Chapter Thirty-Five, Part Two

That evening over dinner Sophie told her father what she had found out. To her annoyance, he already seemed to know.

“Norma mentioned it soon after we moved here.”

“And you didn’t do anything about it?”

Robert set down his fork. “What do you suggest I do? I have no legal right in this town to intervene. The town council has determined that unless a child’s life is in danger, they have no authority over what a parent does.”

“But maybe his life is in danger. Mateo says his dad goes crazy sometimes for no reason at all.”

“Yes,” her father sighed and returned to his meal. “Sometimes people who have been traumatized become that way, usually if they suffered during a war. And Mateo’s father saw a lot.”

“You and Mom were in the war and it didn’t make you crazy.”

Robert hesitated before answering. “Maybe not crazy, but we weren’t the same people after as we were before. And Mateo’s father had it worse. He was in some of the heaviest fighting, then he was captured and tortured for many months.” He picked up his wine glass, took two big gulps, then bent back over his plate. “That’s enough about Mateo for now. We’ll continue being nice to him, and if you’d like to order a Christmas present for him, you can. But there is nothing we can do about his home situation.”

Sophie kicked the table leg in annoyance.

“Stop that, or you can go to your room.”

“Fine.” She picked up her fork and stirred her beans, but didn’t eat any. “But if you could have seen how bad he looked, and then that awful house—“

Robert looked up. “You didn’t say you had gone over to his house. When was this?”

She tried to lie but her father cut her off.

“You can’t just walk away from school anytime you feel like it.”

“I don’t. Just this one time. It was important.”

“Nothing is more important right now than your education.”

Sophie threw down her fork. “There’s lots of things more important, like friends, and helping people in need, and—”

“That’s enough. Go to your room. Now.”

For a moment Sophie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Her father had never lost his temper with her before. Her mother had sometimes been impatient, but not her dad. She stared, and the look in his eyes told her he was serious. She stood and took a few tentative steps from the table, then fled upstairs.

#

After she had gone, Robert tried to finish his dinner, but it was no use. Everything tasted dry now, as appetizing as wood. He finished his wine instead and poured himself another glass.

He hadn’t meant to get angry with Sophie. Mateo’s circumstances were upsetting to him too, all the more so because he was in the habit of solving problems but could find no remedy for the boy’s situation. But more than that, the problem of Emily weighed on him, as did having to wait on a glacial postal system that may or may not result in help from the only two people he could trust in this country.

It had been a mistake to come back here. He should have returned only long enough to get the money, sell the store and lodge, and then leave. It still wasn’t too late to do that, of course, but a part of him balked. Taking Sophie out of school in the middle of a semester was probably not a good idea. They should at least stay until Christmas. Or better yet, until the end of the school year. That would give him plenty of time to find out if Will Channing knew he was back in the USS. And it would give him time to plan.

A sudden thought struck him that was so funny he burst out laughing. And the more he thought about it, the funnier the whole situation became, until he found himself gasping for air, nearly choking as he struggled to bring himself under control.

Diana.

She had lived her entire life without a plan. It had been one of the first things he noticed about her, and one of the few things he ever criticized her for. Obviously her influence had rubbed off on him, and not the other way around, or he would have never done such a crazy thing as come to Castaño without at least three plans as well as a few alternatives if any of those should fail.

Robert stood and wiped away a tear. Had he been crying because it was all so absurd, or from something else? He didn’t want to go too far down that road, so instead he took his dishes to the sink. After he finished washing them he would go upstairs and try to patch things up with Sophie. They would try again to make this crazy life work out. And when he finally got his letter from Miguel and Amalia, he would sit down and make a plan. A real plan, just like he used to do.