Читать книгу: «The Courage Tree»

You cannot be a hero without being a coward.

—George Bernard Shaw

CONTENTS

Praise for Diane Chamberlain

Title Page

Also by Diane Chamberlain

Epigraph

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

CHAPTER FORTY

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

EPILOGUE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

EXTRACT

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

End Pages

PROLOGUE

She would have no music where she was going.

Zoe stood in the center of her living room, with its vaulted ceilings, white carpeting and glassed-wall view of the Pacific Ocean, and stared, transfixed by the huge speaker in the corner of the room. She’d come to terms with the fact that she would lose the beach and the smell of the sea. She knew she could live without television—gladly without television and its bevy of new, young talent—and she could live without newspapers and magazines. But no music? It suddenly seemed like a deal breaker. But then her eyes drifted to the picture of Marti, where it rested on the top of the baby grand piano. Marti had been twenty in that picture, standing next to Max on the beach. She was near Max, but not touching him, and there was no sense of connection between father and daughter, as though each of their pictures had been taken separately and then spliced together. It disturbed Zoe to see that distance between them. If the picture had been of herself and Marti, would they look equally as detached from one another? she wondered. She feared that they would. It was time to change that.

In her boyish way, Marti looked beautiful in the picture. Zoe studied the short cap of blond hair, the compact, small-breasted body, huge blue eyes and long dark lashes that gave away Marti’s identity as a female, and Zoe knew she was making the right decision. In a choice between music and Marti, there was no contest. Everything else in the universe paled in comparison to Zoe’s need to save her daughter.

She turned away from the wall of stereo equipment and began climbing the broad spiral staircase to the second story, her resolve once again intact. It was quite simple, really, leaving forever. She had planned well ahead and now had no need even to pack a suitcase. What could she possibly put in a suitcase that would last her the rest of her life? Besides, someone might realize a suitcase was missing. Unlikely, since she had an entire room on the third story filled with luggage; but still, it was possible, and she couldn’t take that chance.

She walked into Max’s bedroom. She and Max had slept together for the forty years of their marriage, but they’d each had their own bedroom in addition to the master suite they’d shared. Their separate rooms had been for times alone, times of renewal and refreshment, for reading without disturbing one another, for making phone calls late into the night when one of them was working on a project. It was in Max’s room where she knew she would find exactly what she needed.

Opening the door to Max’s walk-in closet, she was startled by the spicy aroma that enveloped her. Max’s aftershave still filled this room, four full months after his death. She had not touched the clothes that hung in neat rows along the walls of the closet since that miserable day in November, and they slowly took on a blurred, surrealistic shape before her eyes. How was it that scent could instantly evoke so much pain? So many memories? But no time for them now. She brushed her hand across her eyes as she pulled the step stool from the corner of the closet toward the shelves in the rear. Climbing onto the stool, she reached toward the back of the top shelf.

Her hand felt the soft-sided rifle case, and she wrapped her fingers around it and drew it down from the shelf. Climbing off the stool, she rested the green case containing Max’s rifle carefully, gingerly, on the carpeted floor of the closet, then returned to her perch on the stool. Reaching onto the shelf once again, she found the box of bullets, then the Beretta pistol and a few loose clips. Never before had she touched these guns, and she hadn’t approved of Max having them. Probably the only thing they’d ever disagreed about.

“Max Garson’s death marks the end of one of the longest running and, by all accounts, most harmonious marriages in Hollywood,” People magazine had written.

For the most part, that had been a highly accurate assessment. And right now, Zoe was glad Max had defied her when it came to the guns. She was doubly glad she had told her friends about the rifle and the pistol and where they were hidden. They would tell the police, and the police would discover the guns were missing. Perfect.

The police would no doubt talk to Bonita, the therapist Zoe had seen for “grief counseling,” as well. Zoe had not needed to employ her acting skills to fake her symptoms of depression.

“Do you think about suicide?” Bonita had asked her on one recent visit, when Zoe had been particularly tearful.

“Yes,” she had nodded truthfully.

“Do you have a plan?” Bonita asked.

The question had shaken Zoe for an instant. How could Bonita possibly know? But then she realized Bonita was asking her if she had considered how she would end her life. Nothing more than that.

“No,” she had answered, knowing full well that if she said she had a plan, Bonita would arrange to have her locked up someplace, and wouldn’t the tabloids have a field day with that. Zoe most certainly did have a plan. Just not the sort of plan to which Bonita was alluding.

She carried the guns into the bedroom and caught sight of herself in the mirror above the dresser. The image horrified her. She looked completely ridiculous. Her long blond hair fell across the rifle case, her deep bangs hung all the way to her eyelashes, and there was something about the lighting in the room that made her skin look sallow, her eyes sunken. She was a large woman. She’d always been tall and full-figured, and back in her James Bond days, she’d been considered voluptuous, but now she was simply big. Amazonian. An aging sex goddess. She had bristled when she’d read those words about herself somewhere, but suddenly, she understood them to be the truth. Who had she been trying to kid, still wearing her hair the way she had when she was twenty-five, coloring the heck out of it to mask the gray? She looked away from the mirror and headed for the stairs. There would be no more two-hundred-dollar trips to the beauty salon in her future, and the thought was rather liberating.

Downstairs, she walked through the kitchen and out into the garage, where she rested the guns on the back seat of her silver Mercedes. Returning to the house, she sat down at the dining room table and gave her attention to what would be her final—and most difficult—task in this home she had cherished for so many years.

Staring down at the sheet of cream-colored parchment on the table in front of her, she picked up the Pelikan fountain pen Marti had given her several Christmases ago, on a day when the world had still seemed benevolent and the future still held promise. She rested the nib of the pen on the paper.

I see no choice but to end my life, on this, the eve of my sixtieth birthday, she wrote. Leaning away from the paper, cocking her head to the side, she noted that her penmanship looked like that of an old woman. Her hand quivered above the page.

“Pathetic old cow,” she muttered to herself, then continued writing.

My life is not worth much anymore. My beloved husband is dead; my daughter has been wrongly, cruelly imprisoned for the murder of Tara Ashton; the tabloids persist in noting each new wrinkle on my face, and I’m losing my singing voice. Although my acting skills are at their peak, they go unrecognized these days. Parts that once would have come to me are now given to actresses much younger than myself.

Zoe stopped writing for a moment and looked out the window toward the ocean. That last sentence made her sound small and bitter. She could leave it out, but then she would have to start the letter all over again. And what did she care what anyone thought of her at this point? She laughed at the bruised ego, the irritating narcissism that had dogged her these past few years and that seemed intent on following her to her counterfeit grave.

What do I have left to live for? she began writing again. I hope to take my life somewhere where I won’t be found. I don’t want to be seen in that condition. Marti, I’m sorry, darling. I’m so sorry I failed you. I tried every possible avenue I could to help you prove your innocence, but the system has failed both of us. The tears were quick to come this time. One fell on the paper, and she blotted it from the word innocence with the side of her hand.

She had failed Marti—in far too many ways—choosing the demands of her career over the needs of her daughter at every turn, placing Marti’s day-to-day care in the hands of nannies, sending her off to boarding school to let someone else deal with her moods and her mischief.

Suspicion would never have fallen on you had you not been my daughter, she wrote. Zoe’s daughter. I love you, dearest. Zoe’s breath caught in her throat, and she stared out the window at the sea for a long moment before continuing. Be strong, she wrote. All my love, Mother.

Moving the sheet of paper to the center of the table, she stood up, blotting her damp palms on her khaki-covered thighs. Her knees barely held her upright as she walked toward the garage, and her entire body trembled now, from the gravity of the lies she had just committed to writing, and from the fear of the journey she was about to make.

CHAPTER ONE

The guest cottage seemed stuffy, its four small rooms over-flowing with sunlight. At two-thirty, Janine turned off the air-conditioning and opened all the windows, starting in her bedroom and Sophie’s room, then the kitchen and finally the living room. Although it became instantly warmer in the cottage, the air was arid, a remarkable phenomenon for June in northern Virginia, and the faint breeze carried the scent of magnolia and lavender into the rooms.

Janine sat sideways on the sofa in the living room, her back against the overstuffed arm, bare feet up on the cushions, gazing out the window at Ayr Creek’s gardens. In fifteen minutes she could leave, she told herself. That would make her early, but there was no way she could wait here any longer.

The view of the gardens was spectacular from this window. Bands of red and violet, yellow and pink dipped and swirled over more than two acres of rolling landscape before losing themselves in the deep woods between the cottage and the mansion. The nineteenth century, yellow frame, black-shuttered mansion could barely be seen at this time of year due to the lush growth on the trees, allowing Janine to imagine that she was master of her own life and not living on her parents’ property. Not that Ayr Creek truly belonged to her parents, who were little more than caretakers. The house was owned by the Ayr Creek Foundation, which was operated by the descendants of the estate’s original owner, Angus Campbell. The Foundation had deeded enough money to the county to keep the garden and a few of the mansion’s rooms open to the public on weekends. And through some quiet arrangement, Janine’s mother, Donna Campbell Snyder, had been given the right to live in the mansion until her death, although she did not otherwise have a cent of her family’s fortune. This, Janine had always thought, was the source of her mother’s bitterness.

Nevertheless, Donna and Frank Snyder adored the Ayr Creek estate. Retired history teachers, they relished the task of over-seeing the upkeep of the house and gardens. And they willingly allowed Janine and her daughter, Sophie, to live rent-free in the “guest cottage,” a euphemism designed to masquerade the true history of the diminutive structure: it had once been home to Ayr Creek’s slaves.

There was a tear in the window screen. Just a small one, and if Janine closed one eye and leaned nearer to the screen, she could see one perfect, blue-blossomed hydrangea captured in the opening. If she leaned a little farther to the left, she could see the roses Lucas had planted near the wishing well. She should get up and repair the hole instead of playing games with it, she thought briefly, but shifted positions on the sofa and returned her attention to the gardens instead.

This restlessness, this stuffy, claustrophobic feeling, had been with her all weekend and she knew it was of her own creation. She had not drawn a full breath of air since Friday evening, when she’d watched her daughter ride away in the van with the rest of her Brownie troop. Sophie had grinned and giggled with her friends, looking for all the world like a perfectly healthy eight-year-old girl—except, perhaps, for the pallor and the delicate, willowy, white arms and legs. Janine had waved after the van until she could no longer make out Sophie’s red hair against the tinted window. Then she offered a quick smile to the two other mothers in the parking lot of Meadowlark Gardens and got into her car quickly, hoping that the worry hadn’t shown in her face. There hadn’t been a day in the last five years that she had not worried.

She’d planned to use this weekend alone to clean the cottage from top to bottom, but she’d gotten little done. She’d spent time on Saturday with her mother in the mansion, helping her research historically accurate wallpaper patterns on the Internet for one of the mansion’s bedrooms, and listening to her complain yet again about Lucas, the horticulturist in charge of the gardens. Janine knew, though, that she and her mother were both preoccupied with thoughts of Sophie. Was she all right? Eight years old seemed far too young to be spending the weekend at a Girl Scout camp nearly two hours away, even to Janine, and she knew her mother was furious with her for allowing Sophie to go. Sitting in the office, which was part of the mansion’s twentieth-century addition, Janine had tried to concentrate on the computer monitor while her mother leaned over her shoulder.

“It’s hot out and she’ll drink too much water,” her mother said. “She’ll forget to take her pills. She’ll eat the wrong things. You know how kids are.”

“She’ll be fine, Mom,” Janine had said through gritted teeth, although she couldn’t help but share her mother’s concerns. If Sophie came back from this trip sicker than when she went, the criticism from her parents would never end. Joe would be furious, as well. He had called last night, wanting to know if he could come over to see Sophie after she got home tonight, and Janine knew he was feeling what she did: the deep love and concern for the child they both treasured. Like Janine’s mother, Joe had expressed strong disapproval over Sophie’s going on this trip. One of many things Joe was angry with her about. Joe’s anger was hard for Janine to ignore, because she knew it came from a place of caring, not only about Sophie, but about herself, as well. Even in the ugliest moments of their separation and divorce, she’d been aware that Joe still loved her.

At two-forty-five, Janine left the cottage and got into her car. She drove down the long gravel driveway, banked on both sides by boxwood as old as the estate itself, and looked toward the mansion as she passed it. Her parents would be inside, waiting anxiously for her to bring their granddaughter home. She hoped she’d have some time alone with Sophie before she had to share her with them and Joe.

Meadowlark Gardens was less than half a mile from the Ayr Creek estate, and the parking lot of the public gardens was as full as she’d ever seen it. As Janine turned into the lot from Beulah Road, people dressed in wedding regalia spilled out of one of the brick buildings, probably getting ready to pose for pictures. In the distance, Janine could see another wedding taking place in the gazebo by the pond. A beautiful day for a wedding, she thought, as she drove toward the southeastern corner of the lot, where she was to meet the returning Brownie troop, but her mind quickly slipped back to her daughter. Suddenly, all she could think about was scooping Sophie into her arms. She pressed her foot harder on the gas pedal, cruising far too fast through the lot, and parked her car near the corner.

Although Janine was early, one other mother was already there, leaning against a station wagon, reading a paperback. Janine knew the woman, whose name was Suzanne, vaguely. She was pretty, a bit older than most mothers of children Sophie’s age, and it was hard to tell if her chin-length hair was a pale blond or actually gray. Janine smiled as she walked toward her.

“They certainly had great weather, didn’t they?” Suzanne asked, shading her eyes from the sun.

“They did.” Janine joined her in leaning against the car. “I’m glad it wasn’t too humid.”

Suzanne tossed her paperback through the open window of her car. “Oh, that wouldn’t have bothered them,” she said with a wave of her hand. “Kids don’t care whether it’s humid or not.”

Sophie would have cared, Janine thought, but she kept the words to herself. She tried unsuccessfully to remember what Suzanne’s daughter looked like. In truth, she’d paid little attention to the other girls in Sophie’s troop. It was so rare that Sophie could take part in any of their activities that Janine had had no opportunity to get to know any of them or their mothers. She looked at Suzanne. “Has your daughter…” she began. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember her name.”

“Emily.”

“Has Emily been on one of these camp-outs before?” Janine asked.

“Yes, she has,” Suzanne said. “But none this far away. And I know this is a real first for Sophie, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” She felt somehow touched that Suzanne knew Sophie’s name. But, then, the other mothers probably talked about her.

“It’s wonderful she could go,” Suzanne said. “I guess she’s feeling better, huh?”

“Much better,” Janine admitted. So much better it was scary.

“I heard she’s receiving some sort of experimental treatment.”

“Yes.” Janine nodded, then hesitated a moment before adding, “She’s in a study of an alternative medicine. She’s only been in the study a couple of months, but she’s had some dramatic improvement. I’m just praying it will last.” It was hard for Janine to give words to Sophie’s improvement, to actually hear herself say those words out loud. She lived in terror that it might not last. Since being in the study, Sophie had not only remained out of the hospital, but had finally learned to ride a bike, had eaten almost anything she wanted, and had even attended the last of week of school. For most of the year, she’d been tutored at home or in the hospital, and last year had been equally as bad. Most indicative of Sophie’s improvement, though, was the fact that she no longer needed to spend every night attached to her dialysis machine. For the last couple of weeks, she’d required treatments only two nights a week. That had given her the freedom to do something she’d never before been able to do: spend the night away from home with her friends.

Sophie’s astonishing improvement seemed miraculous, although Dr. Schaefer, the researcher behind the study, had warned Janine that her daughter still had a long road ahead of her. She would need to receive twice-weekly intravenous infusions of Herbalina, the name he had given his herbal remedy to make it more appealing to the pediatric population of the study, for at least another year. Despite the ground Sophie had gained, her own nephrologist, the doctor she’d been seeing for the past three years, scoffed at the study, as did every other specialist with whom Janine had spoken. They’d pleaded with Janine to enroll Sophie in a different, more conventional study of yet another experimental drug, but Sophie had already participated in several of those studies, and Janine could no longer bear to see her daughter suffer the side effects of the toxic drugs they gave her. With Herbalina, Sophie had only gotten better. No rashes. No cramps. No bloating. No sleepiness.

The positive results were merely a temporary reduction in symptoms, Sophie’s regular doctor and his colleagues had argued. Beneath the surface, the disease still raged. They claimed Schaefer offered false hope to the hopeless, but stopped just short of calling the small, wiry, soft-spoken doctor a charlatan. Janine could easily see the situation from their perspective. After all, the medical profession had been grappling with Sophie’s form of kidney disease for decades, searching for a way to turn the tide of its destruction. Then along comes some alternative medicine doctor, with his combination of tree bark and herbs, and he thinks he can do what no one else has been able to do: cure the incurable. Sophie’s regular doctor said Schaefer’s treatment was nothing more than a Band-Aid, and it terrified Janine that he might be right. She was just getting her daughter back. She could not bear to lose her again.

“Where are the other parents?” Janine looked behind her toward the parking lot entrance. It was nearly three.

“Oh, I think it’s just you and me. I’m going to drive a couple of the girls home. Gloria and Alison will take the rest, but we figured you’d probably be anxious to be with Sophie, so we didn’t think to ask if you wanted one of us to give her a ride.”

“You’re right,” she said. “I can’t wait to see how she made out.”

“She looked so excited when she got into the van Friday evening,” Suzanne said.

“She was.” Janine was glad she was wearing sunglasses, because her eyes suddenly burned with tears. Her baby girl. How rare it was to have seen such unfettered joy in Sophie’s face rather than the usual lines of pain and fear. The sort of fear no child should have to endure.

“She’s so cute,” Suzanne said. “Where’d she get that red hair?”

“It’s a combination of mine and her dad’s, I guess,” she said, touching her hand to her own strawberry-blond hair. Joe’s hair was dark, his eyes blue, like Sophie’s.

“It’s her kidneys that are the problem, right?” Suzanne probed.

“Yes.” Janine didn’t mind the questions. The only time she was bothered by them was when they were asked in front of her daughter, as though Sophie were deaf and blind as well as very, very ill.

“Would a transplant help?”

“She already has one of mine.” Janine smiled ruefully. “Her body rejected it.” Joe had offered one of his, as well, but he was not a good match. And now, Sophie was beyond being helped by a transplant.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Suzanne said kindly. “She seems to handle everything very well, though. I was so surprised when I met her, because she’s so tiny. I thought she was about six. But then this eight-year-old voice comes out of her, with a ten-year-old vocabulary. It’s such a surprise.”

Janine smiled. “Kids with kidney disease tend to be small.”

“What a lot you must have been through with her,” Suzanne said. “And to think of how much I worry when Emily has the sniffles. I really admire you.”

Janine didn’t feel admirable. She was coping the only way a desperate mother could—searching for solutions, doing all she could to make Sophie’s time on earth as happy and carefree as possible…and crying only when she was alone at night.

“Emily told me you’re a helicopter pilot,” Suzanne said.

“Oh.” Janine was surprised. “I was, a long time ago. Before Sophie got sick.” She had learned to fly a helicopter in the army and had flown for an aircraft leasing company after getting out of the reserves. Was Sophie telling people she still flew? Maybe it embarrassed her that Janine had turned from an adventurous pilot into a stay-at-home mom. But with a chronically ill child, she could imagine no other course of action.

“Emily has a secret hope that, when the girls in the troop get a little older, you might give them flying lessons.”

She had thought of that herself, in those rare, optimistic moments when she could picture Sophie reaching her teenage years. “Maybe one day,” she said. “That would be fun.” She turned to look at the parking lot entrance again.

“You must worry about Sophie when she’s away,” Suzanne said suddenly, and Janine knew that the worry was evident in her eyes, or maybe in the way she was knotting and unknotting her hands.

“Well,” she said, “this is new to me. Sophie’s never been away from home without me or her father by her side.” She’d also never been so far from emergency care, which was why Joe had said the trip was out of the question. But Sophie had begged to go. There was so little she ever asked for, and so little Janine could do for her. She said yes, after getting permission from Dr. Schaefer, who even called Joe to assure him that Sophie would be fine, as long as she watched her fluid intake and was home for dialysis on Sunday night and back at Schaefer’s office for Herbalina on Monday. Joe, who lost his temper too easily and too often, had hung up on him.

Like Sophie’s regular doctors, Joe thought Schaefer’s study was a sham, and he had argued with Janine about making Sophie into a guinea pig. Although Janine and Joe had been divorced since Sophie was five, they usually were in agreement on how to handle their daughter’s treatment. This study had driven a wedge between them and was unraveling the already frayed edges of Janine’s relationship with her parents, as well. They hadn’t wanted Sophie to take part in such an unconventional treatment, either. It wasn’t like Janine to stand up to any disapproval from Joe or her parents, at least not in recent years. But Sophie was terminally ill. Even dialysis was failing her, and she’d been given mere months to live. There was little to lose.

“I don’t think you need to worry,” Suzanne said. “Gloria seems like a very caring and responsible leader.”

“I wonder about Alison, though,” Janine said. Alison was the younger of the two troop leaders. Only twenty-five and single, Alison had no children of her own. She’d been a volunteer leader in Sophie’s troop for the past two years, and all the girls loved her. She was fun-loving, comical and had a spirit of adventure that the girls adored and the parents feared. Alison had made a few errors in judgment over the past couple of years. Very minor. Nothing life-threatening. But then, she hadn’t had a child as frail and needy as Sophie under her care before.

“Oh, I think Alison’s super,” Suzanne said. “How many young women do you know who are childless themselves but still volunteer to work with kids? And the girls love her. She’s a good role model for them.”

Janine felt mildly chastened and wished she had thought before she’d spoken.

She was about to apologize, when she spotted a white van pulling into the parking lot.

“Is that them?” she asked.

“Looks like it,” Suzanne said.

The van was heading toward them, and Janine waved.

Stepping away from Suzanne’s station wagon, she wished she could make out the faces behind the van’s tinted windows. Patience, she told herself. If she charged the van, or God forbid, started crying when she saw Sophie, she would only embarrass her.

The van came to a stop next to the station wagon, and Gloria stepped out of the driver’s side, giving them a quick wave as she walked around the front of the car to slide open the side door. Five grimy, tired little Brownies began tumbling out. Suzanne stepped forward to give her daughter, Emily, a hug, and Janine looked past them, watching for a sixth girl to emerge. She walked toward the van, trying to see through the dark windows, but there appeared to be no movement inside.

“Janine,” Gloria said. “How come you’re still here?”

“I’m waiting for Sophie,” Janine said, confused. “Isn’t she with you?”

“Didn’t Alison get here yet?” Gloria asked.

Janine frowned. Alison? Gloria had let Sophie ride with Alison?

“No.” She tried to keep her voice calm. “I’ve been here since ten of. I haven’t seen her.”

“That’s strange,” Gloria said, reaching into the van to pull out one of the girls’ knapsacks. “Sophie and Holly wanted to ride with Alison,” she said, “and they had a good ten-minutes’ head start on us.”

Suzanne must have caught Janine’s look of panic. “Maybe Alison drove Sophie straight home?” she suggested.

“She knew she was supposed to come here first,” Gloria said, reaching for another knapsack.

“But maybe Sophie or Holly persuaded her to take them straight home,” Suzanne said.

Gloria shook her head. “She knew Janine would be waiting here for Sophie.”

Janine turned her head between the women as if following a Ping-Pong game. “I’ll call home,” she said, heading for her car. “I’ll see if they showed up there.”

Her hands shook as she opened her car door and reached inside for her cell phone. She dialed the number for the mansion, and her mother answered.

“I’m at Meadowlark Gardens, Mom, waiting for Sophie to get back, and I just wanted to check to see if her troop leader might have dropped her off there.”

“I haven’t seen her,” her mother said. “Could she be in the cottage?”

“Possibly.” Although if Sophie had been dropped off at the cottage and found that Janine wasn’t there, she probably would have walked up the driveway to the mansion. “Could you check, please?”

Janine heard some movement of the phone. “Frank?” her mother called, her voice obviously directed away from the receiver. Janine pictured her father sitting in the leather recliner in the Ayr Creek library, his favorite perch, either reading or working on his laptop. “Go over to the cottage and see if Sophie’s inside. She might have been dropped off there.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Janine said, once her mother was back on the phone.

“Why would they bring her home if they were supposed to meet you at Meadowlark Gardens?”

Janine tensed. Here we go, she thought. “There might have been a misunderstanding,” she said.

“Well, if they could get something as simple as that wrong, what else could they get wrong?”

“Mom, please.”

“She’s only eight years old, and a very fragile little girl,” her mother said. “I wouldn’t have sent you off to camp when you were eight, and you were healthy as a horse.”

It was true that her parents had never sent her to camp. She’d had to create her own adventures, and create them she did.

“I think this was a terrific experience for Sophie,” Janine said, although she’d argued about this with her mother and father and Joe so much over the past few weeks that she knew anything she said now was pointless.

Janine heard her father’s voice in the background, but she couldn’t make out what he was saying.

“She’s not there,” her mother said into the phone.

“All right. Please call me on my cell phone if she shows up there instead of here, okay?”

“How late is she?”

“Not really late at all, Mom. I was just checking in case they took her home. I’ve got to go now.” She hung up and walked back to the van, where Gloria and Suzanne were talking. Emily leaned tiredly against her mother, and Janine felt a pang of envy witnessing the simple, uncomplicated warmth between them. She wanted Sophie here with her, now.

Gloria and Suzanne were looking toward the entrance to the parking lot. Janine followed their gaze, but there were few cars pulling into the lot this late in the day.

“What color is Alison’s car?” she asked.

“Blue Honda,” Gloria said. “Sophie’s not at home?”

Janine shook her head.

“They probably took a bathroom break,” Suzanne suggested.

“We had to take three of them,” Emily groaned. “Tiffany had to pee twice.”

“Shh,” said her mother.

Janine turned to look toward the far corner of the parking lot, searching for a blue Honda. Maybe Alison had her southeast and northeast confused, but this was the same spot from which the troop had taken off. Besides, she surely would have noticed the van by now.

“I’m sure they’ll be here any minute.” Gloria touched her arm. “They probably got stuck in a traffic jam.”

“You would have gotten stuck in it, too, then,” Janine said. “Does Alison have a cell phone with her?” Her voice sounded remarkably calm despite the fact that she was furious with Gloria for allowing Sophie to ride with the young troop leader.

“Yes, she does.” Gloria sounded relieved at that realization. “I have her number in the van. Hold on.” She walked quickly toward her van, stopping only a second to talk to her daughter.

“Sophie’s just fine,” Suzanne said in a reassuring voice.

Janine tried to nod, but her neck felt as if it were made of wood.

“She had a really good time, Mrs. Donohue,” Emily said, somehow picking up her mother’s cue that Janine was in desperate need of reassurance.

“What sorts of things did you do?” Janine tried to smile at Emily, one eye on the van where Gloria was making the call.

“We rode horses,” Emily said. “That was my favorite part.”

“Really?” Janine asked. “Did Sophie ride a horse?”

“Yup.” Emily told her some of the other things they’d done, but Janine was stuck on the image of her daughter astride a horse for the first time in her life.

Gloria moved the phone from her ear and started walking toward them.

“Did you reach her?” Janine asked.

“No answer,” Gloria said. “She probably has it turned off.”

Brilliant, Janine thought.

The other girls were getting grumpy. They slumped wearily against the van, begging to leave. Their cheeks were pink from the sun, their arms blotchy with mosquito bites.

“Be patient,” Gloria said to them. “As soon as Alison gets here, we can divide up and start for home.”

Gloria and Suzanne chatted calmly as they waited, but Janine could not follow, much less participate in, their conversation. Minutes passed, and her hand became slick with perspiration around the phone locked in her fist, while the world in the parking lot took on a dreamlike quality. Janine was only vaguely aware of the movement of the cars and the people and the tired Brownies, who now sprawled on the stretch of grass between the parking lot and Beulah Road. She glanced repeatedly at her watch as the minute hand made its steady fall toward three-thirty, and her mind raced with explanations for Alison’s tardiness. Maybe Sophie had gotten ill and they’d needed to stop. Or maybe they were simply caught in a traffic jam that Gloria had somehow circumvented. Or maybe Alison had decided to take them on some new, unplanned adventure. Janine wanted to ask Gloria what she had been thinking, putting Sophie in Alison’s car for the ride home. Did Alison have with her the three pages of instructions Janine had written outlining Sophie’s special needs? Did these women understand how sick Sophie was? She suddenly wondered if Joe had been right in not wanting Sophie go on this camping trip. Maybe it had been a foolish decision, after all. Thanks to Dr. Schaefer’s treatment, Sophie looked quite well right now. It would have been easy for the troop leaders to have forgotten how seriously ill she was.

Gloria tried several more times to reach Alison’s cell phone, without success, and at four o’clock, Janine could take it no longer.

“What’s Alison’s home phone number?” she asked Gloria. Her voice sounded curt, but she felt herself soften as she saw the look of concern in Gloria’s face.

Gloria knew the number by heart, and Janine dialed it on her own phone.

“Hello?” A woman’s voice answered.

Janine gripped the phone. “Alison?” she asked.

“No, this is Charlotte. Alison’s not here.”

“Are you her…housemate?”

“Yes.”

“I’m waiting for her at Meadowlark Gardens,” Janine said. “She’s supposed to be bringing my daughter and another girl back from West Virginia. Have you heard from her?”

“No,” Charlotte said. “I was wondering where she was, actually. She should have been home an hour ago. We’re supposed to go to Polyester’s tonight.”

Janine had no idea what Polyester’s was, nor did she care. “Look, if you hear from her, tell her to call this number immediately.” Janine gave the woman her number.

“You could call her, if you want,” Charlotte said. “I can give you the number for her cell.”

“We’ve tried calling her. She must be out of range.”

“I doubt that. She has the same phone plan I do. We’re never out of range.”

“Well, I guess she has it turned off, then.”

Charlotte laughed. “She never turns her phone off. She’s terrified of missing a call.”

Janine said goodbye, then hung up her phone. She looked toward the entrance of the parking lot, where a short line of cars was waiting to exit, and none were waiting to come in.

For whatever reason, Alison had turned her phone off now.

CHAPTER TWO

They waited until nearly four-thirty before calling Holly’s parents, and by that time the muscles in Janine’s face ached from trying not to cry. She wondered how another mother might react in a situation like this. The mother of a healthy child would take tardiness in stride. She wanted to behave like the typical mom of a typical child, but she’d had so little practice with that.

Gloria stood next to Janine as she placed the call to Holly’s parents, but it was apparent from her end of the conversation that they were not home.

“Are you Holly’s sister?” Gloria asked into the phone. “Will you have them give me a call as soon as they get home? It’s important…no, now don’t worry them. I’m sure everything’s fine.” Her voice was tight but upbeat. “Holly’s just a little late getting back from camp, and I wanted to let them know, that’s all.” She gave the girl her number, then hung up the phone and smiled at Janine.

“They have seven children,” she said. “Can you imagine?”

They could lose one and still have six left, Janine thought, although she knew such thinking was both irrational and callous.

“Holly falls smack in the middle,” Gloria continued.

Suzanne glanced over at Emily, lying on the lawn with the four other girls. “Em’s the middle child, too,” she said. “Though she doesn’t have that middle kid syndrome. Not yet, at least.”

“Jason has it, that’s for sure,” Gloria said, referring to her son. “Of course he’s stuck in the middle between two girls, so it’s not just the middle child syndrome he’s coping with.”

Janine had nothing to add to this conversation. How could Gloria and Suzanne stand there chatting about birth order when Sophie and Holly were over an hour and a half late? She stepped away from the two women and dialed Alison’s cell phone number again. Still no answer. She thought of what Alison’s housemate, Charlotte, had said about Alison never turning off her cell phone out of fear of missing a call. Had she had the phone glued to her ear on this trip? Might she have been concentrating on a conversation rather than on her driving and smashed into a tree? But then, wouldn’t Gloria have seen the accident, since she had been behind her? Maybe Alison had taken a different route. Then Gloria wouldn’t have been able to see the accident, and…

“Why don’t I take the girls home?” Suzanne interrupted her ruminating with a question to Gloria. “I’ve got the station wagon. I can fit them all in. Randi, too,” she said, referring to Gloria’s daughter.

Gloria looked at her watch, then nodded. “That would be great,” she said. “No sense in all of us waiting here.”

Suzanne gave Janine a quick, one-armed hug. “I’m sure everything’s fine,” she said. “This is just one of those crazy misunderstandings. You’ll see.”

“I hope so.” Janine tried to smile.

She leaned against the van, watching Gloria and Suzanne help the girls load their gear into the station wagon. She supposed she should help, but felt unable to move from the side of the van, dazed by the sight of all those healthy brown arms and legs, as the girls climbed into the station wagon with their sleeping bags and knapsacks. From the other end of the parking lot came a cacophony of whistles and applause, and she turned to see a car drive out of the lot onto Beulah Road, streamers sailing in the air from the rear bumper. Her mind was so heavy with worry that it took her a moment to realize it was a bride and groom making their getaway.

Gloria came to stand next to her as they watched the station wagon pull out of the parking lot. She looked at her watch again.

“I think we should call the police,” she said. “We should make sure there haven’t been any accidents.”

“Yes,” Janine agreed. She thought they should have called the police an hour ago.

Again, she listened to Gloria make a call in that tight, even voice, describing the problem in terms Janine deemed far too mild. She wanted to grab the phone from Gloria’s hand to tell the dispatcher her view of the situation, but she kept her hands knotted firmly around her own phone.

“They’re sending someone over here to talk with us,” Gloria told her as she clicked off her phone. “Though I hope by the time they get here, we won’t need them.” She looked toward Beulah Road as if hoping to see the blue Honda.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” Janine said. “The one time I let her go someplace alone, and now she’s…Who knows where she is?”

Gloria put a gentle arm around Janine’s shoulders. “I’m sure she’s fine,” she said. “And Sophie had the best time, Janine. I was so glad she was finally able to do something fun with the rest of the girls. I just can’t get over how well she seems.”

“I know,” Janine said. “But she still needs to be careful. To watch her fluid intake and her—”

“And her diet,” Gloria finished the sentence for her. “We were careful with her, Janine. We were vigilant. Although she knows what she’s supposed to do to take care of herself. She’s very sophisticated about her condition.”

“Yes, she is,” Janine admitted. “But it’s gotten more complicated because of the study she’s in. Her fluid needs are always changing.”

“She told me about Herbalina.”

“What did she say about it?” Janine asked, curious.

“That she hated getting it at first. The needle was painful and all. But she knows it’s made her feel so much better. And it’s given her more freedom at night from being hooked up to that machine.”

“It has.” She remembered how Sophie had cried the first time that fat needle had pierced her vein. The last couple of weeks or so, though, she’d been so brave, sticking her arm out for Dr. Schaefer’s attack. Janine owed that change to Lucas and his courage tree.

“Is it a cure?” Gloria asked. “Or just a treatment.”

Janine sighed. “Depends on who you ask,” she said. “The doctor in charge of the study believes it can ultimately cure her. But Sophie’s regular doctor thinks it just buys a little time, and not much of it at that.” She looked away from Gloria, toward the road, tears burning her eyes again.

Gloria squeezed her shoulders. “Even if that’s the case, at least she’s able to enjoy herself right now.”

“Exactly my thought,” Janine said. Although she knew she was lying. Deep inside, she could not settle for mere temporary relief for Sophie. She wanted Sophie to have the chance at a normal life, the same chance Gloria’s daughter had.

“She’s such a sensitive little girl,” Gloria commented. “I don’t mean that the way it sounds,” she added quickly. “It’s not like she’s overly sensitive to what people say to her, or anything like that. But she’s very sensitive to the needs of the other girls. Brianna was homesick that first night, and Sophie told her jokes to take her mind off it.”

“That’s my girl.” Janine smiled. Sophie would always talk about the other kids in the hospital with sympathy. She felt sorry for them for being sick, as though she didn’t recognize that she was one of them herself.

“She said she was worried about you,” Gloria said.

“About me?”

“That you’d be lonely without her over the weekend.”

Janine shook her head, pressing a fist to her mouth. “I don’t want her to worry about me,” she said. Yet she knew that Sophie always did. More than once, Janine had stood in a hospital corridor, peeking unnoticed into Sophie’s room. Sophie’s pale, freckled face would be contorted with pain and misery, but her features would shift instantly into a devil-may-care smile once she realized her mother could see her. What about right now? she wondered. Wherever Sophie was, she had to know that Janine was worried about her. And that would upset her. Sophie had always taken on too much responsibility for the feelings of others.

A police car pulled into the parking lot, turning toward the southeast corner, slowing as it neared them. The car came to a stop next to Gloria’s van, and Janine felt her hope pour into the young officer who stepped out from behind the wheel. He looked little more than a child himself, though, as he walked toward them. She could see the sunburn on his nose and the gawky way he carried himself, as if he’d suddenly found himself in his father’s police uniform and didn’t know quite how to wear it.

“Are you the two ladies with the late Girl Scouts?”

“That’s right,” Gloria replied, but Janine was struck by the insensitivity of his words. The late Girl Scouts. She supposed it was her own sensitivity that was putting her on edge.

“They were due here at three.” Gloria told him about the trip back from the camp and gave him the names of Alison and the two girls. He wrote the information down slowly, in neat block letters, on a small notepad.

“Are you sure she took the same route as you?” he asked Gloria. He pronounced the word rowt.

“I assumed so. I mean, we followed each other going up there. I imagine she would have taken the same route back.”

“But you don’t know that for sure.”

“No.”

“Did you notice anything unusual when you were driving back? Any construction or anything going on along the side of the road—maybe a crafts fair or something—that they might have stopped for?”

“No. But I wasn’t really looking, either.”

The young man studied the words on his notepad as though he wasn’t sure what to make of them. “Okay, first of all, let’s get everyone down here. The troop leader’s roommate, your husband.” He nodded toward Janine, and she thought of correcting him, but there was little point in doing so just then. “The other girl’s parents,” he continued. “And I’m going to call in my supervisor. He has a phone and can check with the dispatchers along the route to see if any accidents have been reported. Unfortunately, only a small part of the route is in Fairfax County, so we’ll have to coordinate with the other police barracks between here and the camp. Of course, we’ve got a recent change of shift, so whatever dispatchers are on duty now might not know about any accidents that occurred on the other shifts.” He tapped the end of his pen against his chin as he stared at the notepad, and Janine grew impatient.

“Wouldn’t they have a record of any accidents, though?” she asked.

“Oh, sure, of course. I was just thinking out loud. Shouldn’t do that.” He grinned at her, and she looked away from him. He was too young to have any children of his own, she thought. He had no idea what this felt like. She watched him stride over to his car just as Gloria’s phone rang.

Gloria quickly brought her phone to her ear, but the caller was only Holly’s mother, and Janine wanted to scream out loud with her disappointment.

“Right,” Gloria said into the phone. “She’s riding in the car with Alison and one other Brownie, Sophie Donohue, and they haven’t shown up here yet. I’m sure everything’s okay, but we’ve contacted the police just in case…yes, you should come over. The police want everyone to be here.”

Somehow, knowing that the police wanted everyone together at Meadowlark Gardens made the gravity of the situation even more real.

“I’ll call my ex-husband,” Janine said, dialing his number on her own phone.

There was no answer on Joe’s end, just his taped message about being unable to come to the phone right then.

Yet another cell phone turned off, she thought. But at least with Joe, she could be reasonably sure where to find him…and who would be there with him.