Courage Tree (31 page)

J
oe needed to be alone.

After leaving Schaefer’s office, he drove directly home. Downstairs in his family room, he mixed himself a drink, even though it was still early in the day and he was not much of a drinker. Right now, though, he felt the need.

The stack of videos Janine had given him was on the coffee table, and he picked one up at random and inserted it into the VCR, then slouched down on the sofa and hit the play button on the remote. The image on the television was of a clinical-looking room, the walls lined with recliners, and it took him only a moment to recognize the setting as the room he had visited an hour earlier: Schaefer’s Herbalina room. But in this film, the chairs were empty, the room still. Then, suddenly, he heard voices, and the camera moved in the direction of the long, empty hallway.

The red-haired nurse appeared in the hallway, leading Janine, Lucas and Sophie toward the Herbalina room. Janine held Sophie’s hand, and Lucas had one hand on Janine’s
elbow. In his other hand, the one with the splint, he was carrying a plastic grocery bag.

“See the camera, Sophie?” the nurse said, pointing straight ahead of her. “You’re one of our first patients, so we’re making a little movie about you.”

The camera closed in on Sophie.

Sophie.

Oh, God. So tiny and pale. She looked puffy and sick; Joe had almost forgotten how sick she had looked before starting Herbalina. She was clutching Janine’s hand hard, and the frightened look in her huge eyes seemed to be asking,
What new torture do I have to endure now?

“You don’t need to be afraid, Sophie.” Janine seemed well aware of her daughter’s trepidation. “You’re just visiting here today, and Gina will explain everything that they’ll do here. Then we can come back tomorrow for your first treatment.”

“And there will be other kids here then, right?” Lucas asked the nurse…as if he didn’t know.

“That’s right. There will be six other children here tomorrow. So you’ll all be able to talk and laugh together, and we can play some cartoons on that screen over there.”

The camera followed Sophie’s gaze to the large screen TV in the corner of the room, but the sight of it did nothing to alter her suspicious expression.

“Why don’t you pick out the chair you’d like to sit in tomorrow?” Gina suggested. “We’ll reserve it for you, then, and it can be your chair when you come every time.”

“How many times?” Sophie asked.

“Every Monday and Thursday,” Janine said. “Twice a week.”

“I don’t want to come here that much,” Sophie said. She was still holding Janine’s hand, clinging to her. “Please, Mom,” she begged.

“Sophie.” Lucas sat down on one of the recliners so that he was at her height. “They have something here called Herbalina,”
he said, “and your mom and the doctor who works here think that it can help you feel much, much better. You wouldn’t need to have your dialysis nearly as much. You could probably go to school again, right?” Lucas looked at the nurse for confirmation, and Joe thought about how ludicrous that was. But Lucas was doing a good job of playing ignorant for the sake of the ruse.

“Yes, he’s right, Sophie,” Gina said. “We think Herbalina’s going to change your life. Now, which chair would you like?”

Sophie looked from chair to chair, then pointed to the one next to where Lucas was sitting.

“Hop on up,” Gina said, and Sophie reluctantly let go of Janine’s hand to climb into the huge chair. She looked so fragile, so heartbreakingly small and vulnerable in that big chair, that Joe had to pause the tape for a minute to bring his emotions under control.

“Now you will be able to either sit up like that or recline a bit, whichever makes you most comfortable,” Gina said, once Joe started the tape again. “Then I’ll put a little needle into the vein in your arm and—”

“No!” Sophie hugged her arm against her body.

“You’ve had needles like that before, honey,” Janine said. “You know they’re not that bad.”

“No,” Sophie repeated. “No more needles.”

“Herbalina is a liquid,” Gina said. “It looks like water. It comes in a plastic bag. In order to get it from the bag into your body, we need to put it through a tube and get it into your vein with a needle. It will only hurt for the tiniest of seconds.”

“Mommy…”
Sophie reached for Janine, the helpless look on her face tearing at Joe’s heart. He felt for Janine, as well, knowing how much it hurt her to put Sophie through yet another form of torture. It must have been especially hard with Herbalina, when she was facing such an unknown treatment and outcome—plus the wrath of her parents and ex-husband.

“Sophie,” Lucas said, “I have something for you.”

Sophie turned to him. There was unabashed trust in her eyes, and Joe knew that Janine was not the only Donohue female to have fallen in love with the gardener.

Lucas reached into the grocery bag he was carrying and pulled out some sort of plant. He rested it on Sophie’s lap, and Joe leaned closer to the TV to try to get a better look at the green-and-peach-colored blossom. It looked like the seed pod from a tulip poplar, but he couldn’t be sure.

“What is it?” Sophie asked.

“This is a flower from the courage tree,” Lucas said, with some reverence in his voice. “It’s very special and very magical.”

“What kind of magic?”

“Well, if you put a flower from the courage tree beneath your pillow when you go to sleep at night, you wake up feeling brave in the morning.”

Joe waited for Sophie to scoff at Lucas’s claim. She was too smart for that, he thought. A born skeptic. She’d questioned the existence of Santa Claus at the age of four, and never bought into the tooth fairy.

But Sophie stroked the peach-and-green seed pod with her fingertips. “Does it really work?” she asked.

“It always works for me,” Lucas said. “Works like a charm, as a matter of fact. Will you try it tonight?”

Sophie looked at the seed pod again. “Okay,” she agreed.

“Hooray, Sophie!” Gina clapped her hands together.

“I’m so glad, honey,” Janine said.

Sophie offered the smallest possible grin she could manage, then wrinkled her nose. “Can I get out of this chair now?” she asked.

A few minutes later, Joe turned off the tape, but he remained seated on the sofa, staring at the dark television screen, still seeing the images there. He saw the love in Janine’s face for Lucas and the amazing strength she seemed to draw from him. He saw Lucas’s ploy to get Sophie to take the medicine he had
created, that he knew would make her well. Medicine that could make any number of children well.

He’d blamed Sophie’s illness on Janine. He’d blamed it on her selfish enlistment in the reserves, her tour of duty in the Gulf War. He’d never for a moment thought that
he
might be to blame—that something in his genes might have caused her to be sick, that something in his stubborn, self-righteous nature might have interfered with her getting well. He owed Janine. He owed her much more than a simple apology.

Getting up from the sofa, he walked upstairs and out the front door. He turned in the direction of the trail that ran through the woods surrounding the town homes. He knew there were tulip poplars along that trail. He needed to find a courage tree of his own.

I
t had rained during the night, and there were puddles of rainwater in both the bedroom and the living room. Zoe tore one of her many sheets into rags, and she and Marti spent most of the morning plugging the leaks in the ceiling of the living room. They would have to do the bedroom later; Sophie was still sleeping.

They’d worked in silence, taking turns balancing on the wobbly chair to reach the cracks between the boards of the ceiling. Marti was still angry over the night before, when Zoe had built a fire to cook the fish. Sophie, although admitting to not generally liking the taste of fish, devoured two of the flaky fillets, but Marti had stalked off into the woods with a can of cold ravioli. She’d returned hours later, after the sun had gone down. Still sulking, she had sat in the living room in the dark, flicking her lighter on and off, while Zoe read in the bedroom. Pretended to read, actually. She could hear the sound of Marti’s cigarette lighter, and with each
flick
, her fear for her daughter intensified.

Once she had blown out the candle in her lantern and shut her eyes, she’d found herself unable to sleep. Sophie’s breath
ing was loud and labored, but that was not all that was keeping Zoe awake. Her thoughts were on the telltale triad of behaviors about which the boarding school counselor had spoken so many years before. Whether or not that counselor had truly been in the habit of asking those provocative questions of all parents, she had clearly seen something in Marti that Zoe had tried hard to ignore. One more time, Zoe had failed her daughter by denying that Marti had any problems. If anything
had
been wrong with Marti, Zoe had hoped the boarding school could fix it, quietly. The world should never know that Zoe Pauling and Max Garson had a troubled daughter. If Zoe had admitted to her daughter’s problems and obtained help for her, would she be all right now? Would she be a happy, normal, productive young woman? Would she still have been capable of murdering the warden? Would she have been capable of murdering anyone?

It was her turn on the rickety old chair, and Marti held it steady for her as she raised a piece of the lavender sheet toward one of the cracks. Steeling herself, Zoe took in a breath, ready to ask the question that had plagued her during the night and was still dogging her this morning.

“There’s something I need to ask you, Marti,” Zoe said, as her fingers pushed the sheet into the crack. “And I want you to be completely honest with me.”

“About what?”

Zoe hesitated, but only for a moment. “Did you kill Tara Ashton?” she asked. She kept her eyes on the ceiling, pressing the sheet into the crevice with greater force than was necessary.

Marti did not answer, and all Zoe could hear was the sound of Sophie’s breathing through the bedroom door. She looked down at her daughter.

“Did you?” she repeated.

Marti was holding onto the back of the chair. She looked up at her mother with those beautiful, dark-lashed eyes.

“Yes,” she said

As carefully as she could, Zoe stepped off the chair and sat down on its edge. She felt as if she were choking, and it took her a moment to find her breath.

“Why?” She tried to keep her voice even and gentle. “What compelled you to do that? I thought you didn’t even know her, Marti.”

“I didn’t.” Marti sat down on the sofa, avoiding Zoe’s gaze. “I told the jury the truth when I said I didn’t know her. I met her ten, maybe twenty minutes before I…before it happened.”

“I—I don’t understand this,” Zoe said.

Marti’s eyes filled with surprising tears. Zoe had rarely seen her daughter cry, not even during the trial. “Mom…I don’t want to tell you why I did it. I didn’t want you to ever know.”

“Tell me,” Zoe said.

“She called me.” Marti glanced out the window toward the forest. “Tara Ashton. She called me a couple of weeks after Daddy died.”

“Why would she call you?”

“She said she needed to see me. That it was extremely important. I didn’t have a clue what she wanted, but I went over there anyhow. She sounded so insistent.”

Marti had been to Tara Ashton’s house, after all. Zoe thought back to the witnesses who had said they’d seen Marti’s car there, seen her exit the building. Zoe had thought they were mistaken, at best. Liars, at worst. She’d been wrong.

“She let me in,” Marti said. “She was all smiles and…oh, you know what she looked like. Just beautiful and…so damn sure of herself.” Marti looked teary-eyed again, and Zoe felt confused.

“Were you jealous of her?” she asked. “Was that it?”

“Jealous of that bitch?” Marti laughed. “No way.”

“Well, then…what happened?”

Marti looked uncomfortable. She shifted her weight on the sofa, raising her feet to the sheet-covered cushions, then
lowering them to the floor again. “We sat in her living room,” she said finally. “She gave me a glass of ginger ale.
Ginger ale.
I thought that was weird.” Marti wrinkled her nose at her mother. “Who drinks ginger ale? And then she told me that—” Marti looked up at the ceiling and let out her breath. “Oh, Mom,” she said. “I just don’t want to tell you.”

“Tell me
what
, Marti?” Zoe was bracing herself. She had no idea where Marti’s admission was headed, but she knew it was going to sting.

“She told me that she was pregnant, and that Dad was the baby’s father.”

Zoe caught her breath, then let it out in a laugh. “Well, that’s ridiculous,” she said.

“I thought it was, too,” Marti said hurriedly. “But then she told me that Dad had helped her get the part that you were supposed to get in that movie. She said he got them to write it for a younger woman so she could have it.”

Zoe could barely breathe. She remembered Max coming home from his office one day, telling her that he’d argued with the writer. He’d described how he’d pleaded with the man to keep the character in the script just the way she was—perfect for Zoe—but the writer had wanted to rewrite the part for Tara Ashton. Max had looked genuinely pained over the turn of events. Suddenly, Zoe wondered exactly whose idea it had been to rewrite that role.

“I still don’t believe it,” she said.

“Mom, I do.” Marti leaned forward. “She was going to get DNA testing done on the baby. She had a lock of Dad’s hair…she actually showed it to me.”

Zoe laughed again, less heartily this time. “He hardly had any hair,” she said.

“I know that. But she had this piece of it, and it looked like his, you know, a little curly, the way his hair was in the back, and she said she was going to use it to get DNA testing done, and that it would be all over the papers and all, unless…”

“Unless what?”

“Unless she got some of Dad’s inheritance.”

“Dad’s inheritance?” Zoe shook her head. “Honey, I just don’t believe…”

“Mom, you never believe anything, you know that?” Marti stood up, her arms waving. “You never believed I did anything wrong, when I was fucking up left and right. You don’t believe Dad could have done anything wrong, when half of Hollywood knew he was screwing around on you. You don’t even believe that little kid in there is going to die.” She pointed toward the bedroom door.

Zoe shut her eyes. All she could see behind her closed eyelids was the softly curled gray hair above the nape of Max’s neck.

“Mom, it was like I had no choice,” Marti continued. “She was going to hurt you one way or another. I
hated
her for that, for what she was planning to put you through, especially right after Dad died. Either she was going to go directly to you to tell you about her and Dad, and you would have had to give her money—and she wanted a lot of it—to keep it quiet. Or she was going to plaster the news all over the universe. That’s what she told me. Either way, you were going to get hurt, and I just…” Marti shook her head and sat down on the sofa again. “She’d been hanging pictures,” she said. “She had a hammer there, on the coffee table. I—”

“I’m sure you didn’t actually mean to do it,” Zoe said. “You probably just impulsively picked up the hammer and…”

“Oh, I meant to do it, Mom,” Marti corrected her. “I meant to wipe that smug grin off her face. I picked up the hammer and…man, I just let her have it.”

Zoe fell silent. For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Then, finally, Zoe braved yet another haunting question.

“Did you…did you feel any regret, Marti?” she asked. “I mean, didn’t it bother you to kill her? To know that you took someone’s life?”

“If she’d been a decent person, then I would have felt bad about it,” Marti said. “Just like I would have felt bad about Angelo, if he hadn’t been such scum. Tara was scum, too. She deserved exactly what she got.”

What could she say? How did you respond to your child when she let you see the evil inside her? Recriminations would not help, of that she was certain. And anyway, she was just as responsible as Marti for what had happened.

She leaned toward her daughter. “Marti,” she began, “first of all, thank you for telling me this.”

Marti looked away from her, studying the corner of the living room floor. “Second, honey, you need help,” Zoe continued, her voice far calmer than she felt. “Do you see that? You’ve always been…troubled. It’s my fault, I know that, and you’re right. I didn’t want to see it. I never got you help when you needed it. But I want to help you, now.”

“Don’t get any crazy ideas, Mom,” Marti said. “I’m not turning myself in or anything like that. They’ll put me back in prison. You know that.”

“That’s the last thing I want,” Zoe said. “I wouldn’t let them put you back in prison. I know that’s not what you need, darling.”

“But that’s what will happen, Mom. If you turn me in, they’ll put me away for life.”

A rasping sound came from behind the bedroom door, followed by silence, and Zoe listened, afraid, until she heard Sophie’s breathing begin again.

“Sophie’s so ill, Marti,” she said. “I think we have to—”

“Mom, if you’re thinking about getting help for her again, just forget it,” Marti said. “I’ve killed two people.” She spoke slowly, deliberately, as though she feared her mother had lost the ability to understand her. “One more isn’t going to make much of a difference at this point. Especially one who’s half dead already.” Marti stood up, and fear filled Zoe’s heart.

“Don’t you dare touch that girl,” she said.

“Don’t worry,” Marti said, as she walked out the front door of the shanty. “I wouldn’t dream of hurting your precious little baby.”

Sophie got up later that afternoon. She shuffled into the living room on her swollen feet, and Zoe looked up from where she was lying on the sofa.

“How are you feeling, little one?” Zoe asked. Her throat was dry, and she had trouble getting the words out.

“Not so good.” Sophie sat down at the end of the sofa, and Zoe moved her feet to make room for her. She’d been lying there all afternoon, ever since the discussion with Marti that had rocked her hold on the universe. Nothing had been as it seemed in her world. Marti had not been the daughter she’d presented to the public with pride, and her marriage had been no better than any other Hollywood union. Of course, there had been rumors about Max’s tomcatting over the years, but she’d ignored them. There was always talk like that about people in power, about people with fame. If you didn’t ignore the rumors, they would eat away at you. But she’d ignored so much. It was far easier to deny that anything was wrong.

“I’m so afraid, Sophie,” Zoe said, her gaze resting on the little girl’s puffy face.

“What are you afraid of?” Sophie asked

Zoe shook her head. “I’m afraid for you, and for Marti. I’m a little afraid
of
Marti, actually. She’s…she’s just…”

“She’s crazy, I think,” Sophie finished the sentence for her, and Zoe had to nod in agreement.

“And I want to get help for you, darling. I do. I wish I could. But if I did that, I’d be sending my own daughter to…” She shook her head. “They’d lock her away for the rest of her life,” she said. “Maybe worse. They won’t see what I see…the troubled little girl inside her. They’ll just see someone who—who has done some terrible things. It’s always that way. They put people in prison instead of trying to help them.”

Sophie looked out the window. “I think I have to go to the outhouse,” she said, standing up.

She hasn’t heard a word I’ve said,
Zoe thought to herself, as she watched Sophie hobble out the front door of the shanty. Just as well. Those words were truly not meant for the ears of a child.

She must have drifted off, because the next thing she knew, Marti was standing over her.

“Where’s Sophie?” Marti asked. “She’s not in the bedroom.”

Zoe sat up on the sofa, her head foggy. “She—” Zoe struggled to remember. “She went to the outhouse, but that was a while ago, I think.” She stood up quickly, heading for the door. “I hope she’s all right out there.”

She and Marti rushed around the side of the shanty to the outhouse. It was empty. There was no sign of Sophie anywhere.

“That little bitch must be trying to get away,” Marti said. She ran back to the front of the shanty, and by the time Zoe caught up with her, she was emerging from the cabin with her gun in her hand.