Looking for Sophie

“Then…you’ll tell me where to find this little girl?”

When Julian didn’t answer immediately, Garnet hurriedly ate what she could. “Now you’ve clammed up. Talk to me,” she begged, knuckles white around her fork. “Tell me everything you know about her, please.”

“That’s not much,” he muttered. “The mother in the household and one of two school-age boys supposedly told a neighbor that their sister suffers from asthma. I wasn’t able to verify that.”

“Sophie was never sick a day in her life. And…there’s a mother?” Garnet held her breath and let it out slowly. “Are you saying Dale has remarried? Did you look for a marriage certificate?”

“You’re jumping to conclusions. First of all, this family isn’t using the name Patton. Second, the boys have yet another last name. They haven’t been in town long.” He picked up his beer. “I did check. There’s no record of this man and woman being issued a marriage license in Georgia. Tell me, does it bother you that your ex might have a new woman? One of your teacher friends said you and he were mismatched and that your marriage was a mistake from the get-go.”

Garnet stared at her plate. “Dale and I met at a housewarming party seven years ago. We were twenty-two. I’m an only child and my parents both had demanding careers that took up a lot of their time. You could say we had a chilly household. One day, shortly after graduation, my college roommate, Jenny, suggested we send résumés to Alaska. I was beyond ready to leave Chicago. I met Dale during that…exploratory phase in my life.”

She balled up her napkin. “He was the antithesis of any man I’d dated before. I can’t deny we shared some good years—before he began saying I was obsessive about wanting a healthy savings account to ensure Sophie’s security.”

Garnet’s tone tightened. “I wonder if he knows I emptied that savings account in six months searching for him. I doubt he’d care that I had to sell the house and move to an efficiency apartment. In the move, I kept Sophie’s favorite toys, but gave her clothes to a local church. Mostly, I couldn’t bear the reminder that at the end of a year she would’ve outgrown everything.”

Julian polished off his beer and waited to see if Garnet would volunteer tidbits that would ring any bells. Apparently, she’d reached her limit. And it bothered him to see the raw emotion in her haunted eyes.

“Did you keep any pictures of your ex-husband?”

“I’m not sure. I threw a lot of stuff away. What about this man in Georgia? Can you describe him?”