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Chapter 18 of 20

Chapter 18 — WHAT SOPHIA SAID

By Mavenlus Desk · 2026-08-29

They discharged her on the Wednesday. Six days inpatient.

She did not talk about it for eleven days. Then, in the truck, at a red light on Route 9, she said it all at once, the way children do.

Sophia: Aunt Sarah came to the window a lot.

Mark: She did?

Sophia: She kept doing this.

And she put her palm flat against the truck window.

Sophia: And she was crying and I couldn't hear her. And then she went away and then she came back and she pointed at the shed.

Mark: The shed?

Sophia: She pointed at it lots of times and I didn't want to go in the shed because of the spiders.

I pulled the truck over into the lot of the Presbyterian church on Route 9 and sat there.

The shed is not locked. It has never been locked. There is a folded blue tarpaulin in there and an old sleeping bag from when we tried camping.

It is fourteen degrees warmer inside that shed than it is on bluestone.

She stood at a window for two hours pointing at the only warm thing she could get to from the inside of a house she could not open.

And a five-year-old did not go, because of spiders.

Sophia: Daddy, why are we stopped?

Mark: Just checking something on the map, baby.

All chapters
1. Chapter 1 — THE CAKE 2. Chapter 2 — THE STONES 3. Chapter 3 — THE BALCONY 4. Chapter 4 — NINETY-FOUR POINT EIGHT 5. Chapter 5 — THE CALL 6. Chapter 6 — WHAT BEV WROTE 7. Chapter 7 — SIX DAYS 8. Chapter 8 — THE DOOR I INSTALLED 9. Chapter 9 — THE KEY 10. Chapter 10 — DANA OKORO 11. Chapter 11 — LUCAS 12. Chapter 12 — WHAT WAS IN THE BUCKET 13. Chapter 13 — WHAT SHE WAS ACTUALLY SAYING 14. Chapter 14 — CLAIRE 15. Chapter 15 — R311.2 16. Chapter 16 — THE PHONE 17. Chapter 17 — SATURDAY 18. Chapter 18 — WHAT SOPHIA SAID 19. Chapter 19 — THE PORCH 20. Chapter 20 — THE DOOR WITH NO KEYHOLE