The Courage Tree - Diane Chamberlain [41]
They were driving down a narrow road, a highly unlikely route for Alison to have taken, when they came to a fork. Janine stopped the car, not even bothering to pull onto the shoulder, since no one else seemed interested in driving on this road.
“Let’s look at the map,” she said. “I don’t know which way to go.”
Joe leaned over and turned off the ignition, but he made no move to look at the map lying on his thighs. Instead he closed his eyes and rested his head against the headrest.
“God,” he said, eyes squeezed tightly shut. “Who the hell knows which way she went? I feel like we’re getting farther away from finding them with every damn turn we make.”
She reached out to lightly touch his arm. “We can’t give up,” she said, although she certainly empathized with his frustration. “We can’t just sit home, twiddling our thumbs.” Nothing could be worse than this, she thought. Nothing. To know that something terrible must have befallen her child, yet have no idea how to help her, or even find her. Or which road to take. A bit of Joe’s helpless panic seeped into her, but she shook free of it. If she gave in to it, she would lose her ability to function. To think clearly. And that would get them nowhere.
“You know what I was thinking?” she said.
He rolled his head on the headrest until he was looking at her. “What?”
“That this would be a lot easier in a helicopter. We wouldn’t be able to talk to people, but we could at least visualize all the roads. It would take us a much shorter time to check out the roads from above.”
He was quiet for a moment, his gaze still on her. “Are you talking about flying it yourself?” he asked finally.
“Yes.”
“When’s the last time you flew?”
“When I left Omega-Flight. Three years ago.” She didn’t say When Sophie got sick, or, When you had an affair. “I bet I could borrow one of their helicopters.”
“If you flew, I couldn’t be with you,” Joe said quietly.
How could she have forgotten his terror of flying?
“Still, Joe?” she asked gently.
“Still and forever,” he said. “I’m not even willing to fight it anymore. I had to go to California on business last year and I took the train. Three days there, and three days back.”
“I’m sorry.” It hurt to see so much fear in such a tough guy. For as long as she’d known him, Joe could barely watch a plane sail across the sky, much less fly in one. The plane crash that had taken his father’s life had left scars that would never go away.
“Paula had to go to the conference, too,” he said, “and she took the train with me, so it wasn’t that terrible.”
“That was very nice of her.” She was not surprised. She thought that Paula would do just about anything for Joe. “Can I ask you something?” she asked.
“Sure.”
“Are you and Paula…?”
“Just friends.” He smiled. “I thought you knew that.”
She had seen Paula and Joe together numerous times these past three years, mostly at Sophie’s bedside or at Joe’s house when she went to pick Sophie up there after a visit. She’d seen the way Paula looked at Joe, with a gaze that held admiration and yearning. Why was that look so easy for one woman to read in another, yet men could be so blind to it?
“But you drove down to Florida with her after her mother died,” she said.
“She really needed a friend right then.”
“But…” she said, hesitantly, then decided to blurt it out. “I always thought she was the woman you had the affair with.”
He looked truly surprised. “You’re kidding. I had no idea that’s what you thought,” he said. He shook his head with a half smile. “No, it wasn’t Paula. It was someone who worked for us temporarily, and it wasn’t an affair, really. I…slept with her once.” He looked uncomfortable saying those words to her. “I was screwed up, Janine. I wish it had never happened.”
“And all this time I thought it was Paula,” she said.
“Paula would never do that to another woman. Her husband cheated on her,