The Courage Tree - Diane Chamberlain [122]
“Well, aren’t we dramatic this morning,” Marti said.
“Why do you say that, Sophie?” Zoe asked, alarmed.
“’Cause I know,” Sophie said. “I mean, I’ve known for a long time that I might die. I’m not really scared or anything.”
“You’re not going to die, honey,” Zoe said. It seemed the right thing to say. But Sophie was not fooled by platitudes.
“You don’t understand about kidney disease,” she said. “I can’t live without dialysis.”
“How long will it take you to die if you don’t get it?” Marti asked.
“Marti!” Zoe was appalled at her daughter’s insensitivity. Worse, she had the uncomfortable feeling that, if Sophie could say how long it would take her to die, Marti would start counting the days.
“Well, she’s talking about it like it’s no big deal,” Marti said.
“I don’t know how long it will take,” Sophie said. “I’ve never done it before.”
Zoe had to smile at the smart-ass tone of the little girl’s answer.
“How can I help, honey?” She raised herself up on one elbow, a twig or something from her makeshift pillow cracking beneath her weight. “You told me it’s important for you to watch what you eat. What would be best for you?”
“Protein,” Sophie said. “Meat. Chicken.”
“Well, I can probably find a rabbit or a squirrel that I could kill with my rifle, and we could have that for dinner if you like.”
“You forgot we can’t have a fire,” Marti said.
“I don’t want you to kill anything,” Sophie said.
“Kill one of those mangy dogs, why don’t you?” Marti suggested.
Zoe ignored her. “There’s a kind of fish that I’ve caught here that’s pretty tasty,” she said, remembering the mild flavor of the dark-scaled fish. “How about I try to catch one of them? Fish is good protein.”
“Okay, I guess,” Sophie said.
“Well, I hope you both like sushi,” Marti said.
“Marti, we’re going to have a fire,” Zoe said, startling both of them with her impatience. “I am going to feed this child. If we hear a plane or something overhead, we can pour water on the fire and get inside, okay?”
“It sounds like you’ve already made up your mind, Mother,” Marti said.
Zoe got out of bed and walked across the room to Sophie’s palette.
“Let me take a look at your foot, honey,” she said, lifting the covers from Sophie’s feet.
Sophie lay still as Zoe carefully unwrapped the bandage. The swelling had gone down a bit; the wound didn’t look nearly as angry and raw, and she felt enormous relief.
“It’s much better, Sophie,” she said. And Sophie raised her head to look at her foot herself. “The antibiotics are working.”
Sophie dropped her head to her pillow again. “If only they could fix the rest of me,” she said.
“I know, honey,” Zoe said, standing up. “I wish they could, too.”
She sat on a rock near the stream, her bucket and net at the ready, watching for one of those dark-scaled fish to swim by. Usually, they were plentiful. Today, when she really needed them, they seemed to have disappeared from the stream. And the lack of them was giving her way too much time to think.
She thought of Marti’s reluctance to have a fire. Those two words, Marti and fire, elicited discomfort in her, and she was afraid she knew why. For many years, those words had been joined together in her mind, although she’d tried hard to fight the cerebral link she’d formed between them. How old had Marti been when the fire occurred? Eleven? Maybe only ten?
Zoe and Max had been called back from New York, where they’d been filming a movie, because there’d been a fire in the Malibu house. The nanny’s room had been destroyed, positively gutted, and at first everyone thought that the young woman had fallen asleep with a lit cigarette in her hand. But after the fire investigators searched more deeply into the cause of the fire, they determined that it had been set, deliberately, sometime in the middle of the night. It had started with a gasoline-soaked rag, which had been tucked in the corner of the room and ignited in some way. And a gasoline-soaked rag would not simply appear in the nanny’s room, unless someone