Lost Girl, Gone Girl

December 1991

Sofia Collins Stark’s first real memories are of her grandparents’ funeral. She has snippets and feelings from before then but fully fledged memory starts at the funeral. She was four years and one month old when her grandpa and nonna died in a car accident on their way to Washington DC.

Sofia didn’t really understand at that age what it meant for someone to die. After all, her grandpa and nonna had just been at her birthday party a couple of weeks ago. They still had to attend next year’s party. She was going to be five and it was going to be extraordinary. Not to mention Christmas was in just two days; they couldn't possibly miss that.

There were a lot of sad faces at the funeral. People were crying. A lot of people were apologizing to her dad. They were all so sorry. Sometimes they apologized to Sofia, too, but mostly she just stood quietly at her dad’s side.

Eventually, they took their seats at the front of the chapel. Sofia tugged on her dad’s arm.

“Daddy?”

“What, baby?”

“Why’s everyone sorry? Did they make grandpa and nonna dead?”

Howard Anthony Walter Stark Jr started going by Howie when he got into middle school. He was still Junior to the family but to everyone else, he was Howie. Except to Sofia. To Sofia, he was just dad.

Sofia only had one name. She didn’t like that her Uncle Tony called her Sofie (or Sasquatch or Sopapilla or Sonya or Satellite or Solar Panel) because her name was Sofia. But she guesses that it’s alright when her dad called her “babygirl.”

“No, babygirl. No, they didn’t. That’s just what people say to you when you lose somebody you love.”

“We lost them? Why can’t we find them again? We can bring them home.”

Edwin Jarvis sat in the row behind Sofia and Howie Stark. He started crying a bit harder at that moment. Sofia liked Mr Jarvis because his accent was fun to mimic and he made good toast. He’d been rather weepy since the news a week ago.

Howie pulled Sofia into his lap and talked a little softer.

“When someone dies,” he said, “there’s no getting them back. Like sometimes, when you lose something, you never find it again.”

“What if you look reeeeeeaaaaally hard? Not even then?”

“Not even then.”

Sofia looked up at the big wooden boxes at the front of the chapel. There were two massive pictures of her grandparents, one next to each box. They didn’t look right. They weren’t old enough.

She’d never known her grandparents when they weren’t old and grey with wrinkly faces and creaky bones. She wonders what they were like when they were four years and a month old. Would they have been friends with Sofia?

Sofia’s Uncle Tony sat down in the chair next to her dad.

“Hey, Tones. You alright?”

Tony smiled thinly at his brother. “Great.”

Sofia's dad reached over to hold Uncle Tony’s hand. They looked at each other for a really long time. Her dad and Uncle Tony did that sometimes: just looked at each other like they could read each other’s thoughts and were talking without using actual words. Sofia sometimes thought that they must have tiny computers in their brains that allowed them to talk in each other’s minds.

Sofia reached down and put her hand over Howie and Tony’s. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

Tony laughed but it was quiet, not like his normal laugh. “Thanks, squirt. I’m sorry for your loss, too.”

“Thank you,” she said, just like her dad when people had apologized to him.

The service was long with lots of speeches and crying. At one point, Aunt Peggy gave a small speech. Aunt Peggy wasn’t really Sofia’s aunt; she was actually just a family friend. She always brought Sofia sweets, which is the British word for candy. Sofia liked Aunt Peggy.

“Howard Stark was a good man,” she said. “Controversial as that statement may be to some, he was and always will be a good man. Misguided and perhaps misunderstood, Howard certainly was. But I had faith in him.

“And Maria Stark, who I did not know quite as well as Howard, was a good woman. A wonderful woman. I haven’t the slightest thing to say about Maria being anything other than a woman of class and kindness and beauty.

“The Stark legacy does not end with Howard and Maria. It continues on through two generations, through their sons, Howard Jr and Tony, and their granddaughter, Sofia, and through the company Howard has built, Stark Industries.

"The Stark family is an interesting one. A brilliant one. They are a family who has given the world so much and will continue to push humanity to new heights that others cannot even begin to dream of.

"To the living Starks, I give my deepest condolences. Your parents—your grandparents were some of the best people I knew. And to those Starks no longer with us, I bid you farewell and good luck."

Sofia walked between her dad and uncle to the graveyard behind the church. The caskets had been moved from inside and were lowered into the ground. Her dad gave Sofia white flowers to throw into the holes after them.

There were a lot of people crying. Mr Jarvis still was. So was his wife Ana, plus a lot of people that Sofia didn’t know. She wondered if she was supposed to be crying, too. Her dad wasn’t crying, and neither was her uncle. She must be fine, then.

People left, then her dad was buckling her into her car seat. Uncle Tony was there, too. Her dad was trying to talk her uncle into coming home with them, to live with them for a while now that the mansion was missing two of its primary occupants.

“Just stay with me. The guest bedroom is all set up. We'd love to have you."

“I don’t want to be a burden. You’ve got Little Miss to take care of.”

“You’re never a burden. Please. I want you with us.”

“I’ll be fine, Junior. I’ll see you for Christmas.”

Uncle Tony ended up going back to grandpa and nonna’s mansion in the city. Sofia and her dad went back to their house in Massachusetts, where her uncle would meet them the next day. Then, they would celebrate Christmas.

That was the plan, anyway, before the Starks' lives got thrown even more off kilter.

The crash has never been very clear for Sofia. She had hit her head. Her memory swims in and out. She sees flashes, ideas of what happened. Sometimes she thinks she remembers things that didn’t happen. Things that couldn’t have happened.

Stone walls and bright lights. Metal chairs and people in uniforms. Words that came out of storybooks, like the names of weapons and mythical beasts. People yelling, demanding things.

She came to in the hospital at around noon the next day, dizzy but not in pain.

“Daddy?”

Tony was there instead, sitting at Sofia’s hospital bedside. He took her hand and looked way too sad. “Sofia. Hey, kiddo. Hey, you’re okay.”

“I want my dad.”

“I know. He’s being looked after right now. He’s gonna be fine. Okay? You’re both gonna be fine. I’m not gonna lose you, too.”

Sofia was too high on pain meds and too young to realize what it did to her uncle, almost losing his brother and niece the exact same way he’d lost his parents just days before. Tony Stark was terrified of losing the only family he had left. Sofia would never understand her uncle’s fierce protection over her until decades down the road.

“I’m not lost." In her moment of delirium from her injuries and the pain medication, Sofia only wanted to comfort her family.

“No. No, you’re not.” Tony kissed her hand. “I love you, squirt. I’m never gonna let anything happen to you.” And he meant it.

The next few days, Sofia was kept in the hospital to recover. She didn’t have any grave injuries. She caught words the doctors were saying when they thought she wasn’t listening.

“Broken collarbone.” “Sprained wrist.” “Bruised ribs.” “Head injury.” “Concussion.”

Tony explained to her when she woke up the second time and was off the strong pain medicine from before that she and her dad had gotten in a bad car crash on the way home from the funeral. They’d flipped three times and it took hours for anyone to find them. Her dad had scooped her up and limped down miles of road on a broken leg until someone stopped to help.

Sofia hadn’t needed surgery, but her dad did. While she was up and about later that day (with an arm sling, of course), Howie was still sleeping. Sofia was allowed to visit him with Tony that night.

“He’s not lost, is he?”

She had seen her dad sleep before. This was a lot like that but he wasn't waking up when she talked like he usually would. She just wanted to be sure.

“No. He’s not lost. He’s right here. See?”

He took Sofia’s hand and bent some of her fingers down so he could press her first two to her dad’s pulse point, under his jaw. His skin jumped under her fingers.

“What’s that?”

“That’s his pulse. That means his heart is still working hard to pump blood through his veins. That means he’s still alive, even if his eyes are closed.”

“Not lost,” Sofia decreed.

Tony nodded in agreement. “Not lost.”

Sofia found out over the few days she was kept in the hospital that hospital food was not that good. That she could remember, she had never been in a hospital for more than a few hours at a time. She went more often than most children but never for days at a time.

She liked the juice, though. She liked to mix the apple and orange juice and make orpple juice. She was mixing the two together as she sat in one of the chairs in Howie's room, a breakfast tray on the table between her and her uncle.

“Orpple juice?” Tony repeated.

Sofia explained it patiently to her uncle because even though it was entirely obvious what she was talking about, sometimes adults didn’t seem to understand that mashup words made perfect sense. “Orange and apple makes orpple."

“And it doesn’t taste bad?”

“At home, I have orange apple banana kiwi juice from a pitcher. I call that orpple kiwinana juice. But just orpple is fine for now.” Tony swiped her glass after she finished stirring. “Hey!”

He took a sip and gave it back to her. Sofia snatched it back, unhappy that he hadn’t asked first but also curious to see his reaction. He had obviously never heard of orpple before, so she was introducing something entirely new to him.

“I feel like there’s something inherently wrong with that drink but it’s good anyway."

A new voice joined their conversation. “Don’t argue with her over orpple juice. You’ll never win.”

Sofia jumped to her feet. “Daddy!”

Sofia was too small to jump onto the bed that her now awake dad was laying on. She was able to reach up and grasp his arm with both hands, though.

“Daddy, I missed you! But you’re okay. You’re not lost. We found you.”

“You did, babygirl? Great job. You’re okay, too?”

“I’m fine, daddy. Look at my sling! It’s yellow.”

“Your favorite color."

Uncle Tony lifted Sofia up onto the bed. She hugged her dad super tight but not so tight that it hurt. When she sat back, her dad moved her hair out of her face. His thumb ran over the scrape on her forehead.

He looked sad but not quite sad almost like he was worried and sad at the same time and also nervous. Sofia didn’t understand that he looked guilty and scared. She thought he was just confused by all the medicine like she had been when she first woke up.

“I love you, babygirl,” he told her. "I'd do anything to keep you safe. You understand that? Anything."

“I love you, too, daddy.”

The damage to Howie Stark’s leg was severe. It was not amputation levels of severe but it was not likely he would make a full recovery. Chronic pain and a mobility aid were well set in the eldest Stark brother’s future.

“Canes can make a man very distinguished.” Tony was trying to cheer Howie up.

“Distinguished is a word used to describe men in their seventies."

“Okay, then I’ll come back in two years and talk to you about being distinguished then.”

Howie smacked Tony with the brochure he was holding. “I’m thirty six, asshole!”

Sofia giggled as her dad argued with her uncle. It was always funny when they teased each other. It showed how much they loved each other that they could pretend to be mean to each other and not get upset over it.

“It’s not my fault you’re old—stop hitting me!”

“It’s not my fault dad had you when he was over fifty. You’re a baby.”

“This 'baby' is one of America’s most eligible bachelors. Shove it, gramps.”

Howie smacked Tony over the head one more time for good measure. Tony wound his hand back. Sofia threw her good arm up.

“You can’t hit him, Uncle Tony,” she said. “He’s in recovery.”

“He hit me first!” Tony cried.

“Hey, you heard the boss. I’m in recovery.”

Tony scoffed. “I’m gonna get a soda. You want anything?”

Howie didn’t. Sofia asked for juice. When Tony was gone, Sofia leaned back on Howie's chest and read a few sentences from the brochure on physical therapy that he was reading.

“Sofia?” Howie asked.

“Mhm?”

“You don’t… remember anything from the crash, do you?”

Sofia thought back. She didn’t remember the crash itself. She remembered her dad swerving and a split second of weightlessness but then nothing. After that…

“I remember a bright light. And stone walls. And sitting in a metal chair. And… someone talking about a shield?”

“Sofia, look at me.”

She did, twisting to face him. He looked at her very seriously.

“That didn’t happen. That was just a dream you had while you were unconscious. Don’t talk about that with anyone because it’ll just confuse them. Okay? Can you promise me that you’ll never talk about your dream with anyone? Pinky promise.”

And because Sofia had no reason not to trust her dad wholeheartedly, she wrapped her pinky around his and said, “I pinky promise never to tell.”

Tony came back with juice.

A little while later, a nurse poked her head into the room. “Excuse me? Mr Stark?”

“Yes?”

“The police are here. For your statement.”

“Okay. Tony, can you take Sofia? Thank you. You can let them in.”

“They want to speak to Sofia, as well,” the nurse said as Tony went to leave with her.

Her dad bristled at that. “Sofia? Why? She was unconscious the second we crashed.”

“I—I don’t know." The nurse looked apologetic and uncomfortable. "They just said they wanted to speak with both of you.”

“Okay. That’s fine. Sofia, remember what you said.”

Sofia nodded. She had pinky promised not to talk about her weird dream, so she wouldn’t.

“Hello, Sofia,” the policeman said. “I’m Officer Underwood, this is Officer Carney. Do you mind answering a few questions for us today?”

“Okay,” Sofia said quietly.

Sofia had found that besides her family and the Jarvises, she was not very comfortable talking to people. She did not have much experience with it. With these complete strangers in their uniforms and without her dad or uncle, Sofia was feeling very intimidated.

“Sofia, do you remember anything about the car accident?” Officer Underwood asked.

“I remember…” Not the walls or lights or chairs; that was a dream. “I remember getting jerked around. And feeling like flying. Then nothing else.”

“You don’t remember crashing or getting out of the car?”

“No.”

“You don’t remember your dad carrying you?”

“No.”

“You just remember swerving and feeling like you were flying and then nothing else?"

“Yes. That's all I remember. Then, I woke up here.”

“Okay.”

While Officer Underwood was asking questions, Officer Carney was writing in a notepad. Sofia noticed he was left handed.

“Well, thank you, Sofia. I hope you get all better soon. Your dad, too.”

Sofia just nodded.

“If you remember anything, let your dad know and then he can call us so we can record it.”

Sofia nodded again. She didn’t know why the police were asking her questions. She’d been in a car accident. It was an accident. It was a simple mistake. She and her dad got hurt and that was it.

Sofia did not know at that time that there were hours of time that did not add up. She did not know that someone had come across the smoking wreckage of their car and called it in. She and her dad were nowhere to be found.

Howie and Sofia Stark weren’t found until the early hours of the morning the next day, miles and miles away from the crash site. There was time that could not be accounted for. It never would be accounted for.

With the gap in her memory, Sofia had not realized that the same day that her dad woke up and the police asked their questions was also Christmas. It was not until her uncle came back after an hour with a box wrapped in gold paper that she remembered.

“Merry Christmas, squirt."

“It’s Christmas?!” Sofia shrieked. “Why did nobody tell me?! What about Horacio? He can’t spend Christmas alone!”

“Who’s Horacio?” Tony tried to sneakily ask her dad.

But Sofia heard him. “Horacio the cat!”

Tony looked at his brother helplessly.

“He’s a stray cat that sleeps on our porch. Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Tony echoed.

“He doesn’t have anyone to spend Christmas with! He’s alone! On Christmas!”

“He’s not alone, babygirl. He’s got all the other stray cats and dogs he’s celebrating with.”

“But there aren’t any other stray animals in our neighborhood. It’s just Horacio.”

Sofia’s day was officially ruined. She loved Horacio. Of course, she had never actually pet him because he was a stray cat and hissed when anyone got too close but he did let her sit on the porch with him while he ate. As long as she kept her distance.

“What if he’s cold?” Sofia asked miserably.

Her dad pulled her close to him to comfort her. “I’m sure he’s alright, babygirl. He’s a big strong boy. He probably traveled someplace to spend Christmas with his friends. We’ll see him when we go home and open presents.”

“Okay..."

“Don’t pout on Christmas,” Tony said. “Here, I got you this as a Christmas and get well gift. Go on.”

Sofia tried not to be too excited about opening her present knowing that Horacio was alone in Cambridge. But it was Christmas. She had her dad and her uncle and sure, her arm was in a sling, but that sling was yellow so that was okay, too.

She ripped the wrappings off and opened the cardboard box within. Inside, there was a something brown. Something plush and squishy. Something with weighted hand and feet, a pink nose, and long ears.

“It’s a bunny!” Sofia's grin widened as she gently pulled him out of the box. She hugged him tight to her chest with her one good arm. “I love him.”

Howie lifted up one of his ears. “He’s very nice.”

“Thank you, Uncle Tony."

“You’re welcome, kiddo.”

Sofia’s stuffed rabbit was named Sofia Jr by the end of the day.

“I thought he was a boy.”

“He is.”

“But his name is Sofia?”

“His name is Sofia Jr.”

“So… he’s a boy named Sofia?”

“His names is Sofia JUNIOR, Uncle Tony. It’s two totally different names.”

They started calling the rabbit SJ for short.

SJ sat in Sofia's lap all the way home. Howie and Sofia had ended up in a hospital in Springfield, Massachusetts, so it took them about an hour and a half to get home to Cambridge. Uncle Tony had to drive because her dad's right leg was in a cast.

"Daddy?"

Tony was outside pumping gas and Howie was in the front seat.

"Yes, babygirl?"

"Is Uncle Tony going to stay with us, now?"

Howie was quiet for a long time before answering. "We're going to be staying together. I'm not going to be able to walk for a while then I'm going to have to learn to walk with my leg not working all the way, so Uncle Tony is going to help me."

"Okay." Sofia was pleased to be able to spend more time with her uncle.

Tony got back into the car and they drove the rest of the way home. When they got there, Sofia tried to help unpack the car but she wasn't able to lift much. Uncle Tony did most of the work after helping her dad inside.

Howie Stark's house in Cambridge was a brisk two minute car ride away from the MIT campus, where he taught in the engineering program and ran the most prestigious engineering research lab in the country. He taught tomorrow's greatest minds while continuing to do his own research.

Compared to the Stark Mansion in New York City which was ornate, grand, and showboat-y with it's chandeliers and intricately carved stair balusters and antique furniture, the Cambridge house was homey. It was a three bedroom, two and a half bath, two story home with a wide backyard and a lovely view of the park across the street.

Sofia pointed at the yellow suitcase with flower stickers on it. "This is my suitcase. Can you take it upstairs so I can unpack?"

"We'll unpack later," Uncle Tony said. "Right now... presents!"

Sofia squealed when her uncle picked her up and carried her into the living room.

"Careful with her; she's still got a broken collarbone!" her dad reprimanded.

Sofia was set down carefully and spent the rest of the afternoon opening gifts. She got toys and clothes, science kits and stuffed animals, dolls and books. Uncle Tony had added his presents to the ones Howie had bought, and all the presents from the Stark mansion had been delivered here as well.

The two brothers exchanged gifts as well. They sat together on the couch while unwrapping the few presents their parents had bought them before they died. Sofia was too busy explaining how a crystal grow kit worked to SJ to notice their quiet conversation.

“Does she know?” Tony asked.

“She knows we’re going to be living together.”

“Junior.”

“I’ll tell her. Soon. I just—… I don’t want to ruin today any more.”

Tony didn’t protest further after that. They watched as Sofia giggled and played by herself. She never had any trouble keeping herself occupied. She did not need a playmate when she could just talk to her stuffies and never worry about saying the wrong thing.

Later in the day, after all the wrapping paper was cleaned up and Uncle Tony cooked dinner to the best of his ability, Sofia sat between beside her uncle as they watched White Christmas.

Her dad had been helped upstairs to his bedroom and was already asleep. Sofia held SJ to her chest and leaned heavily on her uncle.

“You tired, squirt?”

“No,” she lied.

“You wanna go to bed?”

“No. Wanna stay with you.”

Tony’s chest swelled as Sofia curled up closer to him.

Her eyes got heavy and she was asleep before the movie was over. Tony didn’t want to wake her, so he stayed there on the couch with her head in his lap and eventually fell asleep himself.