Sophia hesitated for a sec before picking up the call, and Renata's graceful smile popped up on the screen.
"Yoli, it's me, granny."
Seeing Sophia answer the call, the old lady was over the moon, her eyes curving into two pretty arches as she beamed, looking all kinds of kind and warm.
Sophia couldn't help but crack a smile back: "Hi granny."
Then, feeling a tad guilty: "Sorry granny, I just got home and ran into some stuff, I forgot to call you to let you know I'm safe."
"It's all good, as long as you're home." The old lady chuckled, leaning in closer to the phone and gazing at Sophia, her face brimming with contentment and a touch of tender pity.
Sophia felt a bit awkward under her gaze and was just about to say goodbye when the old lady got all nostalgic: "My Yoli's all grown up, that's wonderful."
Sophia's nose tingled with emotion from the affection in her voice, but her head was crystal clear that the old lady wasn't talking about her - she was just mistaking her for someone else.
"Granny, my name's Sophia. Why don't you call me Sophia, or just Sophy, okay?" she murmured, trying to set the record straight.
But no sooner had she finished her sentence than the old lady's face fell, her lips puckering in distress: "Does Yoli not want her granny anymore?"
Sophia paused at her question.
The old lady's voice wavered with sadness: "If Yoli doesn't want granny to call her Yoli, then from now on, granny will call you Sophia."
Her voice was still filled with a heartbreaking sorrow.
Sophia was suddenly drowning in a sea of guilt.
She felt like she was snuffing out the last flicker of hope for an ailing old lady.
"Granny," Sophia tried to explain, "Yoli's at home, she's come back, don't you remember?"
From the other end of the video, Louis's soothing voice came: "Honey, Yoli's right upstairs, you just saw her."
"No!" The old lady snapped back, visibly upset, turning to rebuff him, "Yoli's on the phone."
Sophia was a bit mortified.
Louis, probably not wanting to upset her, helplessly played along: "Okay, Yoli's on the phone."
Then, he leaned into the camera apologetically to Sophia: "Young lady, my wife's not all there anymore, she can't recognize people. Please be patient, don't take it to heart. As long as she's happy, just humor her a bit, sorry to trouble you."
Sophia's smile stiffened. Seemed like she was expected to embrace the name Yolanda in front of granny. But the old lady comforted her: "Don't worry, if you don't like me calling you Yoli, then I won't. I'll just call you Sophia. My Sophia."
Her face switched to a loving smile.
Sophia's eyes stung, and she was at a loss for words.
The old lady might have been confused, but her emotions and gaze were sharp
as ever.
Maybe she noticed Sophia's reddening eyes because she suddenly became flustered, trying to comfort her and clumsily searching for tissues on the table, seemingly unaware that they were only connected by phone.
She was in the study, a table laden with old photos and architectural models.
The camera followed her movements as she stood up to look for tissues, casting a view onto the table.
Sophia caught a glimpse of the old photos and various architectural models.
She could make out some of the old photos, similar to the ones she'd seen in the car, just more and more fragmented.
The models were mostly Romanesque gardens and buildings, diverse in shape but consistent in style, scattered across the table.
Louis was seated at the table, wearing reading glasses, tinkering with a model of a garden with little bridges over flowing water, a touch of Romanesque added to the serene and elegant design, thick with the weight of history.
Sophia vaguely remembered seeing something like it in some local chronicles, but
never in real life - they were mostly destroyed or had been rebuilt.
The old lady seemed oblivious to the other items on the table, still fixated on finding tissues for Sophia's supposed sadness, rummaging through the models and photos.
"Granny," Sophia interrupted softly, "I'm okay, you don't need to look for tissues, I have some here."
She even pulled out a tissue and waved it at the camera to show her.
The old lady finally calmed down, but as she withdrew her hand, she accidentally knocked over the garden model. Louis instinctively reached to catch her hand: "Did you cut yourself?"
He couldn't save the model the old lady had knocked over, and with a "snap," it fell to the floor.
Sophia saw the old lady pause, then turn to look at the model on the ground, a baffled expression on her face as she stared blankly at the floor.
Louis's face also flickered with pain, but he kept a smile on for the old lady, soothing her with a gentle voice: "It's okay, if it's broken I'll get someone to remake
it."
But the old lady seemed deaf to his words, lost in a moment from the past, murmuring to herself: "He's mad, he left, he left on his own, I made him mad."
By the end, her voice was tinged with the beginnings of a sob.
Louis seemed to pause, glancing at the floor, then wrapped his arms around her, comforting her with a soft whisper: "He didn't leave, he didn't go, he came back later on."
But the old lady was still trapped in her memories, not taking in his words, just muttering on, trying to pick up the pieces and put them back together. Louis held her, continually murmuring soft comforts into her ear, gentle and patient, until slowly the old lady's emotions settled down.
Sophia watched the two in front of the camera, quietly moved and a bit envious. The old lady finally quieted down under Louis's patient care.
Louis, a bit embarrassed, gave Sophia a sheepish grin and explained, "That model was from a garden I visited with her when we were young. We had a big fight over some misunderstanding, neither of us backing down, and it got pretty heated. Eventually, she got so upset she wanted to break up, and I, in a huff, just agreed without a word of protest. She moved out that night, and I stormed off too, and we didn't speak for a while."
Sophia gave him a look, her mind wandering to her and Brandon.
It was kind of like when she and Brandon got divorced, except theirs was a smooth split, not the fiery kind like Louis and Renata's.