Courage Tree (34 page)

One year later

T
he waiting room in the hospital was chilly, and Janine slipped into the sweater she’d brought with her.

“Why do they have the air-conditioning turned up so cold?” her mother asked. “Don’t they know there are sick people in a hospital?” She was sitting a few seats away from Janine, a magazine in her hands, but Janine knew she hadn’t turned a page for at least the past hour. Her father was just as distracted. He had one of his Civil War books with him, but his eyes were glued to the double doors at one end of the waiting room rather than to the pages in front of him.

“I don’t know, Mom,” Janine said. “Would you like to borrow my sweater?”

“No, thanks,” her mother said. “I’ll get another cup of tea if we don’t hear anything soon.”

Sophie suddenly ran into the waiting room from the corridor, a few steps ahead of Lucas, who was walking more
carefully, balancing two cups of coffee in his hands. Sophie carried a can of Coke, and she plunked down in the seat next to Janine.

“No news
yet
?” she asked, and Janine was reminded of all the times that question had been on everyone’s lips a year earlier, when Sophie had been lost in the woods.

“Not yet,” Janine said, as she took one of the cups of coffee from Lucas. She smiled up at him. “Thanks,” she said.

“Donna? Frank?” Lucas asked her parents. “Are you sure I can’t get you anything?”

“Nothing, thank you,” her father said.

“Nothing, unless you can get some warm air into this room.” Her mother was still a complainer, and Janine guessed she always would be, but she treated Lucas—and Janine—with kindness these days. It was Joe who had brought about that change in her parents. He’d pointed out that they would no longer have their granddaughter had it not been for Lucas’s secretiveness and Janine’s rebellious tenacity. Somehow, Joe’s words had made a difference.

Sophie shivered, from either the cool air, the Coke or the excitement, and Janine rubbed her daughter’s bare arms.

“Here,” she said. “Let’s put your sweater on you.” She pulled Sophie’s purple sweater from the back of her chair and handed it to her.

Sophie rested her Coke on an end table, then stood up to put on the sweater. Lucas stood above her, helping her with his free hand.

“I never knew it took babies so long to get born,” Sophie said, sitting down again. “How long did it take for me?”

“About twelve hours,” Janine said.

“Wow.” Sophie’s eyes were wide. “Sorry, Mom.”

Janine laughed. “You were worth every minute,” she said.

“It’s funny to be in the waiting room for a change, instead of in there.” Sophie nodded toward the double doors.

“It’s wonderful, actually,” Lucas said. He sat down in the chair on the other side of Janine.

“You can say that again.” Her father closed his Civil War book and rested it on his lap, apparently giving up the facade of reading.

Sophie had needed only one hospitalization since recovering from her traumatic misadventure in the woods the summer before. The outpatient surgery had occurred three months ago, when they’d removed the catheter from her stomach. It was no longer needed. Sophie was in the second phase of the Herbalina study, and she had not needed dialysis at all for over six months.

On the other side of the waiting room, a woman sat engrossed in one of the tabloid newspapers, and from where Janine sat, she could read the bold headline.
Zoe Spotted In Cancun!
Janine had to smile. For once, she wished the tabloids were reporting the truth.

Marti Garson had spent this last year in a psychiatric hospital, and it was doubtful she would ever be released. After the helicopter had dropped Janine, Sophie and Zoe off at the hospital in Martinsburg, Zoe had turned herself in to the police. Janine had heard her agree to lead them to the log cabin and her daughter, as she pleaded with them to help Marti, rather than send her back to prison.

Janine had lost track of Zoe then, as she focused on the needs of her own very sick daughter, and it wasn’t until the next day when the news was full of the bizarre story that her attention was once again drawn to Zoe and her plight.

No one really seemed certain what had happened as Zoe and the authorities approached the cabin. The official report was that Marti had panicked, barricading herself inside the cabin, threatening to kill everyone, including herself. According to the sheriff’s office, she began shooting wildly through the cabin windows, and one of her bullets had struck and killed her mother.

But there was another tale, one Janine preferred: Zoe had once again faked her own demise and was living in blissful isolation, away from public scrutiny and, yes, the barbs of the tabloids, somewhere in the mountains of West Virginia. Or perhaps, Janine wondered now, in Cancun. That was the explanation she would forever choose to believe.

Joe suddenly stepped through the double doors, wearing blue scrubs and a wide grin. His eyes were on Sophie.

“You have a little brother!” he said.

“Yippee!” Sophie ran to him for a hug.

“Wonderful news!” Her mother clapped her hands together.

“Congratulations!” Her father stood up to shake Joe’s hand, and Lucas put his arm around his brother’s shoulders.

“How’s Paula?” Janine asked.

“Great,” Joe said. He couldn’t lose his grin if he tried, Janine thought, and she stood up to kiss his cheek.

“Daddy?” Sophie looked up at Joe.

“Yes, Sophe?”

“Is he all right?” she asked. There was worry in her face.

Joe squeezed her shoulder. “They’re going to test him when they get him to the nursery,” he said. He and Paula had opted against amniocentesis to determine if their baby carried the gene for the kidney disease Sophie and Lucas shared. It wouldn’t have made any difference to them if he did. They knew there was treatment available for him.

“We can walk over to the nursery now, if you like,” Joe said to all of them. “You’ll be able to see him, then, Sophie.”

They left their coffee cups, soda cans and magazines behind them as they followed Joe through the corridor to the nursery. Lining up in front of the long nursery window, they watched as a nurse wheeled a plastic bassinet toward them. The name
Donohue
was on a card at the foot of the bassinet, and a dark-haired, sleeping angel of a baby boy lay bundled inside it.

“Look at all that hair!” Janine’s mother said.

The baby definitely had Paula’s black hair, Janine thought, but she was certain his nose and lips were Sophie’s.

Sophie stood in front of Joe. “He’s so little!” she said. “Can I hold him, Dad?”

“Very soon,” Joe said.

There were a few more comments about the baby’s good color, his tiny fists, his peaceful slumber. Then, for a moment, no one spoke.

Joe finally broke the silence. “We’re naming him Luke,” he said, his gaze still on his new son.

The name was no surprise to Janine; Paula had told her weeks ago that if the baby was a boy, they would name him after Lucas. But Lucas hadn’t known, and Janine felt the emotion in his grip on her hand.

She and Sophie had moved in with Lucas in February, when the remodeling on his rambler had been completed. They’d built a second story, adding bedrooms that looked into the trees. The green-and-salmon-colored seed pods on the tulip poplars were now in bloom, and Janine could see them through the bedroom windows each morning when she awakened. There was a second tulip poplar outside Sophie’s bedroom window, as well.

The night before Sophie had the surgery to remove the catheter, Lucas and Janine had gone into her room to tell her goodnight. They’d expected her to be a bit anxious over the procedure she’d be having the next day, and Lucas had fretted over the fact that the seed pods were not yet out on the tulip poplars and he had nothing to offer Sophie to tuck under her pillow.

As Janine stood in the doorway, Lucas sat on the edge of Sophie’s bed and told her that she no longer needed a bloom from the courage tree beneath her pillow, since she now lived in a house virtually surrounded by the trees.

“I don’t believe in the courage tree anymore,” Sophie had said, and Janine had felt the tiniest jolt of disappointment at her daughter’s words.

“You don’t?” Lucas asked.

“No,” Sophie said. “There’s no such thing as magic. The courage tree just makes you
think
you’re getting courage from it, but really, the courage is inside you all the time.”

Lucas had smiled and leaned forward to kiss her forehead. “What a wise, wise girl you are,” he’d said.

None of them liked to remember the previous June, when their lives had been filled with fear and worry and too many secrets. Only Sophie seemed to have emerged unscathed from the experience. The annual Scouting trip to Camp Kochaben was coming up again in a couple of weeks, and to everyone’s surprise, Sophie wanted to go. She talked about getting a new sleeping bag and being able to swim in the lake this time, as though no one would hesitate about her making the trip. Joe had given his permission, but Janine had held back.

Now, as she watched her daughter, her entire family, looking through the nursery window to embrace this new life, she knew she had to let Sophie go. And she vowed to reach deep enough inside herself to find the courage that had been there all the time.

Many people helped me in the creation of
The Courage Tree
. I spoke with search-and-rescue experts, medical personnel, renal patients and their families, and fellow writers who kept me on track. I would like to thank Ann Allman, Tim Arthur, Mary Alice Kruesi, Gretchen Lacharite, Kathleen Lawton, Char LeFleur, John Nelson, Alice Soto and Monica Walton for generously sharing their expertise and knowledge with me.

I am especially grateful to my editor, Amy Moore-Benson, for her incredible patience; to readers Beth Joyce and Esther Jagielski, who created a one-of-a-kind basket for me in gratitude for my previous books, as well as to encourage my future efforts, and to Craig MacBean, for helping me thrive in the midst of chaos.

1. Janine carried a great deal of guilt inside her. What was it about her personality that caused guilt to eat away at her? What was it in her upbringing that contributed to those personality traits? Do you think her guilt was merited?
   
2. Janine was a strong woman, unafraid to climb into a helicopter to search for her missing daughter despite the stress of the situation and her anxiety over Sophie’s fate. Yet she was weak when it came to facing her parents and ex-husband. Discuss this dichotomy in Janine. Are there two sides to you, as well?
   
3. Discuss the reasons for Janine’s attraction to Lucas. How did her relationship with her parents influence that attraction? How did her relationship with Joe influence it?
   
4. Janine risked the love of her parents and her husband to pursue her dream of flying. Can you relate to her yearning to get her pilot’s license? Have you had other passions you followed—or did not follow?
   
5. Even before Janine allowed Sophie to go on the camping trip, her parents and Joe formed a powerful triad against her. Discuss why these three people were drawn to one another and why they seemed to turn against Janine.
   
6. How did you feel about Janine turning to an alternative treatment for Sophie? What were your thoughts about Herbalina as the story progressed?
   
7. How did you feel about Lucas throughout the book?
   When did you realize he had a secret side to him? Was there a point where you thought you had his secrets figured out? Were you right? What did you think was going on with him when he had to return to Vienna during the search? How do you feel about his deception in his relationship with Janine?
   
8. The triangle between Janine, Lucas and Joe intensified throughout the story. Which of these three characters garnered most of your sympathy, and why? Did that change at different points in the story?
   
9. The character who grew and changed most in the story was Joe. Discuss those changes in him, and your feelings toward him throughout the story.
   
10. Sophie was four when she stopped believing in Santa Claus, and she never did believe in the tooth fairy. Why do you think she bought in to the idea of the courage tree? Do you think Sophie was a typical eight-year-old? What forces shaped her into the little girl she was?
    
11. The Courage Tree
    is primarily a story about mothers and daughters. Mothers don’t ever stop seeing their child as a child, even when that child is grown. Zoe’s need to save her daughter, Marti, is as strong as Janine’s is to save Sophie, and her actions could be seen as single-minded and irrational. Discuss her personality. What in her makeup influenced her passionate need to help Marti? Could you relate to that need? Discuss her internal conflict between wanting to help Marti and wanting to do the right thing by Sophie. What would you have done in Zoe’s place as you weighed the needs of your daughter against Sophie’s?
    
12. Playwright George Bernard Shaw said, “You cannot be a hero without being a coward.” Do you agree with that statement? How does it tie in to
    The Courage Tree
    ?