Courage Tree (20 page)

“Be right there,” she said, then turned back to them. “I have to go. My suggestion to you folks is that you either go back to the motel and get some sleep or—”

“No way,” Janine said. Was this woman nuts?

“Then make yourselves at home out there on the road. You can come into the trailer from time to time if you need to get out of the sun or whatever, but it’ll get too cramped for all of
you to stay in here. We’ve got some folding chairs you can use if you like.”

“Valerie?” the man called again.

“I’ve got to go,” she repeated. “Let me know where you are at all times, and I’ll keep you posted on how we’re progressing.”

She walked away from them, and Janine looked at Lucas.

“Now what?” she said.

“Now we make ourselves at home out on the road, I guess,” he answered, getting to his feet.

They borrowed the folding chairs and set them up near the embankment. Paula drove Joe’s car into the nearest town to buy snacks, insect repellent and sunscreen, even though the road would be in the shade for most of the day. Janine protested the purchase of sunscreen.

“We aren’t going to be out here that long,” she said. She truly believed what she was saying. There were so many searchers coming into the area, and so many dogs, that it seemed impossible to her that Sophie would not be found within minutes.

But the morning wore on, the hours ticking by with no news from Valerie, although searchers regularly stopped into the trailer to talk with her. At one o’clock, Janine’s parents arrived. They were solemn and scared, and they doled out the more comfortable chairs they’d brought with them, along with sandwiches and drinks. They’d also brought shopping bags containing new T-shirts and shorts for Janine, Joe and Paula, and not so much as the time of day for Lucas. They parked their chairs close to Joe and Paula, and Janine could hear Joe filling them in on the mechanics of the search.

“We heard about Zoe’s daughter on the radio while we were driving out here,” Janine’s mother said. “She’s right in this area.”

“Not really,” Joe said. “She’s at least twelve miles from here.”

“Not far enough,” her father said.

“Zoe could never accept the fact that her daughter was guilty,” her mother continued.

Paula swallowed a bite of her sandwich. “I thought there was reasonable doubt,” she said.

“Zoe’s life just became so tragic,” her mother said.

“Well, she sure got carried away with that plastic surgery,” Janine’s father added. “She didn’t even look like herself anymore.”

“But she probably felt as though she had to do it,” Paula said. “Her fans expected her to look good all the time.”

Janine tried to tune out the inane conversation as she shared her sandwich with Lucas. He looked very tired, and she supposed that her eyes looked just as swollen, her face just as drawn, as his did.

At three o’clock, Valerie finally came out of the trailer to talk to them. She was carrying something in her hand. A cell phone, Janine thought.

“No real news,” Valerie said before they could ask. “I just want to get a little more information about Sophie from you.”

Janine’s father stood up to offer Valerie his chair, but she waved away the gesture, and when she did so, Janine recognized the object in her hand.

“That’s Sophie’s hiking shoe!” She jumped to her feet.

“That’s one of the things I wanted to ask you,” Valerie said, handing the shoe to her. It was dirty and soaking wet, but otherwise in good shape. “It’s hers?”

“Yes! Absolutely.” Janine held the shoe to her chest like a treasure.

“Where did you find it?” Joe asked.

“Only about twenty feet from the accident site,” Valerie said. “We haven’t been able to find anything else, though.”

“You said you wanted some more information about Sophie?” Lucas prompted her.

Valerie nodded. “Well, first of all, let me say that we’re very
concerned that we haven’t found her yet. Given that she’s probably injured, and missing at least one of her shoes, we don’t see how she could have gotten too far.”

“What are you saying?” Joe asked.

“Just that we have to entertain the possibility that she might have…succumbed to her injuries and been found by an animal, and—”

“Don’t give up on her,” Janine said. “Please.”

“No, we’re not giving up. We’re just exploring all possible explanations for why we haven’t found her yet, with this many people looking for her. We rely on statistics to tell us how a lost person might behave,” she continued. “A child between the ages of six and twelve will usually try to use the path of least resistance. Unfortunately, there aren’t any trails down there, so that makes it tough, both for her and for our searchers.”

“Could she have walked on the road instead of through the woods?” Janine’s father asked.

“We speculate that Sophie wouldn’t have been able to get up to the road from the accident site,” Valerie said. “It’s just too steep. But we’re still searching the roads, just in case she did. We’ve divided them up for three miles in all directions. But whether she’s on the road or in the woods, a healthy child Sophie’s age will usually be found within two miles of where they were last seen. It’s really, really rare to find them any farther away than that. And Sophie isn’t healthy.”

“But you’ll look farther than that, won’t you?” Janine asked.

“Yes, we will, of course, if we don’t find her closer in,” Valerie said. “We don’t give up on trying to find anyone, Janine. Especially not a child.”

Joe and Paula, along with Janine’s parents, returned to the motel around six o’clock, but Janine and Lucas remained at the command post until eight, when a thunderstorm forced the
searchers out of the woods for the night. They drove back to the motel in silence in Joe’s car, which he’d left behind for them to use.

Janine didn’t have the energy to bother with pretense, so she didn’t even stop in her own motel room before going to Lucas’s. She lay next to him in his bed, her body limp with exhaustion. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the white trailer, the searchers in their hiking boots, the well-trained dogs with the anticipatory look in their eyes, and the deep woods that had swallowed Sophie whole.

“I need to go back to Vienna tomorrow,” Lucas said suddenly.

They’d talked for a while, but had fallen into a long, discouraged silence, and Janine was as startled by the sound of his voice as she was by the words themselves.

“Why?” she asked.

“Just for the day,” he said. His arm was around her shoulders, and he tightened it in comfort. “I have some business I need to attend to. But I wanted to suggest that you go with me, and we—”

“
What
business?” she asked. “What can be more important than being out here right now?”

“It’s not more important,” Lucas said, “but it’s something I have to take care of, and I can’t do it from here.”

There had always been a secret side to Lucas. Usually, that didn’t bother her, but right now she was annoyed.

“Is it related to finding another job?” she asked. How could he even talk about leaving?

Lucas sighed. “No,” he said. “There’s a project I’m working on with some other people. We’re working some things out online, and they’re waiting for me to get back to them with some information.”

“We can get a laptop somewhere,” she offered.

Lucas shook his head. “All my material is in the tree house,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I’ll have to go back. And I thought it would be good if you went with me—”

“I can’t leave here.” There was anger in her voice, and he hesitated before speaking again.

“There’s so little you can do here, sweetheart,” he said finally. “The search will go on without you, and my idea was that you could go to Dr. Schaefer’s office and get some of the herb stuff…Herbalina…so that if…
when
they find Sophie, it could be immediately administered to her. Also, I’ll have to rent a car to go back to Virginia. I can drop it off in Vienna, then we could bring my car…or your car…back. That way, we’d have a car here.”

He’d lost her with all the talk about cars. She was still thinking about having Herbalina here, with her, ready for one of the paramedics to infuse into Sophie. She kissed Lucas’s cheek. “Thank you,” she said.

“For what?”

“For believing that Sophie will be found alive. I felt like I was the only person who still thought that was possible. And for believing in Herbalina.”

“I’ve seen with my own eyes the change it made in her.”

“So has Joe,” she said. “So have my parents. But that doesn’t make any difference to them.”

“So,” Lucas said. “Will you go with me?”

“Yes,” she said, and she pulled herself closer to him, shutting her eyes. She would try to sleep, praying that sleep would be interrupted sometime during the night with the good news she longed to hear.

Z
oe opened her eyes as soon as the birds started singing their tribute to the morning. Light was only beginning to filter into the room, and from her sleeping palette she could see a cardinal in the tree outside the screened window. When she’d first arrived at the shanty, she’d found some old screening half buried in the ground near the outhouse and had nailed it up to the two windows in the bedroom to try to keep the mosquitoes out. Probably pointless, since the other windows in the house had no screens, but it made her feel good to be able to give Marti some space in the house that would be free of insects.

It was a moment before Zoe remembered she was not alone. The memory of the little girl crept so slowly into her mind that when she lifted her head to look at the sleeping palette across the room from hers, she almost expected to see it empty and the child gone, as if she’d imagined her. But there she was, her body so small it barely elevated the lavender sheet above the bed. The little girl was turned on her side, away from Zoe, and her hair lay in red waves on her pillow.

Zoe rested her head on her own pillow again and shut her
eyes. What was she going to do with this child? And just how sick was she? When she’d gotten up from her long nap the day before, Sophie had managed to keep her eyes open only long enough for Zoe to wash and bandage her cut—and possibly infected—foot before tumbling back in bed again. She’d slept through dinner, through the evening, through the night, as though making up for the three nights she’d suffered in the woods alone.

She was a sweet girl, a smart girl, and all she wanted was to go home. But Zoe was not sure how to make that happen without putting herself and her own daughter in the gravest jeopardy.

Sometime during the night, she’d come up with a plan: she and Sophie would walk the five miles through the forest to the road, leaving a note for Marti, in case she arrived while Zoe was gone. She would have to fashion some sort of shoe for Sophie’s left foot. Even so, that foot was so bruised and damaged by her three days alone, that Zoe wasn’t sure how the little girl would manage one mile on the rough forest floor, much less five. But never mind. That was the least of their problems. She would carry the girl if she had to.

So, she would take the girl to the road. It was a little used road, and they might have to wait awhile for someone to come along. As soon as they saw a car, Zoe would hide, and Sophie could wave it down. She’d have to explain all of this to Sophie ahead of time, of course, so Sophie wouldn’t give her away. It worried Zoe to let the little girl get into a car with a stranger who might not have her best interest at heart, but there was no other way this could be done.

There was one other problem, though. A big one: Sophie had recognized her.

Over their afternoon snack the day before, Zoe had caught the child staring at her across the firepit.

“You’re the most beautiful lady I’ve ever seen,” Sophie had said, and Zoe could not help but be flattered that a child would find her, at sixty years old, befitting of that compliment.

“You look just like Zoe,” the girl went on, and Zoe’s pleasure gave way to fear.

“I’ve been told that before,” she said, dismayed that, even with her blond hair chopped off to her chin, even with the stripe of gray at her roots and without makeup, she could be recognized by an eight-year-old child. “I don’t see the resemblance myself, personally,” she said.

“You look
exactly
like her,” Sophie said. “Like she looked in that Christmas movie.”

“Oh, yes, I remember that movie,” Zoe said. She had taken a role in that PG movie at Max’s insistence, although she’d balked at playing a grandmother. A stylish pip of a grandmother, to be sure, but a grandma nevertheless.

So, a kind driver who picked Sophie up would take her to the police station or sheriff’s office or whatever they had out here, and then Sophie would tell them that a woman who looked exactly like Zoe had taken care of her in the woods. Not such a problem, she thought. People thought Zoe had been dead for months, and even if someone doubted that fact, they’d never guess that she would hole herself up out here in no-man’s-land.

“I think you really are Zoe.”

Zoe started now at the sound of Sophie’s voice. She turned her head to see that the girl had rolled over on her sleeping palette and was staring at her.

“Well,” Zoe said, sitting up. “You certainly had a good long sleep. How do you feel this morning?”

“I saw you from the side,” Sophie said. “You have that little bump on your nose, just like Zoe.”

She thought of arguing, of telling her that any number of people had that little bump on their noses, but she could see by Sophie’s face that the child would not be fooled.

“You’re right, honey,” she said with a sigh. “I am Zoe.”

Sophie sat up, a grin on her face. “I knew it!” she said. She was so damn cute when she grinned, that Zoe had to smile herself.

“And I have a favor to ask of you,” Zoe said. “A very big favor.”

“What?”

“Today I plan to walk with you out to the road and—”

“Through the woods?” Sophie’s smile faded.

“Yes. It’s a long way. But that’s the only way to get you out of here.”

“I can’t go into the woods again.” Sophie’s face paled at the thought, her freckles standing out against her skin.

“It’s the only way out, Sophie. I can’t think of another way.”

Sophie said nothing, but the small crease between her eyebrows deepened.

“I will take you to the road. But…this is a little hard to explain…I don’t want anyone to ever know that I’m here. It’s very important. So I have to ask you not to tell anyone that you saw me here. It has to be our secret, okay?”

“Who should I say gave me this shirt to wear?” Sophie held her arm up in the air, and the rolled-up sleeve of Zoe’s blue shirt slipped down to her shoulder.

“You can tell them a lady in the woods helped you. Just not who that lady was. Okay?”

“Why don’t you want anyone to know?”

Zoe guessed that Sophie had never heard about her suicide, and there was no point in bringing that up. “It’s too hard to explain,” she said. “I got very tired of being recognized everywhere I went, so I just wanted to be someplace where I wouldn’t see anyone for a while.”

“Oh.” Sophie nodded, as though she completely understood.

“So here’s what we’ll do,” Zoe said. “I’ll make some breakfast for us, and then we’ll make some kind of shoe for you to wear, and then we’ll start walking.”

Sophie looked out the window, where the trees formed a green wall against the rest of the world. To Zoe, those trees
were her camouflage, but she tried to see them through Sophie’s eyes. How frightening it must have been for her to spend three days alone, able to see nothing but the thick, ghostly forest no matter which way she had turned.

“Please,” Sophie said. “Can’t you find a phone somewhere and get somebody to come here and get me? I don’t want to go into the woods again.” Her lower lip was trembling.

Zoe sat up on her air mattress and ran her hands through her hair. “I think you’re a very brave girl, Sophie,” she said. “Or else you wouldn’t have made it for three days all by yourself in the woods. This time, you’ll have me with you, honey. You won’t be alone. And it will be daylight. You’ll be fine.”

Sophie looked toward the trees again. “Is there a courage tree out there?”

“A courage tree?” Zoe asked. “What’s that?”

“It’s a tall tree with big sort of leaves, and it has these flower kind of things on it that fall to the ground. Lucas…that’s my mom’s boyfriend…says that if you put a flower from the courage tree under your pillow while you sleep, you’ll be braver when you wake up.”

“Well, I don’t know,” Zoe said. She thought of the trees she’d seen in the forest. She’d never known much about trees and plants, especially those that grew in the east. “Does it have another name?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Sophie said. “I think it’s just called a courage tree.”

“And does it really work? Putting the flower under your pillow?”

Sophie nodded. “Lucas brings me one the night before I get Herbalina—that’s a medicine—and then I’m not afraid to take it. They put it in your veins.” She lifted her arm into the air again, and Zoe could see the small, dark bruise near her wrist.

She felt a prickle of fear. The catheter, the dialysis and now
this. “Is that medicine—Herbalina—for your kidneys?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“How often do you need to get it?”

“Mondays and Thursdays. But I also take a lot of other medicines every day, to help me grow bigger and to keep me from getting too much phosphorus and potassium. I don’t have them with me, though. I had enough for camp and that was all.”

“Wow,” Zoe said. “You sure do know a lot about your medicine.”

“My mom teaches me all about it,” Sophie said.

“Today is Thursday,” Zoe said. “You’re supposed to get that Herbalina today, I guess.”

“I missed Monday, too,” Sophie said, “but I don’t feel bad, so maybe I don’t need it anymore.”

Then again, Zoe thought, maybe she did.

“I tell you what,” Zoe said. “You go use the outhouse and wash your face with some water from the pump out front, and I’ll see if I can find a courage tree flower for you. Then you can carry it with you when we walk through the woods.”

“But I have to sleep on it for it to work.”

Zoe felt her patience slipping, ever so slightly. “You can take a little nap, then, before we go,” she suggested. A very little nap, she thought. They needed to leave soon if she hoped to get back to the shanty before dark.

Sophie looked dubious. “Okay,” she said.

Zoe dressed and walked out to the clearing, where she started the fire and put a pot of water on to boil. Then she walked into the woods. It was a beautiful morning, and she and the birds had the forest to themselves, but there was little time to enjoy her surroundings.

The forest was so dense here that there weren’t very many blooming things. She picked one of everything she could find that could possibly be construed as a flower. There were white
lacy blooms in the shape of small pom-poms and large, purple flowers that she thought were rhododendrons. Small blue flowers grew like weeds under one particular tree, and in one area, large green-and-salmon-colored seed pods were scattered on the ground. She carried her bounty back to the clearing, hoping she’d managed to find at least one blossom that would sufficiently resemble the flower from Sophie’s courage tree.

She found Sophie still in the shanty, still sitting on her sleeping palette.

“I was afraid to go to the outhouse by myself,” she admitted.

“Well, maybe one of these will help.” Zoe spread her hands out in front of her, the flowers covering her palms and her fingers.

“That’s it!” Sophie said, reaching for the green-and-salmon seed pod. She kissed it and put it beneath her pillow, and Zoe smiled. The child really was quite adorable.

“Do you think you’ll be able to take a nap right after breakfast?” Zoe asked. “You’ve already slept so long.”

“I think so,” Sophie said. “And maybe it will work if I just lie down on it awhile without sleeping.”

“Come on,” Zoe said. “I’ll walk you to the outhouse.”

Sophie stepped off the bed, yelping when her bandaged left foot hit the floor. She lifted the foot up instantly, as though she’d stepped on a bee, and Zoe could see that it was swollen, the skin puffy around the gauze.
Damn
. How would she ever be able to walk through the woods with her foot in such terrible shape?

“You and I will have to put our heads together and come up with a creative solution to this problem,” Zoe said. “We’ll have to be cobblers. Shoemakers.”

“I know what a cobbler is.” Sophie looked insulted that Zoe had felt it necessary to define the word for her.

“Well, let’s figure out the solution over breakfast,” she said.
“Your clothes are probably dry by now. I’ll get them for you, and I’ll give you a pair of my underwear to put on. They’ll be way too big for you, but better than nothing.”

“Do you know where my penknife is?” Sophie asked.

“It was in the pocket of your shorts,” Zoe said. “I put it on the front porch.”

Zoe walked into the living room, where she picked up a box of instant oatmeal from the shelf she’d formed from crates and rotting wood. Outside, she started a fire in the fire pit, then gathered up Sophie’s clothes and her penknife from the porch and carried them back into the bedroom.

Outside again, she cooked the oatmeal over the fire, and after a moment, Sophie hobbled out of the shanty and joined her on the flat rocks. Zoe scooped some of the oatmeal into a bowl and handed it to the little girl, along with a spoon.

“Are your parents divorced, Sophie?” she asked as they ate. “You said Lucas is your mom’s boyfriend.”

Sophie nodded. “Yup. My mom’s boyfriend is Lucas. He lives in a tree house—”

“No!” Zoe said.

“Yes, he really does. He has a regular house in front of it, but he hardly ever uses it. And my dad has a friend named Paula, but she’s not an actual girlfriend.”