Courage Tree (8 page)

She was with three of her friends from high school: her best friend, Ellie, and two male friends who were simply that—friends. They were in two canoes, deep in the forest, battling a patch of white water, when the pains started. Quickly, Janine was bleeding, her terror mounting with each stab of pain.

They paddled to the riverbank, and Ellie stayed with her on a bed of leaves and moss, while the guys went for help. Ellie had no idea what to do, of course, and looking back on the event later, Janine barely remembered her friend’s presence. Instead, she remembered feeling completely alone, the trees a canopy of gold above her as she gasped from the pain and shivered in the October chill.

By the time the paramedics found her, she had delivered a stillborn baby boy, which Ellie had wrapped in her windbreaker.

The paramedics lifted Janine onto a stretcher and covered her with blankets.

“What the hell are you doing out here when you’re nearly eight months pregnant?” one of them asked her, as he rested a blanket on top of her.

She couldn’t answer, but she knew she deserved the hostile tone of the question. Once in the ambulance, she stared at the unmoving bundle where it rested in a clear plastic bassinet, and it was as if she were acknowledging for the first time that there had truly been a life inside her that she had taken for granted. A life she had, in effect, abused and neglected. She didn’t cry, at least not aloud, but tears washed over her cheek onto the stretcher.

Joe had been furious. He didn’t talk to her for weeks, and she’d felt alone and completely deserving of the isolation. She would mourn for that baby for the rest of her life. That had been her first true taste of guilt—a bitter, vile taste that was unfamiliar in her mouth. But it was not to be her last.

“Are you awake?”

She heard Joe’s voice in the darkness and drew herself back to the present.

“Yes.” She sat up straight, brushing tears from her cheeks. They were still in the car, somewhere on Beulah Road, and she saw the lights of the Meadowlark Gardens parking lot ahead of them. Leaning forward, she tried to make out the vehicles in the far corner of the lot.

“Looks like Gloria’s van,” Joe said. “And Rebecca and Steve’s Suburban. Your car. That’s it.”

They pulled into the lot, vast and dark in its emptiness, and drove to the corner. The four of them—Paula, Gloria, Rebecca and Steve—were sitting on small beach chairs set on the macadam. The Krafts’ two sons were no longer with them,
and Charlotte had apparently gone home. Crushed bags and empty cups from Taco Bell littered the ground near the chairs.

Everyone stood up as Joe parked the car next to the Suburban.

“Any news?” Janine asked, as she got out of the car.

“Nothing,” Gloria said. “How about on your end? Did you see anything?”

“No clues,” Joe said. “But it was so dark up there, and the people working at the gas stations and restaurants are not the same people who were there this afternoon. So it was a little frustrating.”

“Plus, a lot of the shops and restaurants are closed,” Janine added.

“The police told us to go home and stay close to the phone,” Gloria said. “But we didn’t want to leave until you two got back.”

“Your parents called us a million times,” Rebecca said to Janine. “They’re so worried. You might want to give them a call.”

Rebecca and Steve no longer wore their wide, optimistic smiles. They looked a little ragged around the edges now, with dark shadows around their eyes, and Janine wanted to pull Rebecca into a hug. But there was still some distance in Rebecca, as if she were intentionally holding herself apart from the scene, and Janine did not feel that they were sharing the same frightening experience at all.

Joe touched Janine’s arm. “I’ll take Paula home, then meet you over at Ayr Creek, okay?” he asked.

She nodded, uncertain if it would help or hurt to have Joe there when she spoke to her parents.

She walked toward her car. It seemed like weeks had passed since she’d driven into the lot, full of excitement at seeing her daughter. Inside the car, she felt the emptiness in the back seat where Sophie should have been, and she kept turning to glance behind her, as though Sophie might pop up, yelling
“Surprise!” and telling her this had been some silly kind of trick, some crazy scheme of Alison’s. But Sophie was not in the car, and as Janine drove through the dark, winding back roads on the outskirts of Vienna, she said a prayer that, wherever Sophie was, she would be alive and healthy and, somehow, unafraid.

J
anine didn’t drive directly home. She pulled out of the parking lot at Meadowlark Gardens and onto Beulah Road, glancing in her rearview mirror as if she still expected the blue Honda to turn into the lot any moment, then drove as quickly as she could toward Lucas’s property. He lived at the end of a cul-de-sac on an acre of mostly wooded land bordering Wolf Trap National Park. She parked in the driveway near the small, rambler and walked along the darkened, familiar path through the woods to reach the tree house. She was relieved to see that the lights were on in his living room; she would hate to wake him.

Gripping the banister, she climbed the stairs that circled the oak tree. He must have heard her, because he was waiting for her on the deck by the time she reached it. Wordlessly, he pulled her into his arms. She breathed in the soap-and-earth scent of him, feeling enclosed, but not truly comforted; sheltered, but not safe. Nowhere would she feel safe right now.

“You must know Sophie’s missing,” she whispered.

“Yes.” His breath was warm on her neck.

“How?”

“Cop came to ask me some questions.”

She pressed her hands against his back. “Oh, no,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. Is there any news?”

She pulled away from him, running her hands through her hair. “Nothing,” she said. “Joe and I drove all the way up to the camp and back again, trying to cover the route she would have followed back to Vienna. There was no sign of Alison’s—the troop leader’s—car anywhere. And we must have talked to every gas station attendant and waitress between here and there. They’ve just disappeared.”

“Come in,” he said. He guided her into his small living room, an arm around her shoulders. “Have you eaten anything?”

“I can’t.”

“Iced tea? Soda?”

She shook her head. The thought of trying to get anything down her throat nearly made her gag.

Lowering herself onto the built-in sofa in his living room, she suddenly began to cry. “I feel so helpless,” she said, accepting the handkerchief he handed her and blotting it to her eyes.

He pulled one of the captain’s chairs in front of her and sat down, taking her right hand in both of his. “Tell me everything,” he said. “What do the cops think?”

She ran her fingers over the blue splint on his wrist as she wearily answered his questions, and Lucas suggested the same possible explanations for the disappearance of the girls that she had gone over with Joe and the police and Gloria. They were lost. They’d fallen asleep somewhere and forgotten the time. They’d taken a recreational detour. The explanations sounded weaker now, in the middle of the night, and for the first time, Janine allowed the worst to enter her mind.

“What if she’s dead?” she asked Lucas. “Children disappear all the time. They’re always found dead somewhere.”

“Children don’t disappear all the time, and they are rarely found dead,” he said softly. “They’re simply the ones you hear about. It doesn’t do any good to start thinking that way, Jan.”

“She’s supposed to have dialysis tonight,” she said, “and she needs her Herbalina IV tomorrow.”

Lucas nodded. “I know. I was thinking about that. Have you ever asked her doctor what would happen if she missed an IV?”

She shook her head. “I would never allow that to happen.”

“You should call him right now.”

“Schaefer? It’s the middle of the night.”

“Yes, but I think the police should have a very clear picture of her illness. Did you tell them?”

“Yes. But not in great detail. Not anything about what would happen if she misses that IV.”

“They should know, Jan, don’t you think?” Lucas asked. “They can get the information to the media, and the media can get it out on the airwaves. They need to know how urgent this is. If—and this is only an if—Sophie’s been kidnapped, by the Scout leader or someone else, and the kidnapper hears that Sophie needs treatment right away…well, maybe he or she has a soft spot in his heart and would drop her off at a hospital or something.”

She nodded. He was right, and making the call would give her something to do to ease the helplessness. “His number’s stored in my cell, but can I use your phone?” she asked. “I don’t want to tie mine up.”

He handed her his phone and she dialed the number. It was after one in the morning, and the woman at Schaefer’s answering service sounded annoyed at being disturbed.

“I need to speak with Dr. Schaefer,” Janine said. “It’s an emergency.”

“If this is an emergency, you should hang up and call 911,” the woman said.

“No. Not that sort of emergency. Please…just get in touch
with him and ask him to call Janine Donohue right away. Only not at my usual number.” She gave the woman Lucas’s number, then hung up the phone. Her hand was shaking.

The doctor called within five minutes. He sounded wide-awake, although his usually faint New England accent was more pronounced than she’d ever heard it before.

“Is Sophie all right?” he asked, and Janine was grateful for the genuine concern in his voice.

“I don’t know,” she said. “She went to a Girl Scout camp this weekend and she hasn’t come home. She and another girl and their leader are all…missing. They were due back at three. The police are involved, but there’s no trace of them. And I’m worried she won’t be found in time to get her IV tomorrow. Will she…will she be all right without it?”

There was a long silence on Schaefer’s end of the phone line.

“Dr. Schaefer?” she prodded, wondering if he had fallen asleep.

Finally he spoke. “This sounds very serious,” he said.

“Yes, it is, but right now I’m just worried about her physical condition. What will happen if she’s not back in time for her appointment tomorrow? And she’s supposed to have dialysis tonight.”

He hesitated again. She would have chalked it up to sleepiness on his part had it not been for the fact that this slow reaction time was his usual style. “As soon as she arrives tomorrow, bring her in,” he said. “Don’t worry about the appointment time.”

“What if she doesn’t arrive, though? I mean, tomorrow. What happens if she misses tomorrow’s IV altogether? And what if she misses Thursday’s, too?” She looked at Lucas, who was leaning toward her, his arms on his knees.

“The obvious,” Schaefer said.

“What do you mean, ‘the obvious’?” she asked.

Lucas scowled, apparently annoyed with the doctor as he
listened to Janine’s frustrated side of the conversation. He reached for the phone, asking her permission with his eyes. She nodded, relinquishing the phone to him gladly.

“Dr. Schaefer?” he said. “This is Lucas Trowell. I’m a friend of Janine’s. Maybe you could tell me precisely what you think will happen if Sophie misses her IV and her dialysis. And if you could also give me the details of her illness, we can give them to the police.”

He reached behind him to grab an envelope from the coffee table, then motioned to Janine for a pen. She found one in her purse and handed it to him, watching as he began to take notes, the phone nestled between his shoulder and his ear.

Apparently Schaefer had found his voice, and Lucas filled the entire back of the envelope with his small, neat script. When he hung up the phone, he gave Janine a sympathetic smile.

“Thanks,” she said. “He was driving me crazy. What did he say?”

“It’s what you would expect. Without the dialysis, she’ll have a buildup of fluid and toxins, but that will happen much more slowly than if she’d never had the Herbalina. And she’ll get gradually worse with each Herbalina IV she misses, until she’s back where she started.”

“How many can she miss before that happens? And will it work again for her if she starts it up again after missing it for a while?”

“He didn’t seem to know how long it would take to be out of her system, but he does think it will work just as well as it did before, if she needs to start it all over again. He gave me some general information about her condition you can pass on to the police so they can get the word out, although I really think you know at least as much about it as he does.” He often told her how much he admired her tireless research into Sophie’s condition and the few treatment options that were available.

“Would you mind calling the police?” she asked. “You can
read your own notes better than I can. Besides, I seem to be screwing things up tonight.” She picked up his phone again and dialed the number Sergeant Loomis had given her.

“I’ll do it,” he said, taking the phone from her hand, “but only if you promise to cool it with the self-deprecating comments, all right?”

She nodded. “Okay.”

She listened while he spoke with the sergeant, explaining who he was and why he, rather than Janine, was calling. It reassured her that Loomis was still working on the case, even though it was the middle of the night. He hadn’t sloughed it off onto someone else’s shoulders.

Lucas was so calm. A rock. As he spoke to the officer, he reached for her hand again and held it on her knee. He could talk to anyone, she thought: the gardeners he supervised, a medical specialist, a cop. An eight-year-old girl. She remembered how he’d ceremoniously presented Sophie with a small, black penknife before she left on this trip, her first camping adventure.

Janine’s love for Lucas brought easy tears to her eyes as she watched him on the phone. His body was lean, yet tight—an odd mix of physical laborer and computer geek. His brown hair was frosted by the sun and beginning to thin at the temples, and he wore wirerimmed glasses. His gray eyes looked cloudy now, inside at night, but in the daylight, they were translucent. Sometimes she thought she could see straight through them to his soul.

“I assume they don’t know anything new?” she asked, once he had hung up the phone.

“Nothing. But he was grateful for the information and said they’d send out a press release right away.”

“Thanks for calling.” She looked at her watch and shuddered. “I have to go to Ayr Creek and see my parents. Joe should be there by now, and I’m sure they’re furious I haven’t gotten over there yet.”

“Don’t let them blame you for this, Janine,” Lucas said, standing up. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Haven’t I?” she asked. “Then why do I feel like I have? Why do I feel as though every time I make a decision that flies in the face of what they think I should do, something terrible happens? I canoe while I’m pregnant, I kill my baby. I join the army, I kill my daughter. I—”

“You haven’t killed anyone.” He ran his hands down her arms, drawing her into an embrace.

“I enrolled her in a study no one wanted her to be in except me,” she said into his shoulder, “and she felt so well that I let her go to camp, even though everyone told me I shouldn’t. But I did, and now she’s probably lying in a ditch somewhere, dead and—”

“Stop it!” His voice was so loud and so uncharacteristically harsh that she did stop. He held her shoulders. “I don’t want to hear this, Jan,” he said. “It’s irrational. You love Sophie as much as any mother could love a child, and you’ve let your parents—and Joe—do a number on your head all these years. She’s not dead. Don’t start thinking that way, all right?”

She pressed her forehead to his. “I’ll try,” she said, her gaze on the floor. On the Berber carpet, his feet were bare, hers in sandals. She felt his hand circle the back of her neck.

“Good.” He kissed her forehead. “I love you, Jan,” he said. “And all I want is for you to start loving yourself.”