The Courage Tree - Diane Chamberlain [29]
“Thanks,” she said. “He was driving me crazy. What did he say?”
“It’s what you would expect. Without the dialysis, she’ll have a buildup of fluid and toxins, but that will happen much more slowly than if she’d never had the Herbalina. And she’ll get gradually worse with each Herbalina IV she misses, until she’s back where she started.”
“How many can she miss before that happens? And will it work again for her if she starts it up again after missing it for a while?”
“He didn’t seem to know how long it would take to be out of her system, but he does think it will work just as well as it did before, if she needs to start it all over again. He gave me some general information about her condition you can pass on to the police so they can get the word out, although I really think you know at least as much about it as he does.” He often told her how much he admired her tireless research into Sophie’s condition and the few treatment options that were available.
“Would you mind calling the police?” she asked. “You can read your own notes better than I can. Besides, I seem to be screwing things up tonight.” She picked up his phone again and dialed the number Sergeant Loomis had given her.
“I’ll do it,” he said, taking the phone from her hand, “but only if you promise to cool it with the self-deprecating comments, all right?”
She nodded. “Okay.”
She listened while he spoke with the sergeant, explaining who he was and why he, rather than Janine, was calling. It reassured her that Loomis was still working on the case, even though it was the middle of the night. He hadn’t sloughed it off onto someone else’s shoulders.
Lucas was so calm. A rock. As he spoke to the officer, he reached for her hand again and held it on her knee. He could talk to anyone, she thought: the gardeners he supervised, a medical specialist, a cop. An eight-year-old girl. She remembered how he’d ceremoniously presented Sophie with a small, black penknife before she left on this trip, her first camping adventure.
Janine’s love for Lucas brought easy tears to her eyes as she watched him on the phone. His body was lean, yet tight—an odd mix of physical laborer and computer geek. His brown hair was frosted by the sun and beginning to thin at the temples, and he wore wirerimmed glasses. His gray eyes looked cloudy now, inside at night, but in the daylight, they were translucent. Sometimes she thought she could see straight through them to his soul.
“I assume they don’t know anything new?” she asked, once he had hung up the phone.
“Nothing. But he was grateful for the information and said they’d send out a press release right away.”
“Thanks for calling.” She looked at her watch and shuddered. “I have to go to Ayr Creek and see my parents. Joe should be there by now, and I’m sure they’re furious I haven’t gotten over there yet.”
“Don’t let them blame you for this, Janine,” Lucas said, standing up. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Haven’t I?” she asked. “Then why do I feel like I have? Why do I feel as though every time I make a decision that flies in the face of what they think I should do, something terrible happens? I canoe while I’m pregnant, I kill my baby. I join the army, I kill my daughter. I—”
“You haven’t killed anyone.” He ran his hands down her arms, drawing her into an embrace.
“I enrolled her in a study no one wanted her to be in except me,” she said into his shoulder, “and she felt so well that I let her go to camp, even though everyone told me I shouldn’t. But I did, and now she’s probably lying in a ditch somewhere, dead and—”
“Stop it!” His voice was so loud and so uncharacteristically harsh that she did stop. He held her shoulders. “I don’t want to hear this, Jan,” he said. “It’s irrational. You love Sophie as much as any mother could love a child, and you’ve let your parents—and Joe—do a number on your head all these years. She’s not dead. Don’t start thinking that way, all right?”
She pressed her