The Courage Tree - Diane Chamberlain [113]
It had not been quartz. Not mica. The glittery shard of light had not come from something in the rock at all, but rather from something on the rock.
That thought came to her as Holly’s relatives took to the pulpit, one by one, to talk about the little girl they’d lost. Janine heard nothing they said. Instead, she pictured the flat rocks, and in her mind, the small, dark crevice in one of them turned into the penknife Lucas had given Sophie; the shard of light was the glint of its blade. The image grew stronger and sharper in her mind as the service continued, and she could barely wait to escape from the chapel to tell Valerie Boykin her theory.
Once they had left the funeral, she used the cell phone in Lucas’s car to call the search manager.
“I think I saw Sophie’s penknife on a rock near a log cabin, about five miles from the road,” she said when she had Valerie on the phone.
Valerie took the information in, wordlessly, and Janine knew the search manager was humoring her. Valerie was about to give up. Janine could hear it in the silence.
“Please,” Janine begged. “Just have someone go out there and check.”
“I know how much you want Sophie to be found alive, Janine,” Valerie finally said. “We all do. But she couldn’t have walked that far. You know that, don’t you? And you’re not even sure of the location of the cabin.”
Janine had pleaded a while longer, then decided her only recourse was to get to the site early in the morning and make her plea in person. Lucas had agreed to go with her, but only reluctantly. He seemed a little distant, and she feared that he, too, was giving up.
They arrived at the trailer early Sunday morning to find it and its tow truck standing alone on the road. There had been no orange cones forming a barricade across the road when they’d turned onto it minutes earlier. There were no sheriff’s cars, no vehicles belonging to the searchers. The only other sign of the activity that had consumed the area during the past week was the blue portable toilet standing next to the embankment.
“Where is everyone?” she asked Lucas as she parked near the trailer.
Lucas didn’t respond, and she feared she knew the answer. They had called off the search. To the rest of the world, Sophie’s short life was now a closed book.
Valerie Boykin looked up from the desk in the trailer when Janine and Lucas stepped inside. Slowly, she got to her feet. Nothing needed to be done quickly, now, Janine thought. The emergency was over, at least in Valerie’s eyes.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” Valerie said.
“Where is everyone?” Janine repeated.
“We’ve decided to call off the search, Janine,” Valerie said with real sympathy in her voice. “I’m so sorry we couldn’t have done a better job for you. But with no sign of Sophie, and with the dogs completely unable to pick up her scent again—if it was ever her scent they found in the first place—there seems to be—”
“You can’t just stop looking,” Janine said. “You have to check that log cabin.”
“The medical consultants have told us that, given Sophie’s condition, she couldn’t possibly have survived this long out there,” Valerie said.
“That would be true if she hadn’t been taking Herbalina,” Janine said. “But she could—”
“The doctors don’t believe that a herbal treatment could possibly make that much difference to her.” Valerie put her hand on Janine’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry. I know this is hard to hear.” Valerie looked at Lucas as if asking him for some support, but Lucas only excused himself and went outside to use the portable toilet.
“Well,” Janine said, “I guess now I’ll be allowed to search for myself, right?” Anger clipped her words. “The mother is allowed to look for her daughter only when everyone else has given her up for dead.”
“Janine,” Valerie said, “I can understand—”
“She’s not dead, damn it!” Janine pounded her fist on the counter. “I know she’s not.”
She stomped out of the trailer and stood in the middle of the road, arms folded across her chest as she waited for Lucas. She’d been there for a few