Chapter Text
Everyone knew that Sophie Beckett was being verbally abused by her step mother.
The staff knew but they were all too afraid of what the Penwood family would do to them if they spoke up. But they loved Sophie enough to always console her when she cried or help her fake illness when it got to be too much. And Sophie loved the staff for the small comforts they gave her but she also knew it was time to leave. She had to get out now or she would break. And if there was one thing Sophie Beckett never wanted to give her step mother it was the satisfaction that the vile women had finally torn down her dead husband’s only child.
Sophie, while still young, wasn’t stupid....her father had taken great pains to educate his daughter....she needed a plan and she needed money. She knew she couldn’t access her trust fund and her step mother, Araminta, never let her have enough cash to do anything more than go to the drug store but Sophie also knew she was surrounded by wealth....so much wealth that the chances of Araminta realizing that Sophie had taken the golden locket that her father gave her for her 10th birthday (and that Araminta had seen fit to give her own eldest daughter once her husband was dead) would be slim to none. Especially considering no one had worn or even mentioned the necklace for at least two years. So three days ago Sophie took it, for three days she has waited for anyone to notice and unsurprisingly no one has.
She made sure to tell no one what she was planning....the staff had a better chance if they honestly knew nothing.....and she payed attention to Araminta’s social plans to find her window....and once she found it she knew the time had come. So on a cold night in the middle of the winter Sophie waited in her room for everyone to leave to attend whatever fancy dinner party was scheduled that evening and once the coast was clear she ran. She ran until her lungs burned and her feet ached. She ran until she couldn’t even recognize her surroundings and she ran as far as half the money the locket had been sold for could get her.....New York City.