What Happened to Sophie Wilder Read Online Free Page A

I’ve wanted to meet you.”
    â€œWhy are you calling?”
    She didn’t like taking this tone but felt bound to it.
    â€œI’m at Saint Vincent’s, recovering from some surgery. Minor stuff, exploratory. Supposed to let me out two hours ago. But one of the nurses gave me something for pain. Now they say they have to release me into someone’s care.”
    Sophie took a moment with this news.
    â€œI’m sorry to hear about that,” she eventually said, which was true. “I hope you’re all right.”

    â€œSixty-two-year-old man, and they can’t let me go without a chaperone.”
    â€œDid you try the number I gave you?”
    â€œTom wouldn’t—that is, I couldn’t get through to him. I just need someone to come down here and walk me outside, that’s all. Maybe sign some kind of form. Once I’m out on the street I’ll be fine.”
    â€œIf you wait a few hours, I’m sure they’ll let you go.”
    â€œI can’t wait,” he said. “I can’t stay here.”
    She felt then his desperation’s full force. The sound in his voice wasn’t drink, or even whatever drugs they’d given him, but terror fighting to contain itself.
    â€œIsn’t there anyone else who can help?”
    If there had been anyone else, he never would have called.
    â€œPerhaps you should try Tom again later.”
    They both knew he’d already reached Tom, already been refused.
    â€œI can’t leave on my own until tomorrow, and I can’t spend another night here.”
    She wasn’t sure she wanted to help the man, wasn’t even entirely sure that it was the right thing to do. The voice that urged her on, she recognized with some surprise, was one she hadn’t heard for some time—not the voice of conscience, but the voice of curiosity. The voice that said, It would make a great story .
    â€œI’ll be there in half an hour.”
    Â 
    In her first years with Tom, Sophie had often thought about meeting his father. She had worried over it, dreamed of it. A great deal of mystery had built up around him, mystery that Tom was not inclined to address, and so it was natural that she should be curious. But her interest went further: if
there was a mystery she wished to solve in meeting Tom’s father, it may have been Tom himself.
    She hadn’t thought at first that there was anything mysterious about him. He was just another of those boys who majored in economics and lived on the row, the boys she fell in with during her breaks from Charlie, boys who became temporarily enthralled, finding her unlike the other girls, but proved ready to move along as quickly as she was. It was senior year when he introduced himself, the second day of the fall recess. Though the dining hall was open, it was as empty as the rest of campus when she came in for lunch. She was sitting alone at one of the long rectangular tables, eating a salad in a large plastic bowl, when he set his tray down beside her.
    â€œYou’re in my philosophy class,” he said.
    Indeed, she was. Introduction to Ontology.
    â€œIn a manner of speaking,” she answered.
    â€œHow’s that?”
    â€œI mean, we may need to define our predicate more precisely.”
    He looked genially confused as he sat down.
    â€œI don’t really get it,” he told her. “I’m just fulfilling my Lib Arts requirement.”
    â€œAh, yes,” she said. “Lib Arts. I’d forgotten about that requirement.”
    He didn’t seem to know that she was being rude. He might just have been dumb, but she suspected—and he later admitted—that he’d been waiting some time to talk to her and wouldn’t be put off by her sarcasm.
    â€œSo what are you doing here?” she asked, trying to be friendlier now, though it didn’t come out that way.
    He’d been given an extension on a paper, which he’d finished