Sophie’s Secret (5 page)

“What’s documental evidence?” Kitty said.

“You would already know that if you were an archaeologist,” Fiona said.

“But I’m not!” Kitty said.

“You’re supposed to pretend!”

“Oh,” Kitty said.

Sophie patted her hand. “Maybe you should just listen at first, until you get the hang of it.”

Kitty nodded glumly.

Sophie pushed her glasses up on her nose and went on. “Remember that we must scrape off only an eighth of an inch of dirt at a time and put it on the screens.”

Sophie pointed a proud finger at the old pieces of screen she had placed over the openings of the white buckets.

“Why?” Kitty said.

Fiona gave a sigh that sounded as if it came from the pit of her stomach.

“So any pieces of artifacts will stay on the screen and the dirt will fall through,” Sophie said.

Kitty craned her neck toward the buckets. “Those are going to be some pretty small articles.”

“Artifacts!” Fiona practically screamed at her. Fiona’s skin blushed toward the shade of a radish.

“I don’t even think the dirt is going to go through holes that small,” Kitty said.

Sophie had to admit she was probably right. “Okay,” she said. “We won’t use the screens. We’ll just look at our dirt and if there’s anything in it, we’ll put it in this bucket, and we’ll put the dirt in that bucket.”

“Excellent plan, Doctor,” Fiona said. “You amaze me with your expertise.”

“Her what?” Kitty said.

Fiona sighed again. “Just pretend you know what I’m talking about, okay?”

They all went to work with their trowels, carefully scraping off soil with the sides of them, examining it closely for signs of armor or seventeenth century pottery, and dumping the dirt into the buckets.

After ten minutes, Dr. Demetria Diggerty’s hand was starting to hurt, and Kitty was complaining that this was boring and that she was freezing. Even Artifacta Allen rocked back on her heels and said, “This is going to take forever, Soph—Doctor. I doubt that we’re going to find any valuable evidence until we’ve dug down further.”

“Yeah,” Kitty said. “Don’t you have any bigger shovels?”

That isn’t the way they do it!
Sophie wanted to say to them. But she knew if she did, Kitty would abandon the whole thing, and she and Fiona were determined to show Kitty that it was far better to be a Corn Flake than a Corn Pop.

She adjusted her Winnie-the-Pooh ball cap—the closest thing she could find to those hats the archaeologists at Jamestown were wearing—and nodded slowly.

“Agreed,” she said. “Let’s dig down two feet before we start sifting again.”

“I would suggest three,” Fiona said.

Kitty didn’t say anything. She was already coming out of the garage dragging three shovels.

So they went to work again, talking as much like archaeologists as they could and hauling out huge shovelfuls of dirt and piling it against the fence. It turned out to be a lot more fun than scraping off tiny bits at a time, and even when it started to drizzle and Sophie had to wipe off her glasses every few minutes, they kept on; “spirits high!” as Fiona put it. In spite of her whining that it was time to get the camera out, Kitty got into the project too.

“I wanna be the first one to have my shovel hit the buried treasure chest,” she said.

Both Fiona and Sophie stopped and stared at her.

“It’s not that kind of treasure we’re looking for,” Sophie said.

“Then what is it?” Kitty said.

“Don’t you remember, Madam Munford?” Fiona said between her teeth. “We are searching for small things that will help us understand the way the people before us lived.”

Kitty poked her shovel back into the now very wet dirt. “I think they left a treasure chest,” she said, and kept digging.

Dr. Demetria Diggerty smiled to herself. Perhaps she didn’t have the brightest assistant in the field, but at least she was enthusiastic. By the time the camera crew arrived to film their progress, Madam Munford would be as professional as she and Artifacta were. She lifted her head from her digging to tell them both how much she appreciated their hard-working attitudes—and found herself looking right up into Daddy’s scarlet face.

“Sophie—what in the world are you THINKING?”

Kitty whimpered, dropped her shovel with a splash into the hole, and took off toward the house, crying, “I have to call my mom. I have to go home!”

Fiona, on the other hand, leaned on her shovel and wafted an arm over their handiwork. “This is an archaeological dig,” she said.

“No,” Daddy said. “This is a mess. Sophie—you know what it took for your mother and me to put this yard in last summer—and here you are digging it up! What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking we would find some artifacts,” Sophie said.

“And I’M thinking you’re going to find the sprinkler system and chop a hole in a line!”

“We would know a sprinkler pipe wasn’t an artifact, Mr. LaCroix,” Fiona said. “We’re professionals.”

“Fiona,” Daddy said, with his eyes still boring into Sophie, “go call your Boppa to come pick you up.”

“Right now?” Fiona said.

“Go, Artifacta,” Sophie said. “I will contact you later.”

“Don’t count on it, ‘Artifacta’”, Daddy said as Fiona reluctantly put down her shovel and trudged toward the house. “Sophie is going to be out of the loop for a while.”

Sophie could feel Dr. Demetria Diggerty fighting to take over, yearning to turn and call to her colleague, “Don’t worry. I will find a way. We will not be kept from our duty to history”—but she strained to stay focused on Daddy. It sounded like she was in enough trouble already.

“Artifacta?” Daddy said. “Never mind.” He ran a hand over his hair as he looked down at the hole they’d been so proud of a few minutes before. His eyes were still blazing.

“I can’t believe you did this,” he said. “Is all that therapy doing any good at all?”

“Yes,” Sophie said. “I’m making good grades. I have friends now—”

“You have friends, all right. Friends that aren’t any more responsible than you are.” Daddy snatched Sophie’s shovel from her and picked up the other two with one hand. She could see the muscles in his jaw going into spasms. He looked over at the pile of dirt that had now turned to mud against the fence, and groaned.

“All right, here’s the deal,” he said. “It looks to me like you need some time apart from your ‘friends’ so you can think about your responsibilities. One week—”

A whole WEEK? Just for a hole?
“No phone, no email, no TV, no camera.”

“Can’t I just fill in the hole and let that be my punishment?” Sophie said.

“Go to your room, Sophie,” Daddy said, “before I say something we’ll both regret.”

Dr. Demetria Diggerty stormed to her living quarters, her dignity dashed and her project in ruins. But as she slammed her door behind her and hurled herself across her cot, she swore with her fists doubled that even the evil Enemy of History, Master LaCroix, would not stand in her way.

But that didn’t help much. Sophie sat up on her bed and hugged a purple pillow against her chest.

Jesus,
she thought.
I’m supposed to imagine Jesus when I get mad—not Dr. Diggerty.

She closed her eyes and tried to picture the kind man who always seemed to understand. She could almost see him—but not quite. His edges were fuzzy this time.

Sophie squeezed her eyes shut tighter and tried some more.
I know you love me, Jesus. There aren’t any ifs anymore. I know you’re there —

But she couldn’t quite see his face in her mind. It was a good thing, she decided, that the next day was a Dr. Peter day.

Daddy told her that night, when he came in to get the camera, that he couldn’t keep her from being with her friends at school, but he “advised her” to spend any of her free time there working on her studies and “getting serious.” She didn’t remind him that there wasn’t much point in getting good grades if she didn’t get to have her camera anyway. She decided it would be better to discuss that with Dr. Peter.

So all day long she suffered through Kitty’s tearful looks and Fiona’s notes asking her why she didn’t stage a mutiny on her father, which was what SHE would do. Finally, school was over and Mama picked her up to take her to Hampton for her appointment.

At first they rode in stiff silence, as if the air between them had been spray starched. All Sophie could think about was that if Mama was going to go along with this heinous punishment, she couldn’t confide in her. She didn’t know WHAT Mama was thinking.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Mama said finally.

“No, thank you,” Sophie said.

But she did squirm in her seat belt and say, “I’m sorry if it upset you that I dug a hole in the yard. I didn’t think you would mind.”

“We don’t always know what people would and wouldn’t mind about what belongs to them,” Mama said. “That’s why we ask first.”

But you weren’t there!
Sophie wanted to say.
You were off doing something for Lacie. Like usual.

Sophie even turned to her to maybe say SOME of that, but Mama looked as if she were already thinking about something else. Something that had nothing to do with her.

The minute Mama pulled up to the clinic, Sophie was out of the Suburban and inside Dr. Peter’s office. As always, he was waiting for her at the front counter with a “Sophie-Lophie-Loodle! Good to see you!”

“We need to talk,” she said.

“Of course,” he said. His face grew serious and his blue eyes stopped twinkling behind his glasses. “That’s what I’m here for.”

Sophie climbed up onto the window seat in Dr. Peter’s office and grabbed one of the face pillows to crunch against her. She could feel a stuffed nose pressing into her chest, and she plucked angrily at an ear that poked out the side.

“Okay, Loodle,” Dr. Peter said when he was settled at the other end of the seat. “Give me the goods.”

She did, pouring out everything, good and evil. Aunt Bailey and Uncle Preston. Jamestown. Dr. Demetria Diggerty. Bra shopping. And, of course, the hideous groundation punishment.

“And you know what’s the absolute worst?” she said when she had come to the end.

Dr. Peter shook his head of short, curly, reddish brown hair. He was looking at her soberly.

“I tried to imagine Jesus so I could ask for help—and then I was gonna wait for it, like you taught me—only it didn’t work.”

“You didn’t get the help yet?”

“No! I couldn’t even imagine his face!” Sophie swallowed hard. “I needed to see his eyes in my mind.”

“And it upset you that you couldn’t.”

Sophie nodded. “Are you sure he’s really always there? He doesn’t get busy with somebody else’s stuff?”

“I’m absolutely sure. That’s the cool thing about Jesus: with him, it’s always all about you and him, just like it’s all about me and him, and all about whoever and him.”

“Then where is he?” Sophie said.

Dr. Peter pressed his hand against his chest. “He’s in there. We know that for sure, because you always fill up your space with the things that God loves.”

“Then I guess I had some No-God space last night,” Sophie said.

The serious face broke into a crinkly road map of smiling lines. “I like that, Loodle. There can be only two types of space within a person, God and No-God. Where we want to stay is our choice.”

“I want to stay in God-space! Only it’s hard when I’m mad.”

“Understood,” Dr. Peter said. “But you can stay in God-space if you know more about Jesus—what he was like on earth and still is in Spirit. Hey—” His eyes sparked to life again. “You want to do a little archaeology into Jesus’ childhood?”

Sophie squinted at him through her glasses. “Wouldn’t we have to go to Nazareth to do that?”

“Nope—although wouldn’t we have a blast?”

Sophie had to agree that they would. In fact, she had to work hard for a minute to keep Dr. Demetria Diggerty from taking completely over and planning the trip.

“No, our best site for digging,” Dr. Peter went on, “is in the gospel of Luke. I’m going to write down some Bible verses for you to read and picture in your mind. It sounds like you’re going to have plenty of time for that this week.”

Sophie scowled. “I sure hope this works,” she said. “’Cause I’m tired of getting mad all the time.”

Dr. Peter let a silence fall, though it wasn’t a starched-up one like she had sat through with Mama in the car. While he was writing on a piece of paper with a purple Sharpie, Sophie sighed back into the cushions and let her thoughts settle down.

“Tell me something, Loodle,” Dr. Peter said finally. His voice was soft. “What do you want most in the world right now, right this very second?”

Sophie didn’t even have to think about it. “I want my father to stand up for me, just once,” she said. “Instead of always saying everything that happens is my fault and telling me what I should have done different.”

Dr. Peter nodded as he handed her the paper. “It’s time to dig in with God then, Loodle. I think this is going to help you meet the challenge.”

Dig in. Meet a challenge.

Now THOSE sounded like words for Dr. Demetria Diggerty. Sophie took the paper and gave Dr. Peter a promise nod.

Five