Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 58th cycle. Now cycle 59!
"A Little Secret"
(Older) Rachel, Sophie (OC; daughter), Chloe Clarke (OC; guest)
Red series
(no listing yet; sequel to "Talk On, Talk Out")
On her second morning in New York, Chloe had said she wanted to explore the neighborhood. Sophie had offered to go with her, but their guest had insisted that she needed to be able to navigate on her own. She had told this much to her mother when she woke up and asked where Chloe was.
"I'll go look for her if she isn't back by lunch," Sophie assured her.
"Right," Rachel chuckled as she sat with her coffee. "You two have a good time yesterday?"
"Oh, yes, I'll be getting her in heaps of trouble in no time," Sophie joked, ignoring her mother's side look. She had debated whether or not to bring this up with her. Chloe hadn't particularly sworn her to secrecy, but she had told only her, so…
"Hey, what's going on there?" Rachel spoke up, and Sophie looked at her, chin up, evasive eyes.
"Well…"
"Sophie," Rachel stared.
"I sort of found out why she ran away, back when you met her," she sighed. Rachel had not seen this as the answer, and she sat up. "She was looking for her father."
"Her father?" her mind had gone to the same place Sophie's had.
"Her birth father," she clarified. "She hasn't seen him since she was a baby, but then she saw a picture in a newspaper of a guy that looked like him, and he was in New York. Here," she grabbed her phone and pulled up the photo. "Snapped a shot when she wasn't looking, just in case," she turned the phone around for her mother to see. Rachel looked, and she took the phone from Sophie's hand.
"Peter Stenger," she stated, and Sophie paused.
"What?"
"His name is Peter Stenger," she stared at the picture in disbelief.
"You know him?" Sophie almost had to laugh.
"So do you or at least you used to. He used to work at the theater when you were eleven or twelve. He was the one who would bring chocolate all the time. You called him Petey. He hated it," Rachel recalled.
"But he'd let me do it," Sophie smiled, remembering as well.
"He told me he had a daughter once, too. He said she lived with her mother, I didn't think anything of it."
"I can't believe this…" Sophie was stunned. "You have to tell her."
"One thing at a time," Rachel shook her head. "I haven't seen the man in a decade, there's no telling whether or not I'll find him."
"But she needs to know she was right about him," Sophie pushed on.
"Right about what?" Rachel asked.
"She wanted to see if she'd gotten this love for theater and performance from someone," she replied. Rachel sighed, looking back to the picture.
"Of all the people, what are the odds?" She returned Sophie her phone. "I'll look. I'll try and find him, but you can't tell her any of this, not until I have something to tell her, one way or the other. Even if I find him, there's no promise he'll want to see her."
"Why wouldn't he?" Sophie couldn't see that as being possible.
"He did leave. Has he ever called her or contacted her in any way?" Rachel asked, and Sophie didn't need to reply on that.
"She should still know," she declared. "If she has her father out there, then she deserves to know." Rachel placed her hand over her daughter's, curling her fingers underneath. She would have given anything to spare her girl losing her own father as she did.
"She will."
Sophie had gone looking for Chloe in the end, not because she had been lost, but because she wanted to. The girl had become bonded to their family in so little time, in ways even Chloe couldn't understand yet.
She had found the shock of red hair a couple of streets over. "I was on my way back," she promised, although there was the slightest hint of relief in her eyes at the sight of her idol's daughter.
"Great, then I can walk you," Sophie offered her arm, and Chloe played along, taking the arm. "Listen, I might have told my mother about the thing with you and your father, the picture in the paper and all that."
"You did?" Chloe asked, sounding more nervous than angry. "She won't tell my mother, will she?"
"Not a word," Sophie vowed. "She cares about you, you know? My mother, I mean. Yours does, too, obviously, I just mean… Girls and their fathers, it's always been something for her, with both of hers, and mine…" Chloe had caught the look that flashed across her face, and Sophie tried to smile it away. "Don't worry, I just go into my little head space sometimes when I think about him. Sort of been doing that a lot these days."
"That's okay, it's normal to miss him," Chloe told her.
"I know," Sophie breathed. "And you must know all about it, don't you? With everything you know about my mother."
"Yeah," Chloe looked down, like she felt she'd been invading on their lives. It was one thing to read about it; it was another to walk and talk and live with the people who had gone through it themselves.
"You know that picture in the hallway, right next to the staircase?" Sophie asked, and Chloe nodded. "Every morning, she greets it, and every night she tells it good night. When she's out of town, it goes with her. I was ten years old when he died, and I would see her do that, didn't understand how this made anything better. But I would say 'good morning' and 'good night' to that picture, too, like someday it would bring me my father back, if my mother believed in it hard enough. When I understood that wouldn't happen, I… didn't take it well. I don't know why I'm telling you all this. But I guess the point of it is that… My mother's always been concerned with the affairs of fathers and daughters."
THE END
A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.
In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are
always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!