Courage Tree (24 page)

T
he three of them sat on the flat rocks in the clearing, eating cold baked beans and franks straight from the cans. Marti would not allow a fire in case searchers might be able to see the smoke.

Sophie did not have much of an appetite, and Zoe couldn’t blame her. The little girl was in pain from the wounds on her foot, and she was also very, very frightened. It was probably beginning to dawn on her that she was not getting out of here any time soon.

Zoe had finally decided against walking Sophie to the road. Her reasons for changing her mind were many. First, Sophie had not awakened from her nap until nearly two o’clock, and there was no way Zoe could get all the way to the road and back again before dark. Second, when Sophie
did
finally wake up, her foot was so inflamed, so obviously infected, that there was no way she could possibly walk on it. Zoe gave her some antibiotics from the stash she’d brought with her, hoping not only that they would help, but that they would have no unforeseen negative effect on Sophie’s kidney problems. Who knew what was going on inside the little girl’s body?

But the third reason for not taking Sophie to the road was the most compelling: she simply could not put Marti’s safety at risk. Yes, Sophie had promised not to give away the identity of the person who’d found her in the woods, and Zoe knew the child was sincere about that. But Marti was right. They would question Sophie until she gave in. She was smart and strong, but she was also sick and scared. No, Zoe could not put Marti in that sort of jeopardy.

When Marti had returned from her angry escape into the forest, Zoe had sat with her on the sofa in the living room, talking quietly, trying to figure out what to do. Both of them had been calmer, then. Both of them ready to reason.

“Please don’t take her to the road, Mom,” Marti had said. Her voice had been soft, yet pleading, and Zoe’d felt torn apart by the fear that lay just beneath the surface of her daughter’s words. “You made this plan for me to get out of prison,” Marti said. “This wonderful, elaborate plan. And if you take her, it’s going to screw everything up.”

“She’s a sick little girl, though,” Zoe had said. “Seriously sick. I’m afraid she might even die if I don’t get her help.”

“But how
can
you get her help?” Marti asked. “Be realistic. Her foot is so bad, she has to hop rather than walk. I know your intentions are good, Mom, but if she’s not able to walk out of here with you, it’s not your fault. It’s just one of those things. I mean, it’s not like we have a phone or anything so that we can call for help. We’ll just have to try to take care of her ourselves, the best we can.”

“Except…I could go myself up to the road,” Zoe said slowly, thinking the idea through as she spoke. “I could get a ride into the nearest town and let someone know she’s here and that she needs help.”

Marti simply stared at her. “Tell me you’re kidding,” she said. “You’d have to let people see you then. They’d know you’re not dead. And then they’d find me and take me back
to Chowchilla. I’d never get out of there. And you’d probably be in there with me for helping me escape.”

“I wouldn’t care for myself,” Zoe said honestly. “I’m really beyond caring. But
you’re
not going back there. I won’t let that happen.”

“Then you know you can’t go and get her help, don’t you?”

Zoe nodded. “I know,” she said, giving in.

“Thanks, Mom.” Marti smiled. She pulled another cigarette out of the pack in her pocket and lit it. Taking a drag on the cigarette, her eyes suddenly filled with tears.

“What is it, Mart?” Zoe asked her.

“I just felt…jealous, or something,” she said, staring at the tip of her cigarette. “Watching you with that little kid. You never paid that much attention to me when I was eight.”

“I know that, honey,” Zoe admitted. “You’re right, and I’m sorry.”

“Why did you ever have me in the first place?” Marti asked.

Zoe stared out the window at the forest. “I wanted a child,” she said. “I was thirty-two, and practically every woman I knew had children. I felt like I was missing something. Your dad was forty-three by then, and he really wasn’t interested in becoming a father. He was so attached to his career, and he was also attached to mine, as you know. He never wanted me to get pregnant, because it would take time away from my work.” Although she’d been an entertainer since she was small, it was Max who had truly made her into a superstar. She’d been a little bit of everything. Sex kitten. Singer. Dancer. Actress. The one label that had never fit her well, though, had been Mother.

“I don’t feel like I ever really knew Dad,” Marti said.

“I know,” Zoe said. “He was an absent father for you. Just like I was an absent mother.”

“Didn’t you realize that at the time?” Marti asked. “Didn’t you see that you were never there for me?”

Zoe thought about it. She wanted to answer truthfully. This
time with Marti was going to be all about honesty. “Yes, I knew that, and I felt guilty about it,” she said. “But the truth was, even if I’d had the time to give you, I didn’t know how to be a mother to you. I was lousy mother material, and I knew it. That’s why I hired nannies for you.”

“You were never, ever home,” Marti said. Her bitterness was masked, but barely. And she was right. Zoe had been on the road during much of Marti’s childhood, and when she
had
actually been at home with her daughter, she’d been honestly uncomfortable with her. Marti had seemed like a stranger to her. Zoe truly had not known her at all.

“That’s why I wanted to do this for you, Mart,” she said. “I wanted to help you prove your innocence, but the lawyers I hired blew it.”

“No kidding.” Marti rolled her eyes.

“So, I came up with this plan. I figured neither of us had much left to lose. I’d try to…spring you.” She smiled at the expression. “And if we succeeded, great. If we didn’t, we were back where we started.”

“Mom…” Marti leaned forward. She rested her hand on Zoe’s arm and tears filled her eyes again. “I can’t go back there, ever, Mom. Please don’t let that happen to me.”

“I won’t, sweetie,” she promised, pulling her daughter, her own little girl, into her arms. And she knew that somehow, Sophie would have to heal herself. Zoe was giving up on her, turning her fate over to a force greater than any of them. There was nothing more she could do for the child.

“Hey, look!” Marti said now. She pointed toward the edge of the clearing, and Zoe and Sophie looked up from their beans and franks to see what had attracted her. A huge turtle had lumbered out of the woods, making slow but steady progress across the clearing.

“Is it a turtle or a tortoise?” Marti asked, walking across the clearing to get a better look.

“What’s the difference?” Zoe asked.

“I don’t have a clue,” Marti said.

“It’s a snapping turtle,” Sophie said with authority.

“How do you know that?” Zoe asked.

Sophie shrugged. She was not a happy little camper this evening. “I just do,” she said. She was using her penknife to spread peanut butter on a piece of Melba Toast.

“So,” Marti said, as she neared the turtle. “Do they snap?”

“They can break your finger right off,” Sophie said.

“Oh, they can, can they,” Marti said. She picked up a stick from the edge of the forest and held it in front of the turtle, and Zoe saw her slowly reach into her shorts pocket and pull out a survival knife.

“Oh, don’t hurt it, Marti,” Zoe said, but she was too late. The turtle stretched out its long neck to bite down on the stick, and with one quick blow, Marti decapitated it.

“Turtle soup for tomorrow night!” she crowed.

“Oh, Marti.” Zoe felt shaken, actually sick. She found herself unable to look at the turtle and averted her eyes. Yet
she
had killed animals out here. Why did this feel so different? She looked across the clearing at Sophie, whose face was a mixture of fear and horror.

“Why did you do that?” Sophie asked Marti. “He wouldn’t hurt you if you just left him alone.”

Marti tossed her knife on the ground and sat down on one of the rocks again. “Because turtle soup is delicious,” she said. “That’s why.”

“And how are you going to make turtle soup without a fire?” Sophie asked. She set down her penknife and got off the rock. Carrying the Melba Toast, she hopped across the clearing toward the shanty.

Marti watched her go. “Sensitive little thing, isn’t she?” she said to Zoe.

Zoe cleared her throat. “I have some books in the shanty that will tell you how to clean a turtle.”

“We can’t have turtle soup,” Marti said. “Sophie’s right. We’d need a fire.”

“So, you killed that turtle for nothing,” Zoe said. Anger surged inside her, and she did her best not to let it come out in her voice.

“Don’t go getting all sappy on me, all right?” Marti stood up and headed for the shanty. “You and Sophie make quite a team,” she called back over her shoulder. “It was just a turtle.”

Zoe sat still on the rock after Marti went into the shanty, her can of beans in her hand, her eyes averted from the slaughtered turtle on the other side of the clearing. She was annoyed at herself.
So, it’s okay for you to kill animals, but not for Marti to do it?
she asked herself. But then, suddenly, she knew why her hands were shaking, her heart pounding.

She remembered the kitten, the white ball of fluff, that Marti had been given as a birthday gift for her seventh birthday, or maybe her eighth. She’d been thrilled with the kitten, or so it seemed. But one day, the cat disappeared. The nanny found it a few days later, beneath Marti’s bed, its neck broken. Marti denied knowing anything about the kitten’s death, and Zoe had believed her.

At least, she’d pretended to believe her. Zoe was an actress. She was very, very good at pretending.

L
ucas’s house was dark. Joe was parked down the block, not certain what he should do next. Lucas’s car was in the carport, and Joe’s best guess was that he was with another woman up in his tree house. Why else would he desert Janine at a time like this?

Night had finally fallen over Vienna, and Joe got out of his car under the cover of darkness. He heard music coming from the amphitheater at Wolf Trap National Park, followed by rowdy applause and whistles that cut through the still air, and he wondered who was performing there tonight. Not the symphony, obviously.

Moving quietly, he slipped into the woods at the edge of Lucas’s property. He had never been to the tree house before, but he knew its approximate location, since he’d seen it from the road in winter when the leaves were off the trees. After a moment or two, he was surrounded by the darkness of the woods and a bit disoriented. Is this how Sophie felt in the woods, night after night? It was unfathomable. He was a thirty-five-year-old man in the safe confines of Vienna, just blocks
from traffic, with the civilized sound of music wafting through the trees, and he still felt spooked. How could Sophie survive this?

The reality was that Sophie probably had not survived. When he was being honest with himself, Joe knew that was the truth. Even if she’d been able to tolerate the emotional anguish of being lost, even if she’d somehow found the courage to make it through four nights alone in the forest, and even if she’d somehow managed to find food that was safe to eat, she could not survive. Her kidneys would not let her. And if Herbalina
was
the miracle drug Janine thought it to be—something he did not for a moment believe—she still would have needed dialysis by now.
Oh, Sophe.
What a cruel way to die. No one deserved to die afraid and alone, least of all his little girl.

Ahead of him, a light flickered through the trees. He walked toward it as quietly as he could and was relieved to see that it was coming from the tree house. The two-tiered house was in darkness except for one brightly lit room, and from where he stood, Joe could clearly see Lucas sitting at a desk in front of a computer monitor. Just the gardener and the machine, no sign of another woman. For this, Lucas had given up a night with Janine? Maybe he was an Internet junkie in need of a fix.

Joe leaned a bit to the left to try to see the screen of the monitor more clearly, and his foot came down on a dead branch as he shifted his weight. It cracked in two, the sound so loud that Lucas turned his head toward the window.

Joe held his breath. Lucas stood up from the computer to look through the window into the darkness, then he disappeared from the room.
He’s walking out to the deck,
Joe thought. Any minute, Lucas would turn on an outside light to look for the intruder.

Having no desire to be found spying, Joe turned around and headed swiftly back to the road.
This is, without a doubt, the weirdest thing you’ve ever done,
he told himself, as he moved
through the woods. And he sure as hell didn’t want to be caught doing it.

He was perspiring by the time he reached the street and was about to head toward his car, when his gaze was drawn to the two bags of recycling sitting on the curb in front of Lucas’s brick rambler. He walked over to the bags and peered inside them. There were no streetlights on this side of the road, but Joe was still able to see that one of the bags was filled with a week’s worth of the
Washington Post.
The second seemed to contain junk mail and magazines. Leaning over, he tore the paper on the second bag, curious to see if its contents might contain any clues to Lucas Trowell.

The paper spilled from the bag onto the curb, one of the magazines falling open, and Joe blinked in horror. The magazine had opened to a picture of a nude child. A girl, Joe thought, although it was hard to tell in the dim light. He moved the magazine with the toe of his shoe, trying to get more light on the picture, but a rustling noise from the woods stopped him. Looking up, he saw a light flickering through the trees.
A flashlight.
Lucas was on his way out here.

Joe backed away from the torn bag of paper and ran toward his car. His hands shook wildly as he climbed into the driver’s seat and turned the key in the ignition, and he pressed on the gas, leaving Lucas’s neighborhood behind him as quickly as he could.

When he neared Ayr Creek, he pulled to the side of the road, turned off the ignition and rested his head against the back of the car seat. He wanted to wipe the last half hour from his mind. Shame filled him. He was a spy, a voyeur. He was, as Paula had so kindly pointed out to him, obsessed with Lucas Trowell.

Okay, so he’d done the deed. He couldn’t take it back. He just needed to let it go.

He started the car again, and by the time he turned into the Ayr Creek driveway, he’d managed to erase most of the escapade from his mind—all except the shadowy image of a naked little girl.