The Courage Tree - Diane Chamberlain [119]
Janine shook her head. “I didn’t know.”
“Well, now that you do know, please try to look after him a bit,” Sherry said. “His body can’t continue this way. If he hadn’t gotten in here when he did, I don’t know how long he would have lasted before he suffered respiratory arrest or had a heart attack. He could easily have died. He still could, if we don’t get his potassium and phosphorous back in balance.”
“I know,” Janine said. She thought of how disappointed she had been in Lucas for remaining in Vienna that night she’d wanted him with her in West Virginia. How many other nights should he have ignored her wishes and come to the hospital for dialysis? “I wish he had told me what was going on with him,” she said.
“He plays his cards close to the vest, that’s for sure,” Sherry said. “I’d known him for months before he told me about his daughter.”
“You mean my daughter,” Janine corrected her.
“No, no,” Sherry said. “I meant his daughter. The one who died.”
“I…” Janine struggled to think clearly. “Could you have him mixed up with someone else?” she asked. “He has a niece Sophie’s age, but she’s still living…at least as far as I know.”
Sherry looked surprised, then wrinkled her nose. “You mean, you don’t know about his daughter?” she asked.
“He told me he didn’t have any children.”
Sherry let out her breath. “Yikes,” she said. “I think I just put my foot in it.”
“What are you talking about?” Janine asked.
“Well, it’s certainly not my place to tell you,” Sherry said, “and I never would’ve said anything if I thought you—”
“Tell me,” Janine demanded. Her patience was ready to snap. “I can’t take any more of these secrets.”
Sherry looked toward the dialysis room, then turned to face Janine again. “Well, he had a daughter with the same disease,” she said. “It’s usually hereditary, as I’m sure you know, since your own daughter had it.”
“Has it,” Janine corrected her. She wasn’t yet ready to speak about Sophie in the past tense.
“And it usually affects boys,” Sherry continued, “but there’s all sorts of variations on it, as you probably know. So, anyway, his daughter also had it, and she died when she was ten.”
Janine shook her head, incredulous. “That’s simply impossible,” she said. “He would have told me.”
“He didn’t even tell you that he was sick himself,” Sherry said gently. “For some reason he hasn’t wanted you to know all of this. I probably never should have said anything.”
Janine looked toward the door of the dialysis unit. She was tempted to march back in there and confront him, make him explain why he had kept so much from her, but she knew this was not the time to press him.
“I’m glad you told me,” she said.
“Maybe that’s why he was willing to jeopardize his own health to help you find your little girl,” Sherry suggested. “You know, a way of making up for his own loss, somehow.”
She’d driven home after the encounter with Sherry, numb and confused. She’d stopped at the mansion to speak briefly with her parents, telling them about Lucas’s illness and how, all those times he’d left work early, he’d been going to dialysis. She realized instantly that she should not have told them. They had no sympathy for him. He should have been honest with them, they said. He shouldn’t have taken a job that was too taxing to his health.
Then they changed the subject to Sophie.
“We want to start planning the memorial service for her,” her father said.
“We thought there should be balloons,” her mother said. “You know, in Sophie’s favorite colors. I thought that would have been a nice touch at Holly Kraft’s funeral, especially since there were children—”
“You don’t plan a memorial service for someone who might still be alive,” Janine said. She stormed out of the house, slamming the door behind her. Everyone, even Lucas, was ready and willing to bury Sophie.
Inside the cottage, she’d put on the videotapes. She needed to see Sophie alive.
The next tape had been made during one of Sophie’s hospitalizations, when she was five years old. She was trying to learn an Irish jig from a clown, her hospital