Sunshine After The Rain

Chapter Sixteen

Sophie was in the kitchen putting away the leftover Chinese food when her son bolted in the room, followed by Lucas, who was walking at a much more relaxed pace.

"We ran outta firewood!"

"Okay?" Sophie looked over at Lucas, trying to get a hint of why her son appeared so frantic.

"We haven't even had s'mores yet, and the fires gonna go out soon," he explained further, acting as if he'd just told her a meteor would bring the world to an end in thirty days.

She supposed that was the beauty of children, being able to give such a shit about things like that, yet not worry about the actual issues the world faced. "So, hurry and make s'mores."

Justin rolled her eyes at her, and Sophie was about to correct him, then realized she'd appear a hypocrite with Lucas in the room, having made the same gesture toward him just a few days ago. "But once it got dark, we were gunna tell ghost stories."

Seeing as it was at least an hour before darkness hit, she guessed by the time it did, there would be little more than smoldering ash.

Growing tired of being on her son's bad side, Sophie relented. "I think there's a gas station not too far from here that sells bundles of firewood. Does anyone know where my purse is?"

Justin shrugged, never knowing where anything was, including the things right in front of him.

"You left it in the dining room after I said I was buying dinner," Lucas chimed in.

Though Sophie was more than happy to pay for takeout, she also knew when to pick her battles and when to relent. She went over into the next room, and sure enough, her purse was right on the edge of the table from hell.

Rather than pick up her purse and walk out the door, she just kept staring at the thing. Sure, she and Laura were on okay terms now, but at that time, hell, even two weeks ago, she'd never done or said a single genuinely kind thing.

This was one of the first of many times she'd been made to feel unwanted. It was one of the first times she'd kept her mouth shut so as not to make waves. The table was the beginning of a lengthy line of putting up with shit rather than standing up for herself.

"I've got some money if you can't find it!" Lucas yelled before making his way into the room. She felt his stare for a while before he approached her with caution. "What's up?"

Sophie crossed her arms in front of her chest, her eyes never straying from that giant, piece of shit, spiteful bastard of a table. "Would this be enough firewood?"

"What the table?" He asked.

"And chairs."

"What's wrong with it?"

Sophie pried her eyes from the piece of furniture to look up at Lucas. "This table represents pretty much every crappy moment of my marriage and every time I should have spoken up, but didn't."

"And how did it do all that?" Lucas inquired further, mimicking her by crossing his own arms.

It was hard to express all the feelings and thoughts this table gave her, but Sophie gave it a shot anyhow. "Do you know that I didn't pick out a single piece of furniture?" Sophie asked rhetorically, not bothering to wait for his answer since she already knew what it was. "This is our first house, and every time I picked a piece of furniture out, Jason didn't like it and we ended up going with his choice every time because I didn't want to seem ungrateful for our first house that he paid the down payment on.

"Then he tells me I can pick out the dining room set. When I showed him what I wanted, I thought would be a good fit for the rest of it. He told me to send it to Laura because she wanted to buy us a housewarming present. A week later she shows up with this piece of shit table," she continued, uncrossing her arms to point at it, "that had zero in common with the photo I sent her. He never allowed me to replace it because it was a gift, and now that he's gone I want to burn this son-of-a-bitch to the ground."