The Courage Tree - Diane Chamberlain [42]
“So Paula and I have something in common.” She instantly regretted her words. They were having a good conversation, and she’d just taken it below the belt. But Joe didn’t seem disturbed.
“Yes, you do,” he said. “I wish you’d told me you thought it was Paula. I could have saved you from…I don’t know, you must have felt awkward around her.”
“At first, I did,” she said. “But it’s been a long time. So, if not Paula, then…is there someone else?”
“Now, you mean? A girlfriend?” He smiled again, this time ruefully. “Lord knows, I’ve tried,” he said. “I’ve gone out with a few women. They all say…” He shook his head.
“They all say what?” she prodded.
“It’s hard to talk about.”
“What?”
“They all say I’m still in love with you.”
They were the last words she’d expected. “Are you?” she asked.
“Let’s just say I would do anything to erase the past and make us a family again.” He took her hand in his. “Is there any chance of that?” he asked.
Again, she felt a surge of sympathy toward him. His words, his obvious honesty and sincerity, were seductive to her, and she allowed herself one brief moment’s fantasy of being his wife again. But then she thought of how he would react if she mentioned that, at this very moment, Sophie should be at Dr. Schaefer’s office receiving her infusion of Herbalina. And she thought of how, despite his momentary kindness, he held her responsible for Sophie’s disappearance, and she knew she could never be that close to him again.
“Now is not the time for this conversation,” she said, squeezing his hand. She took the map from his lap and looked out the window at the two roads stretching out in front of them. Neither looked promising.
“Let’s go back,” Joe said with a sigh. “Let’s just go to the police station and get ready for the press conference.”
She hesitated, looking down at the map, trying to determine exactly where they were.
“It doesn’t mean we’re giving up,” Joe said. “Just changing our strategy.”
She handed the map back to him. “All right,” she said.
Joe looked at his watch. “It’s after twelve,” he said. “We told your parents we’d call before noon. Might as well do it before we start driving again.”
She nodded and took her phone from her purse, pressing the memory button for the mansion.
“Hello?” Her mother’s voice had that brittle, anxious quality that Janine knew all too well.
“Hi, Mom. We—”
“Let me talk to Joe.”
Janine sucked in her breath as though her mother had punched her. “I just wanted to let you know that we haven’t found anything,” she said quickly.
“Put Joe on,” her mother insisted.
Janine shut her eyes. “She won’t talk to me,” she said, handing him the phone. Her throat was so tight she could barely breathe, and she reached into her shorts pocket for a tissue.
“Hi, Mom,” Joe said. “No, no word at all. Any news there?”
She listened as Joe told her mother about the press conference scheduled for that afternoon. When he hung up, he looked at her, and she knew her nose was red from her quiet crying.
“How about I drive back,” he suggested.
She shook her head and started the car. She needed something to engage her mind. Yet as she drove, all she could think about were the countless other times she’d done something to elicit the sting of her mother’s silent anger.
After she lost the baby on the banks of the Shenandoah, she suddenly noticed babies everywhere. Janine had never paid much attention to them before, not even during the seven and a half months of her pregnancy. But suddenly babies slept in strollers in the shopping malls, reached from carts for forbidden items on the shelves at the grocery store and were carried in sacks against their mother’s chests in the bank, where Janine had taken a job to help Joe pay their expenses. Mothers cooed at their little ones, smiled at them, comforted them when they cried, and played peekaboo with them on the counter at the bank. Each time Janine was witness to one of these interactions, she felt the pain of losing her own infant. She had not felt that pain at the time; she had felt nothing, actually,