The Secret of You and Me - Melissa Lenhardt Page 0,38

her throat. “I realized pretty quick that Charlie could serve another purpose: making my mother believe you and I had been experimenting. When you told her that I was the one who instigated everything...” She swallowed and looked at me with an expression of betrayal, even after all these years. “Is that how you thought of what happened between us? That I coerced you?”

“No. But, you did make the first move, in everything. It wasn’t like that in the end, but it was in the beginning, and you know it.”

“Well, Brenda was beside herself. It was easy to let her catch Charlie and me in the act. My God, the relief on her face. It was a close second to the relief she felt when I told her I was pregnant.”

“Did you do that on purpose, too?”

Sophie’s mouth tightened, puckered slightly in anger. “No. Broken condom.”

I stood and walked to the net, my back to her. When I’d heard about Sophie and Charlie, I assumed it had been accidental. Something that happened when they were drunk and talking shit about me. Let’s show her. I’d tormented myself for months with images of them touching, kissing, making love, laughing at me. It had never occurred to me that Sophie had engineered the whole thing to protect our secret and to save her skin. Poor Charlie never had a chance. I knew better than anyone how effortlessly Sophie could make someone fall in love with her.

“Did you ever love him?” I said over my shoulder. I was too afraid of the answer to look at her.

“Yes.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat and nodded, relieved Charlie hadn’t been wholly cuckolded, but jealous all the same. After losing Sophie it had taken me years to open myself up emotionally to another person, but Sophie had managed it within weeks.

“But, not like I loved you.” She said it so softly I almost didn’t hear her.

“You’re eighteen years too late,” I said almost as softly as she had. Not sure If I wanted her to hear it or not.

“The final letter,” she said, voice stronger, “explained everything, apologized for everything. Begged your forgiveness. I wanted to be with you, wherever you were, whatever it meant.”

I spun around to face her, my heartbeat throbbing in my chest, my ears roaring so that I wasn’t sure I’d heard her correctly. I hoped I hadn’t, but one look at Sophie told me I had. Sophie’s eyes and voice were clear, and she looked happier than she had since I’d been back, as if she could float up from the rickety wooden bench she sat on.

“I took over your job at the Char-Grill and had saved some money. Not much, but enough for gas and hotels to get to you. Wherever you were. All you had to do was ask. I knew you were out of basic training, thanks to Emmadean. So I told you to write to me at my grandmother’s. I went to visit her like I did every summer and waited.

“At first I thought my nausea was because I was sick with anticipation waiting to hear from you. Every day that passed, I knew you weren’t going to write, and I knew if you did, it wouldn’t matter anymore. I stopped at a gas station on the drive home. I’d barely finished peeing before the pink lines showed up in the window.”

I sat down next to her. Years of pent-up resentment drained away, leaving me saddled with regret. I’d always taken comfort in the knowledge I’d been blameless, at least mostly, in the whole affair.

I took Sophie’s hand and held it between both of mine in my lap. I traced one of her smooth red nails with my thumb. “I should have read them. I dreamed...of you coming to me. I wanted that so much.” Sophie shifted her hand to intertwine her fingers with mine. “When I heard about you and Charlie, I burned them.” I swallowed. “If I’d asked you to come, after you took the test, would you have?”

Sophie shook her head and wiped tears from her cheeks. Her voice was hoarse. “No.” Her eyes met mine. “If you’d read the letter, would you have asked?”

I thought of my last conversation with Brenda Russell, her parting threat. “No.”

Sophie squeezed my hand and released it. She stood and started putting her gear together. “Then we are both where we were meant to be.”

Sophie was tossing her bag in her car when I popped the trunk