeing as desert stones. It felt like if she waited long enough, her body would just cease. Turn off. Begin crumbling away as if she’d never been.
A pounding at the door.
The pounding stopped.
Started again.
Stopped.
If she ignored it long enough, whoever it was would eventually go away.
The alarm system activating was a shrill throbbing electronic tone that demanded a response. After the apartment was breached six months ago, Sophie’d had it tied straight into the building’s security. Now, if she didn’t deactivate it, police would be on their way.
Sophie groaned and threw on her sleep tee, walking with an effort to the panel by the front door. She deactivated the alarm.
“Sophie! Open up right now or I’m breaking in!”
Marcella. Her friend’s voice was loud but muffled by the solid door. She might have known Marcella would persist. Sophie opened the door. “I’m okay.”
“No, you’re not.” Marcella’s cheeks were flushed with the effort of pounding on the front door to the point that the alarm was triggered. Wisps of sleek, chocolate-brown hair had escaped from the chignon she’d nicknamed the FBI Twist. There was no hiding her gorgeous, curvy figure, but Marcella played it down in a plain white blouse and gray slacks. “You look like hell. When did you eat last?”
Sophie shrugged and let go of the doorframe. Marcella followed her in as Sophie pressed the intercom button on the blinking alarm panel. “This is Sophie Ang.” She spoke the all-clear code and let go of the button. “Marcella, I know you mean well. But please. Leave me alone.”
“Of course not. Clearly you don’t know what friends are for.” Marcella set her hands on her hips. “What the hell did you quit for? You’re going to win this DAVID thing. You need to stay in the fight and stick to your guns!”
Sophie turned and walked away. She flopped face down on her bed.
“Sophie, I’m fixing you something to eat. Go get in the shower. You smell disgusting.” Marcella headed for the kitchen. “Get to it, or I’ll call Marcus to come over and help me put you in the shower whether you like it or not.”
Marcus Kamuela. Marcella’s intimidating Hawaiian HPD detective fiancé tolerated Sophie for Marcella’s sake, but they weren’t friends. The thought of that burly man hauling her by the scruff of the neck to the shower was humiliating, and Marcella would follow through on that kind of threat. Sophie was too depressed to be embarrassed, but that next phase of shame wasn’t far off—she could smell a whiff of it like smoke in the air.
She got to her feet, shuffling to the bathroom. She could hear Marcella talking on the phone in the kitchen, probably discussing her with Lei Texeira, their mutual friend. Sophie groaned aloud. “Daughter of a stillborn water buffalo!” Cursing in Thai just didn’t feel satisfying enough so she tried a string of English cusswords.
Those didn’t work either.
Sophie turned on the water. She avoided looking in the mirror. She’d just see her skin gone sallow, purple circles under her eyes, her cheekbones jutting.
At least her cropped hair was too short to give her any trouble.
Under the flow of water, the smell of coconut soap brought her beautiful mother Pim Wat Smithson back. This was the cycle that her mother went through. Sophie had her to thank for this ‘sickness of the soul’ as her father called it.
Mama had been depressed as long as Sophie could remember: withdrawn, lethargic, prone to tears, and unresponsive to her daughter’s needs, with rare times when she came out from beneath the disease to bloom like a flower. To reach adulthood and fall prey to the same affliction Sophie had struggled against with her parent felt like one more rock in the bag of them around her neck.
Marcella opened the door, letting steam out. “Hurry up in there. Food is almost ready.”
The door shut with a bang.
“Ugly sister of a poxy whore.”
“I heard that!” Marcella bellowed from the kitchen. “And I can’t understand it, but I know it’s not nice. I’ll kick your ass in the ring, ’cause that’s where we’re going next.”
Sophie snapped off the water and shook the extra water off her hair. Her brain sloshed in her skull with the abrupt head movement. She just needed to comply long enough to get Marcella off her back and then she could go back to bed.
Several hours later, Marcella said goodbye and left Sophie at the building after a thorough trouncing at Fight Club, the gym where they both practiced MMA fighting. The Doggie Daycare had dropped Ginger off, and she waited at the security station. Heading back up to the apartment holding the dog’s leash, Sophie had to admit she felt better.
She still had DAVID, even if the program was mothballed. She had friends. She had a dog that loved her. She just needed to beat the depression back enough to get ahead of it.
The elevator doors opened.
A tall, well-built, dark-haired man stood outside of her apartment, his hand raised to knock on the red lacquered door. He turned, raked her with a glance, and broke into a grin.
“Sophie Ang? Just the woman I came to see.”