The Courage Tree - Diane Chamberlain [136]
Zoe shut her eyes. All she could see behind her closed eyelids was the softly curled gray hair above the nape of Max’s neck.
“Mom, it was like I had no choice,” Marti continued. “She was going to hurt you one way or another. I hated her for that, for what she was planning to put you through, especially right after Dad died. Either she was going to go directly to you to tell you about her and Dad, and you would have had to give her money—and she wanted a lot of it—to keep it quiet. Or she was going to plaster the news all over the universe. That’s what she told me. Either way, you were going to get hurt, and I just…” Marti shook her head and sat down on the sofa again. “She’d been hanging pictures,” she said. “She had a hammer there, on the coffee table. I—”
“I’m sure you didn’t actually mean to do it,” Zoe said. “You probably just impulsively picked up the hammer and…”
“Oh, I meant to do it, Mom,” Marti corrected her. “I meant to wipe that smug grin off her face. I picked up the hammer and…man, I just let her have it.”
Zoe fell silent. For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Then, finally, Zoe braved yet another haunting question.
“Did you…did you feel any regret, Marti?” she asked. “I mean, didn’t it bother you to kill her? To know that you took someone’s life?”
“If she’d been a decent person, then I would have felt bad about it,” Marti said. “Just like I would have felt bad about Angelo, if he hadn’t been such scum. Tara was scum, too. She deserved exactly what she got.”
What could she say? How did you respond to your child when she let you see the evil inside her? Recriminations would not help, of that she was certain. And anyway, she was just as responsible as Marti for what had happened.
She leaned toward her daughter. “Marti,” she began, “first of all, thank you for telling me this.”
Marti looked away from her, studying the corner of the living room floor. “Second, honey, you need help,” Zoe continued, her voice far calmer than she felt. “Do you see that? You’ve always been…troubled. It’s my fault, I know that, and you’re right. I didn’t want to see it. I never got you help when you needed it. But I want to help you, now.”
“Don’t get any crazy ideas, Mom,” Marti said. “I’m not turning myself in or anything like that. They’ll put me back in prison. You know that.”
“That’s the last thing I want,” Zoe said. “I wouldn’t let them put you back in prison. I know that’s not what you need, darling.”
“But that’s what will happen, Mom. If you turn me in, they’ll put me away for life.”
A rasping sound came from behind the bedroom door, followed by silence, and Zoe listened, afraid, until she heard Sophie’s breathing begin again.
“Sophie’s so ill, Marti,” she said. “I think we have to—”
“Mom, if you’re thinking about getting help for her again, just forget it,” Marti said. “I’ve killed two people.” She spoke slowly, deliberately, as though she feared her mother had lost the ability to understand her. “One more isn’t going to make much of a difference at this point. Especially one who’s half dead already.” Marti stood up, and fear filled Zoe’s heart.
“Don’t you dare touch that girl,” she said.
“Don’t worry,” Marti said, as she walked out the front door of the shanty. “I wouldn’t dream of hurting your precious little baby.”
Sophie got up later that afternoon. She shuffled into the living room on her swollen feet, and Zoe looked up from where she was lying on the sofa.
“How are you feeling, little one?” Zoe asked. Her throat was dry, and she had trouble getting the words out.
“Not so good.” Sophie sat down at the end of the sofa, and Zoe moved her feet to make room for her. She’d been lying there all afternoon, ever since the discussion with Marti that had rocked her hold on the universe.