The Courage Tree - Diane Chamberlain [125]
Lucas sat down in the chair next to his bed. He was attached by an IV to a bag of clear liquid, which hung from a pole above the bed, and he moved the pole out of the way so he could see Joe more easily.
“Come over here, Joe,” he said. He motioned toward the chair near the end of the bed. “Have a seat.”
With a few long strides, Joe crossed the room and sat down. He stared at Lucas, who was dressed in a flimsy blue-and-white hospital gown, and who still looked pale and a bit bloated from his near call with death. But he felt no sympathy for the man sitting across from him.
“What’s your game?” he asked.
“That was my ex-wife,” Lucas said.
“And is that your baby she’s carrying?”
Lucas smiled. “No. We’ve been divorced for several years. She’s remarried. When she heard I was in the hospital, she came down from Pennsylvania to see me. We’re still friends.”
Joe no longer knew what to believe when it came to Lucas Trowell. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
“Look, Lucas,” he said. “I don’t know what I’m dealing with here. I know you’ve got something to hide. You somehow turn up working at Ayr Creek, with the same disease as my daughter, and as I’m sure you know, it’s not the world’s most common illness. I know you never worked at Monticello.” He thought he saw Lucas flinch at that revelation. “And, I admit this was way out of line of me, but I went by your house the other day, and I saw a magazine in your recycling bin that had a picture of a nude little girl in it. So, since you insist on hanging around my wife—my ex-wife—and since you spent so damn much time with my daughter, I think I have the right to know exactly who you are and what you’re up to.” Joe heard the sudden break in his voice; he hadn’t expected the rush of emotion that accompanied his words. The thought of Lucas being anywhere near Sophie was unbearable.
Lucas licked his lips and leaned back in the chair, eyes closed, and for a moment, Joe thought he was simply going to sleep. But finally, he spoke.
“I’m not a pedophile, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he said, opening his eyes again. “I don’t know what magazine you could possibly be talking about. The Monticello thing—” Lucas looked out the window “—that’s a little harder to explain, but trust me, I have my reasons for tampering with the truth there.”
“I don’t trust you,” Joe said, standing up in disgust. “You’ve lied left and right to Janine, who’s completely honest and…unsuspecting. You lied to Donna and Frank, and apparently to the Ayr Creek Foundation that hired you. You have zero integrity. What gives you the right to ‘tamper with the truth,’ as you call it? Where do you get off?”
“Look, Joe.” Lucas’s voice sounded quiet and controlled after Joe’s outburst. “Sit down again, please.”
Joe was tempted to walk out of the room, but something in Lucas’s solemn demeanor compelled him to take his seat again.
“I didn’t want to tell you this,” Lucas said, “at least not now, but it looks like you need to know, or else there’s going to be a major misunderstanding between us.”
“Tell me what?” Joe asked. His gut was churning.
“I developed kidney disease when I was in my teens,” Lucas said. “I started dialysis about ten years ago, when my kidneys completely failed on me. I was married then…to Sandra, the woman you just saw in here. We had a daughter named Jordan, who inherited this disease from me, but she had it much worse. Her kidneys failed when she was just six. Her mom gave her a kidney, just like Janine did for Sophie, and Jordy did pretty well with it at first, but then she rejected it.”
“Same as Sophie,” Joe said.
“Right. So she was back on dialysis again.” Lucas shook his head, and there was some anger in his eyes. “What a lousy way for a kid to have to live, you know? Needles and machines and the restrictive diet and all.” He looked out the window again, lost for a moment in his own memories. “Anyhow,” he finally continued, “she ultimately died. She was ten. She had an infection that went systemic. Killed her in a couple of days.”
Joe wondered