The Courage Tree - Diane Chamberlain [15]
“Look, Joe,” Paula interrupted his thoughts. “Janine needs support right now. You guys need each other. So put the anger aside and just be a dad for now. Okay?”
She was right, and he nodded. “I’ll try,” he said.
The parking lot at Meadowlark Gardens was nearly empty, except for the bustle of activity in the corner nearest the road. Joe followed Janine’s car across the lot and parked between the white van and a police car. Scanning the small group of people, he tried to find a skinny, little red-haired girl among them, hoping Sophie had arrived safely during Janine’s trip to Reston.
But Sophie was not there, and Joe and Paula got out of the car and followed Janine into the circle of people.
“Any news?” Janine asked a tall woman, who shook her head, then looked at Joe.
“You’re Sophie’s dad?” The woman reached her hand toward him and he shook it quickly, as if he didn’t want to touch her for too long. He was angry with her, too. Angry with anyone even remotely responsible for putting Sophie in harm’s way.
“Yes,” he said.
“I’m Gloria Moss. Sophie’s troop leader.”
“What’s going on?” He heard the impatient, officious tone to his voice and felt Paula’s steadying hand on his arm once again.
“Sergeant Loomis just arrived,” Gloria said, pointing in the direction of a large black man in uniform. He was talking with a young male officer, who used his hands as he spoke, cutting the air with them, while the big man listened.
Gloria introduced Joe, Paula and Janine to Holly’s parents, Rebecca and Steve Kraft, who had apparently arrived only minutes earlier in a large, midnight-blue Suburban. Everyone had questions for one another, but no one had the answers, and they stood waiting uncertainly by the white van, while the sergeant spoke to someone on the phone. Joe wanted to walk over to him and tell him to hurry up and do something, but he knew that was not going to help.
A Honda sped into the parking lot, giving all of them a hope-filled start until they realized that the car was silver. It came to a stop near the fence, and a young woman jumped out.
“I’m Charlotte,” she called as she ran toward them. “Alison’s roommate. Did anyone hear from her yet?
“No,” Janine said. “You haven’t heard anything, either?”
Charlotte shook her head. She looked about twenty years old, with shoulder-length blond hair and tiny glasses perched atop her button nose. Within seconds, Joe knew she was the sort of young woman who could make any event into a disaster.
“This is terrible,” she said repeatedly. “Alison would never be this late without a good reason. We’re supposed to go out tonight.”
“Well, the police are working on it,” Gloria said, although she looked uncertain as she glanced in the direction of the sergeant and young officer. Gloria wore her tension and worry in her face. She couldn’t have been more than his and Janine’s age, thirty-five, Joe thought, yet her forehead was creased with deep horizontal lines and her mouth was tight, her lips narrow.
Janine, on the other hand, carried her worry as she always did, with a calm resolve that made her face impassive and hard to read. How often he’d seen that face across Sophie’s hospital bed or while waiting for news from one doctor or another. She would fall apart later, he knew, when she was alone. But for now, there was little outward sign of the anguish he knew she was feeling.
Holly’s parents were another matter altogether. Steve and Rebecca Kraft wore wide, optimistic smiles, as though they dealt with this sort of thing all the time and refused to let it get them down. They were an older couple, somewhere in their mid-forties, he guessed, with the look of well-aged hippies. Steve wore his graying hair in a pony tail; Rebecca’s mousy-brown hair fell to her shoulders from a center part. Two of their seven children were with them—one a young boy, barely a toddler, the other a sour-looking six-year-old named Treat. “Everything will work out all right,” Rebecca said to Joe and Janine as she bounced the toddler in her arms.