The Courage Tree - Diane Chamberlain [107]
Sophie barely seemed to hear her. She looked toward the window. “It’s going away!” she said, struggling to free herself. “Let me go. Mom!”
She pulled free of Marti’s grasp and ran out the door before either of them could stop her, but she was too late. The sound of the helicopter was growing faint in the distance, and soon all Zoe could hear was Sophie’s cries for her mother, and even they were weak and fading and heartbreaking. She knew the little girl was in tears, and she stood up and walked to the door.
“Don’t go to her, Mother,” Marti said. “Don’t reward her for practically sending both of us to jail for the rest of our lives.”
Zoe turned to her daughter. “You’re a very hard woman, Marti,” she said. “I never realized that.”
“I had to be,” Marti said. “I grew up without any parents to protect me.”
Zoe winced at her words, but before she had a chance to respond, Sophie limped back in the shanty, the bandage on her foot spotted with red.
“Your foot’s bleeding again, honey,” Zoe said. “Sit down and let me take care of it.”
Sophie dropped wordlessly to the sofa, raising her foot to the crate again. Her cheeks and nose were red from crying, and she turned her face away from the two of them.
Zoe got to her knees in front of the crate and began unwrapping the bandage. She winced against the pain in her back. How many more nights could she sleep on her lumpy, homemade mattress?
“Get me the peroxide, will you, Mart?” she asked her daughter. “It’s in the bedroom in the box by my bed.” Sophie’s foot looked worse than it had the day before. She wished the antibiotics would start to work.
Marti returned with the bottle of peroxide and a handful of cotton balls. She stood above Zoe, staring down at Sophie’s foot.
“You really screwed up your foot, kiddo, running out there like that,” she said to Sophie.
Sophie turned her head to look at her. “You are so mean,” she said.
“She’s not really mean, honey.” Zoe dabbed peroxide onto Sophie’s foot with the cotton balls. “She’s just scared.”
“You killed that poor turtle and then didn’t even eat it,” Sophie said.
They had left the turtle in the clearing the night before. This morning, it was gone, and Zoe figured the dogs had gotten to it.
Marti sat down on the other end of the sofa and lit her lighter. She had no cigarettes left, and playing with the purple lighter had quickly become her new addiction. “Look, Sophie,” she said. “Do you understand what’s going on here?”
Sophie looked at her suspiciously. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“I mean, if they find you, they’ll find me, and then I’ll have to go back to jail. Someday, we’ll all be able to leave here, and then maybe you’ll be free to go, but that’s a long way in the future.”
Sophie stared at her foot as Zoe wrapped it with fresh gauze. “Why were you in jail?” she asked.
Zoe tore off a piece of surgical tape and glanced at her daughter, wondering how she would answer.
“They think I killed someone,” Marti said.
“Did you?” Sophie looked up at her now.
“No. But the evidence made it look like I did. So I’m supposed to be in jail for the rest of my life.” She sighed. “Do you know what it’s like in jail?”
“Not really.”
“Well,” Marti said, “imagine being trapped someplace you can never, ever get out of. And people there hurt you. The wardens, who are there to make sure you don’t get out, hurt you all the time. And the other prisoners hurt you. Everyone hates everyone else. You have no choice what you eat, and it’s all garbage, anyway.” She flicked her lighter again and stared at the flame. “You have no freedom to go any place,” she said. “You have to do whatever they tell you to do, or you’ll end up in solitary, locked up all by yourself, day and night, with no lights and…man, you just go crazy.”
Sophie cast a sideways glance at Marti, then studied her foot again. “I think I know a little bit what jail must be like,” she said. “Some kids I know say that dialysis is like being in jail.” She shrugged. “I guess it is, in a way. Every single night, before I got Herbalina, my mom hooked me up to a machine