The Courage Tree - Diane Chamberlain [124]
“I know you do, honey,” she said. “I wish I knew how to make that happen.”
“I want to see my mom,” Sophie said.
Zoe looked over her shoulder. “Where’s Marti?” she asked, almost in a whisper.
“Inside. Reading.”
Zoe glanced toward the open living room window, then returned her attention to Sophie, as she struggled to find the words that would help the little girl understand her predicament.
“Your mother took very good care of you, didn’t she?” she asked, finally.
Sophie nodded. “Yes.”
“And I need to take very good care of my daughter, too,” she said. “I’m afraid, Sophie. I’m worried about you, that’s true, but I’m even more afraid for Marti.” She lowered her voice, uncertain if Marti was in the living room or the bedroom. “She’s…not very well. Her mind isn’t right. I didn’t realize that. Or else, I just didn’t admit it to myself. But I can’t let her go back to prison. I know that must be hard for you to understand, but prison would be the worst place for her. She would never get well there. And she would only suffer.”
Sophie chewed on her lip and looked ahead of her, toward the clearing. “If my mom was Marti’s mom,” she said, “and if she was here with us, she’d find a way to get help for both of us. My mom would figure it out.” She got up from the step and hobbled around the side of the shanty toward the outhouse.
Zoe watched her go, then stared down at the fish, crowded together in the water-filled bucket. Was Sophie right? she wondered. Might another mother be able to come up with a solution to this dilemma? If she could, she’d be a much better, a much braver mother than Zoe could ever hope to be.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Joe pulled into the hospital parking lot just before noon. In a few hours, Janine would be on her way back to West Virginia to continue what he was certain was a futile search for Sophie. He didn’t know how to stop her, or how to comfort her, and it hurt him to realize that Lucas would probably know how to do both. That pain paled in comparison, though, to his certainty that Sophie was dead. His daughter—their daughter—was gone, and Janine, the person he needed as his partner in grief, could not grieve with him. She was too busy holding on to the slim hope that somehow Sophie had survived her ordeal.
All night long, Joe had thought about how he should handle the situation with Lucas. So, he had kidney disease. And maybe he’d had a daughter who had died of the same malady, but frankly, Joe had his doubts about that. Still, those facts could not explain why Lucas had lied about working at Monticello, nor did they explain why he had that kiddy porn in his recycling bag.
The only thing he could think of to do was to confront Lucas. He would tell him what he knew and get his response. And if Joe’s suspicions were correct about the man, he would demand a promise from him to leave Janine alone.
Lucas’s room was directly across the hall from the nurses’ station, and as Joe walked toward it, he was able to see straight into the room through the open door. He stopped walking when he spotted a man and a woman locked in an embrace, silhouetted against the large window. Was it a double room? he wondered. Was that Lucas’s roommate embracing his wife?
He started walking again, entering the room and turning toward the first bed, expecting to see Lucas lying in it, but the bed was empty. At the sound of Joe’s entry, the woman looked over the man’s shoulder to see who was intruding on their privacy.
She dropped her arms from around the man’s neck. “I’ll be back later, babe,” she said, drawing away from him, and only then did Joe realize it had been Lucas in her embrace. Lucas was holding the woman’s hand, but he let go of it when he spotted Joe.
The woman walked toward the door, smiling at Joe as she passed him, and he saw that she was pregnant, at least six or seven months so. Anger rose inside him as she left the room. True, he wanted Lucas to be proven a cad, but not to this degree, and not at Janine’s expense.
“What the hell is your story?” he asked