«Sophie, honey your shoelaces are untied.»
Declan was focused on Helen's screen, trying his best to understand the test results at hand. But when Erika's voice chimed in again, he got intrigued and looked at the toddler. Sophie was trying her best to catch up with baby-Alice, crawling on the floor with the toddler's building block. She was obviously thinking hard about a way to get the block back without hurting her friend.
"Sophie?" Erika sing-sang, to no avail.
The young mother tried to catch the kid's gaze, trying yet another time to catch her attention.
"Soooophiiiiie…"
Declan raised an eyebrow. He had no experience with small children, besides emergency medical aid to civilians in warzones. He had seen toddlers ignoring their parents' call, but this seemed… Different, somehow. Sophie was a striking child, almost eerie sometimes. She could act like a toddler and then look at you with those big grey eyes and you'd see something adult-like floating around, and it felt uncomfortable, as if she knew something you didn't about yourself. Sometimes, it sent chills down Declan's spine.
He threw a look at Helen, who had been following Erika's effort, waiting for the moment she would have to intervene.
"Does she do that often?" he asked.
Helen nodded. It was a recurring thing that she too had noticed. Whereas Alice, at only nine months, had no problem reacting to her own name, Sophie had these little phasing outs. It was notalwaysthe case. After all, her name had come to her parents as something the fetus had chosen on its own, flowing from their mouths at the same time, without a second of reflection on the matter. But it did happen regularly. It never lasted long. A few seconds. At times, maybe a couple of minutes. Helen was not particularly worried about it, putting in on her daughter's ability to focus entirely on one, and only one thing, too absorbed to care about the world around her. It reminded Helen of Nikola sometimes and she could not help finding it very cute, at times. After all, she was a toddler. It was not unusual for a toddler to stare into space for a while as if seeing ghosts, or running decidedly only to forget what their intention had been in the first place.
Anticipating Declan's question, she smiled:
"Ihavechecked. Her hearing is more than acute." She stated.
She knew Declan quite enough to see he was going through his encyclopedic knowledge to pinpoint what could be wrong with her daughter. She had to act fast, before he could come up with a terrible brain disease.
She frowned.
"Is that chocolate in your breast-pocket?" She asked, her voice lowered to a point where she could barely be heard above Alice's babbling.
That seemed to magically redirect Sophie's attention from the baby to Declan, as she scampered towards her mother's desk, her hands flailing out at her sides and her head bobbing frantically. She almost fell, only to catch Declan's combat trouser in her fist so as to find some stability. When she felt reasonably sure she would not stumble to the ground, she raised her head, planting her deep, ageless grey stare in Declan's eyes, smiling with all her baby teeth.
How could one resist such a child? Her starry eyes and light brown curls were simply to die for, Declan thought.
Helen chuckled.
"I'm sorry honey. I thought Declan had chocolate but it turns out it's only a pen." She explained, stroking her daughter's hair.
The toddler sighed, pouting, looking as if life was just too much to handle after such a deception. She released her hold on Declan's leg to stand there, unsure as to what her goal should be now.
"Sophie, your shoe is untied. Would you let me fix it for you so you won't trip on it?" Helen asked.
Sophie nodded and Helen crouched to help her.
She flashed a teasing smile at Declan.
"See? Great ears, but selective attention." She explained as her daughter's hands were playing with a strand of long brown hair.
Declan's head tilted, not so convinced. Still, as cute as this child was, he could not shake the eerie feeling she gave him.