The Courage Tree - Diane Chamberlain [121]
“I don’t think your cell will work in the woods, though.”
She feared he was right about that. “I’ll be fine,” she said.
“Won’t you be afraid, being out there alone?”
She smiled. She had thought this through. “No,” she said. “If Sophie could do it, I certainly can. It probably makes no sense to you, but I feel close to her out there. And being alone, without Lucas or anyone, will make me feel that much closer to her. To what she experienced.” Her eyes burned, and she blinked back the tears. “I’m just torn about leaving Lucas,” she continued. “I thought he was going to die, Joe. I really did. And I just couldn’t bear…” She stopped speaking, knowing that it was unkind of her to let Joe see just how powerful her feelings were for Lucas.
“You really love him, don’t you?” he asked.
She nodded. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know it’s not what you wanted. What you’ve been hoping for. But I do love him.”
“It just bothers me that he lies to you.”
“I think he had good reasons,” she said. “At least, I think his reasoning seemed good enough to him.”
Joe looked at the floor a moment, then his nostrils flared slightly with the intake of breath. “I’m not so sure that’s all he’s lied to you about.”
“What do you mean?”
He shook his head as though he regretted his words, and got to his feet. “Nothing in particular,” he said. “Just…use your head with him and not only your heart. Promise me that?”
She thought of pushing him to tell her more, but tonight, she really didn’t want to know.
“Okay,” she agreed, standing up to walk him to the door. “I promise.”
After Joe left, she leaned against the door and shut her eyes. Tomorrow, before she headed back to West Virginia to continue her solo search for Sophie, she would talk with Lucas. She wanted to know why he had felt the need to keep so much from her. For tonight, though, she would have to suffer with the mystery.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Although it was very early in the morning when Zoe opened her eyes, sunlight already peeked through the cracks in the bedroom ceiling, and she could tell it was going to be a beautiful day. Yet, that realization did nothing to lift her mood. She’d gone to bed feeling as low as she’d ever felt; this morning, she felt even lower.
What the heck had happened to her life? A few years ago, she’d been married to a fine and loving man, she’d had a career that was the envy of most entertainers. It had been on the downhill slope, to be sure, but she’d still had fans who would pay any amount to see her sing or dance or act, and the critics loved her movies, even if the general taste of the public had shifted. She’d lived in beautiful surroundings, and when she’d been able to put her fears about her career on hold, her life had seemed exciting and full.
Now look at yourself, she thought. No husband, no career, no house on the beach. She had to use a damn outhouse, for heaven’s sake. She’d actually enjoyed the isolation and the challenges at first, back when she’d had the shanty and the woods and all of West Virginia to herself, but now she felt trapped in those same woods with her daughter, whom she loved, despite the fact that she was beginning to think of her as unlovable. And she felt painfully responsible for an eight-year-old girl, a child she could not help without gravely harming her own child—as well as herself.
“Good morning.”
Lifting her head from her leaf-stuffed pillowcase, she saw Marti sitting sideways on her sleeping palette, her back against the wall. She was reading one of the paperbacks Zoe had brought with her to the shanty.
“Good morning.” She returned the greeting, then looked across the small room at Sophie’s bed. Sophie was facing her, her eyes open, a look of resignation on her face. The skin around her eyes was noticeably puffy, even in the dim, early morning light.
“How do you feel today, Sophie?” she asked
Sophie didn’t respond right away. The only sign that she was alive at all was the slow blinking of her eyelids.
“Sophie?” she repeated. “How are you?”
“I think