The Courage Tree - Diane Chamberlain [83]
Janine’s father stood up to offer Valerie his chair, but she waved away the gesture, and when she did so, Janine recognized the object in her hand.
“That’s Sophie’s hiking shoe!” She jumped to her feet.
“That’s one of the things I wanted to ask you,” Valerie said, handing the shoe to her. It was dirty and soaking wet, but otherwise in good shape. “It’s hers?”
“Yes! Absolutely.” Janine held the shoe to her chest like a treasure.
“Where did you find it?” Joe asked.
“Only about twenty feet from the accident site,” Valerie said. “We haven’t been able to find anything else, though.”
“You said you wanted some more information about Sophie?” Lucas prompted her.
Valerie nodded. “Well, first of all, let me say that we’re very concerned that we haven’t found her yet. Given that she’s probably injured, and missing at least one of her shoes, we don’t see how she could have gotten too far.”
“What are you saying?” Joe asked.
“Just that we have to entertain the possibility that she might have…succumbed to her injuries and been found by an animal, and—”
“Don’t give up on her,” Janine said. “Please.”
“No, we’re not giving up. We’re just exploring all possible explanations for why we haven’t found her yet, with this many people looking for her. We rely on statistics to tell us how a lost person might behave,” she continued. “A child between the ages of six and twelve will usually try to use the path of least resistance. Unfortunately, there aren’t any trails down there, so that makes it tough, both for her and for our searchers.”
“Could she have walked on the road instead of through the woods?” Janine’s father asked.
“We speculate that Sophie wouldn’t have been able to get up to the road from the accident site,” Valerie said. “It’s just too steep. But we’re still searching the roads, just in case she did. We’ve divided them up for three miles in all directions. But whether she’s on the road or in the woods, a healthy child Sophie’s age will usually be found within two miles of where they were last seen. It’s really, really rare to find them any farther away than that. And Sophie isn’t healthy.”
“But you’ll look farther than that, won’t you?” Janine asked.
“Yes, we will, of course, if we don’t find her closer in,” Valerie said. “We don’t give up on trying to find anyone, Janine. Especially not a child.”
Joe and Paula, along with Janine’s parents, returned to the motel around six o’clock, but Janine and Lucas remained at the command post until eight, when a thunderstorm forced the searchers out of the woods for the night. They drove back to the motel in silence in Joe’s car, which he’d left behind for them to use.
Janine didn’t have the energy to bother with pretense, so she didn’t even stop in her own motel room before going to Lucas’s. She lay next to him in his bed, her body limp with exhaustion. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the white trailer, the searchers in their hiking boots, the well-trained dogs with the anticipatory look in their eyes, and the deep woods that had swallowed Sophie whole.
“I need to go back to Vienna tomorrow,” Lucas said suddenly.
They’d talked for a while, but had fallen into a long, discouraged silence, and Janine was as startled by the sound of his voice as she was by the words themselves.
“Why?” she asked.
“Just for the day,” he said. His arm was around her shoulders, and he tightened it in comfort. “I have some business I need to attend to. But I wanted to suggest that you go with me, and we—”
“What business?” she asked. “What can be more important than being out here right now?”
“It’s not more important,” Lucas said, “but it’s something I have to take care of, and I can’t do it from here.”
There had always been a secret side to Lucas. Usually, that didn’t bother her, but right now she was annoyed.
“Is it related to finding another job?” she asked. How could he even talk about leaving?
Lucas sighed. “No,” he said. “There’s a project I’m working on with some other people. We’re working some things out online, and they’re waiting for