The Courage Tree - Diane Chamberlain [110]
“Right now, though, Lucas isn’t hurting anyone,” Paula said. As always, she was the voice of reason. “And Janine gets a lot of comfort from him. Even if he is everything you say, now is not the time to dump all of that on her. You’d be ripping her support system right out from under her.”
Joe scowled. “I don’t want her with him any longer. Sleeping with him any longer.” He shuddered. “It makes me sick to think about her being with someone like him.”
“Joe…” Paula adjusted her seat belt to turn toward him. “You know I love you, hon, right?”
He nodded.
“Sometimes you can be pretty selfish.”
It wasn’t the first time someone had told him that, but he didn’t like to hear those words from Paula. He could always count on her to tell him the truth, and this was one truth he didn’t feel like hearing.
“So, if I tell Janine that her boyfriend might be a criminal, I’m being selfish?”
“If you told her right now, then, yes. I’d say you were.”
He didn’t get it. Her rationale made no sense to him. But he trusted her in a way he trusted no one else.
“All right,” he agreed. “I’ll hold off until this whole mess blows over.”
Paula smiled as she leaned over to kiss his cheek. “That’s my boy,” she said. “You’re not so bad, after all.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Lucas did not know where to look. He sat next to Janine in a pew near the center of the chapel, clutching her hand to comfort her, although he needed the comfort every bit as much as she did. Possibly more. Two rows ahead of them, Joe and Paula sat next to Donna and Frank. Joe had acknowledged Janine with an embrace and a kiss on the cheek, but Donna and Frank had ignored their daughter, and Lucas hoped that he was not entirely the cause of their cruelty. It was not like him to ignore their wrath—anyone’s wrath—without addressing it, putting it on the table, trying to fix it. But Lucas was not himself these days
The small chapel in Vienna was filled with people, both adults and children, and the sorrow in their faces was nearly too much for him. A large photograph of Holly Kraft rested on an easel near the pulpit, and he’d looked at the picture without meaning to, his gaze slipping in that direction before he’d realized what he was doing. He’d only looked for a moment, but that had been enough for the little girl’s smile to burn itself into his brain, and he wished he could think of another image to take its place.
He kept his eyes averted from the front pew, where Rebecca and Steve were sitting with the rest of their children. He couldn’t look at the minister, either, nor could he give any attention to Holly’s other relatives, who, one after another, came up to the microphone at the front of the chapel to talk about Holly’s life and her spirit and her future cut short. Some of them attempted to tell funny stories about Holly, and had it been an adult being eulogized, the anecdotes might have provided some relief, some gentle reminiscence. But there was nothing funny to be said about a child struck down before she’d truly had a chance to live.
Before today, Lucas had been to only one other funeral for a child, and that had been one too many. He’d made a promise to himself that he would never attend another funeral like it. Yet, there was no way he could turn Janine down when she asked him to come with her today. Now, he tried to focus on her, to forget about himself. He glued his gaze to her hand where it rested locked in his own. Her nails were short and a bit ragged after a week’s worth of neglect. Her skin was lightly tanned, and he was keenly aware of the yellowish cast his own skin had next to hers. The sight gave him a jolt; he had not realized that his skin had taken on that unhealthy hue. Seeing it made him feel panicky, and he must have squeezed Janine’s hand involuntarily, because she looked at him briefly before facing the front of the chapel again.
He’d shift his focus to Joe, Lucas decided. He would shut out the rest of the chapel, and sure enough, the harder he stared at the back of Joe’s head, the blurrier,