The Courage Tree - Diane Chamberlain [89]
“Sophie, this is my daughter, Marti,” she said. “Marti, this is Sophie. She got lost in the woods a few days ago and found her way here. I’m planning to walk her up to the road and—”
“You’re what?” Marti exclaimed.
“Sophie and I have already talked about it. I’ll hide and let someone else pick her up to take her to the police,” Zoe assured her quickly. “And Sophie understands that I don’t want anyone to know she’s met me, don’t you, Sophie?”
Sophie was staring, riveted, at Marti, but she managed a nod.
“Mother, you cannot do that,” Marti said. “They’re going to be looking for me. They’ll be all over these woods. They probably are already.”
“Why would they be looking for you?” Zoe asked. She felt Sophie sidle closer to her. “How would they know to look for you here?”
“They just do,” Marti said.
“Listen, Marti.” Zoe’s anxiety was rising. “You’d better tell me what’s going on. You took the gun from the warden, and…I just don’t understand. Did something go wrong with the plan?”
Marti laughed. “I’d say that.”
“Okay,” Zoe said. “Let’s just cool our heads about this. Everybody sit down. Pick a rock.” She sat down on the nearest flat rock, and Sophie sat down right next to her.
“Not out here in the open,” Marti said.
“This is hardly ‘the open,’” Zoe countered.
“Mother, you don’t get it. We need to go inside.”
It would be easier to follow Marti inside the shanty than to fight her. With a sigh, Zoe got to her feet and walked toward the shanty with one protective arm around Sophie, who was hopping along next to her to avoid putting any weight on her swollen foot. Zoe had to help her up the porch stairs. How she was going to get this girl over five miles of forest floor was anyone’s guess.
“Oh, my God, you’ve actually been living here?” Marti asked, once they were in the small front room with its sheet-covered sofa, makeshift shelves and filthy walls. “This place is probably crawling with vermin, Mother. There are no screens in the windows.”
Zoe laughed, a bit uncomfortably. “Well, yes, that’s true,” she admitted. “There’s not even any glass in the windows, for that matter.” She hoped Marti’s sour mood was simply a product of her night in the woods and that it would soon lift. “I put some screens up in the bedroom, though.”
“Where am I supposed to sit?” Marti looked helplessly around the room.
“The sofa is perfectly clean with that sheet on it,” Zoe said, “and that chair is fine.” She pointed to the wobbly old wooden chair in the corner. She watched her daughter lower herself gingerly onto the edge of the chair, while she herself sat on the couch. Sophie sat down so close to her that she was practically in Zoe’s lap, and Zoe put her arm around her again.
“You’re going to have to get used to a little dirt,” Zoe said to Marti. “You’ll have to adjust to less than perfect living conditions.”
Marti looked at her angrily, her eyes filling with tears. “Don’t talk to me about adjusting to less than perfect living conditions, Mother,” she said. “You have no idea how I’ve been living. I’ve been in the slimiest, seediest, most abusive prison on the face of the earth.”
Zoe regretted speaking so harshly. She had to remember that Marti had suffered, and suffered unfairly, paying for a crime she didn’t commit because Zoe had hired sloppy lawyers to defend her. Marti looked unwell. Her hair was longer than it had been in years. Probably she had not had it cut since the trial. Its pretty blond color had faded, and even her huge blue eyes had lost their sheen.
“I’m sorry, hon,” she said. “So, tell me everything. Tell me why you think anyone would be looking for you out here?”
Marti pulled a cigarette from the pack in her shirt pocket and lit it with a purple lighter. Zoe had never allowed her to smoke in the Malibu house,