Lucas returned around the other side of the cottage and knelt down in front of them. “You’re locked up tight,” he said. “Is there a spare key in the mansion?”
“Yes, but my parents are out and they always lock the house when they leave.” Was it stupid of her to tell him her parents were not at home? There seemed to be no one around except the three of them, and one of them had demonstrated an unnatural interest in little girls.
“I can get in the back door, but I’ll have to break the glass to do it,” he said. “I can repair it for you tomorrow, though. I’ll just need to get another piece of glass.”
Against her cheek, Janine felt the heat rising from Sophie’s forehead. “Yes, please, if you could,” she said.
She and Sophie waited as he walked around the house again. They heard the sharp crack of breaking glass, followed by the tinkling sound of the shards hitting the linoleum floor of the kitchen. In a moment, the front door opened and Lucas stood in the living room.
“The deed is done,” he said. “Come in, and I’ll clean up the glass.”
Janine helped Sophie to her feet, then reached for the bucket.
“Leave it,” Lucas said. “I’ll take care of it later.”
“Oh, no, I don’t want you to have to—”
“Leave it, Janine,” he repeated. “It’s not a problem. Get Sophie inside here.” It was the first time he had called her by her name, and she thought she should be incensed at him for taking that liberty. Instead, she found herself liking that intimacy from him. She wished he would say her name again.
She walked Sophie into the house. “Let’s get you to bed,” she said, guiding her toward the hallway. She looked at Lucas, who was indeed staring at Sophie, but the look on his face was one of concern, nothing more. She should thank him and see him out the door, but she owed him more than that. “Would you like some lemonade or iced tea?” she offered.
“Just a little cold water would be great.” Lucas smiled.
“There’s a pitcher in the fridge. Help yourself. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Sophie fell onto her made bed, eyes shut, instantly asleep, and Janine sat next to her for a moment. In the afternoon light from the window, Sophie’s eyelids were nearly translucent; Janine could almost see the blue orbs beneath them. The lightly freckled skin on Sophie’s face, across her nose and in the gaunt hollows of her cheeks, had that same translucent quality, as though Sophie were slowly becoming invisible, fading away. Janine unfolded the light throw at the foot of the bed and laid it gently over her daughter before leaving the room.
She found Lucas standing in the kitchen, leaning against the old coral-colored tile counter, a glass of water in his hand. “I poured a lemonade for you,” he said, nodding toward the glass on the table.
“Thank you.” She had not really been in the mood for lemonade, but it suddenly looked delicious, and she took a swallow.
“Do you have a broom?” he asked. “I should get this broken glass off the floor. And I can cover the window with a piece of cardboard and some tape for you, so the cold doesn’t pour in tonight.”
Janine looked at the glass on the floor and the broken window. He had already done enough. “I’ll get it later, thanks,” she said. “Let’s sit in the living room while you finish your water.”
He followed her into the small, square living room.
“I’ve wondered what it was like in here,” he said, as he sat down on the sofa. “This was once the slave quarters, right?”
She nodded as she sat on the leather armchair. “Yes. Twenty people lived in here at one time. Can you imagine what that was like?”
“I did some reading about Ayr Creek before I started working here,” he said. “Isn’t there supposed to be a ghost in this cottage?”
“Not in the cottage,” Janine replied. “She’s supposed to be in the woods, searching for her little girl. The woman’s name was Orla. Some other slave owner wanted her little girl to work for him, and Angus Campbell, the owner of Ayr Creek, promised Orla he wouldn’t split up her family. But one night the little girl disappeared. He’d sold her to the other guy, of course, but he told Orla he had no idea what happened to her. Orla apparently went crazy then, talking to herself and spending every night walking through the woods, hunting for her daughter. You can hear her out there sometimes, keening.”
“Do you believe the story?”
“Oh, I believe it, all right,” she said. “It’s a matter of history. But I certainly don’t believe that Orla’s ghost is haunting the woods. I’ve heard the sound that people attribute to her, though, and it is weird and eerie, but I’m sure it’s just a possum or some other nocturnal animal. You hear it mainly in the summer, late at night, when you’re trying to sleep. Sophie gets a bit freaked out by it.”
Lucas looked down at his water, swirling it around the inside of his glass.
“Tell me about Sophie,” he said. “Her illness…it’s very serious, isn’t it.” It was a statement rather than a question, and once again his voice was so kind that, without any warning, she began to cry. He said nothing as she lowered her head into her hands and let go of the tears she’d been holding in all morning for Sophie’s sake. Finally she raised her head.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He shook his head. “Nothing to be sorry for.” He brushed a blade of grass from the blue splint on his wrist. “Is it something you can talk about? Can you tell me what her problem is?”
“It’s her kidneys. She has a rare disease that usually only affects boys this seriously, but somehow, she was unlucky. She developed it when she was three, and it’s just gotten worse.”
“Would a transplant help?”
“I gave her one of my kidneys when her symptoms got bad enough, but she rejected it.” She bit her lip and looked toward the kitchen. Through the now empty pane of the back door, she could see the woods closing in on the cottage. “She’s been through so much. She has dialysis every night, and—”
“Peritoneal?” he asked, surprising her. Most people didn’t know that dialysis could be performed at home, using the membrane in the abdomen as the filter for the blood.
“Yes,” she said. “We have the machine here in her bedroom.”
“How has she done with it?”
“It’s not holding her,” she answered, and her voice caught in her throat. “This morning her doctor told me there isn’t anything else they can do for her. He said flat out that she probably has less than a year left.”
Lucas shook his head very slowly. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “What terrible news.”
“It wasn’t really news.” Janine sighed. “Just a confirmation of what I’ve known would happen if she didn’t turn around with the latest treatment they’ve had her on. Now I have to call her father and tell him.”
“Is he very close to her?”
“Yes. He’s been a much better dad than he ever was a husband.” She smiled weakly, regretting instantly that she’d criticized Joe to this stranger.
“Isn’t most kidney disease inherited?” he asked.
“Some, yes, but not all. The type she has usually is, but there isn’t any of it in my family. We really don’t know much about Joe’s roots, because he’s never had contact with his mother’s side of his family—she left him when he was little. His father’s dead, but there were no kidney problems on his side that we know of, although we really aren’t close to them.” She took a swallow of the lemonade, but found it hard to swallow, and she set the glass down on the end table. “Actually, I don’t think Sophie inherited it.”
“What do you mean?” Lucas asked.
“Do you know about Gulf War Illness?” she asked.
“Well, I know that some of the soldiers who fought in the Persian Gulf think they contracted something while they were there. Is that what you mean?”
“Yes. And some of them are producing children with medical problems.”
Lucas looked confused. “I’m not sure I’m following y
ou. Was Sophie’s father in the military? Did he fight in Desert Storm?”
She shook her head. “No,” she said. “But I did.”
He looked surprised. “You’re kidding. What branch of the military were you in?”
“Army Reserves,” she said. “I flew a helicopter in the Gulf.”
“Well.” He smiled. “I have to say I’m impressed.”
“There’s nothing impressive about it,” she said. “It was a selfish decision on my part. I wanted to learn to fly, the reserves seemed like an easy way to do it. But it took me away from Joe for long periods of time. And ultimately—” she lowered her voice “—I’m afraid it’s going to cost my daughter her life.”
“You mean…you think you picked up something over there that caused you to give Sophie her kidney problems?”
“Yes. I don’t have any symptoms myself, but I got pregnant with Sophie right after I returned from the Gulf. It fits.”
He shook his head, almost violently. “No, it doesn’t fit. Those kids have deformities, not renal disease.”
“Not just deformities. I’ve heard of other diseases appearing in the children of Gulf War soldiers.”
“But diseases appear in kids no matter what.”
She felt herself sink deeper into her chair, deeper into her gloom. “I’d like to believe you, but I don’t. I blame myself for what’s happening to Sophie. My parents blame me. And so does Joe. He never says as much, but—”
Lucas stood up from the sofa and walked over to her. Sitting down on the leather ottoman in front of her chair, arms folded and resting on his knees, he looked directly into her eyes.
“You are not to blame,” he said. His eyes were narrowed and serious, his voice firm with measured words, as if it were very important for her to believe him.
“You don’t know,” she said.
“I do know,” he said. “I’ve done some reading on Gulf War Illness because one of my friends was over there and got sick afterward. I think he really did pick up something there, or else he got it from the anthrax vaccination or those pills they gave them to protect them against nerve agents—”
“Pyridostigmine bromide pills.” She remembered those pills and the dizziness she’d experienced after taking them.
“Whatever.” Lucas smiled. “So I’m not arguing that the illness is all in their heads. But as I did research for him, I read about the kids being born with medical problems. None of them had renal disease. And here you have some pretty good clues that Sophie might have inherited her illness from her father’s side. A missing mother. Not a heck of a lot of information about his father. So, why are you tormenting yourself over this? You have enough to deal with without taking on that guilt.”
His words seemed so logical, yet he didn’t understand the core doctrine of the Donohue and Snyder family: whatever Janine did was wrong.
“What about experimental treatments for Sophie?” he asked. “You’re not that far from the National Institutes of Health or Johns Hopkins, right?”
“She’s in a study at NIH right now,” Janine replied. “They’re trying a new, miserably toxic medication to block the potassium buildup. That’s what she’s been on, and that’s why she’s throwing up all the time. Today, I told the doctor I wanted to take her off it, and he agreed that she’s only getting worse on it. I don’t want her to spend the last few months of her life sick all the time. Throwing up all the time.” She started to cry again, and somehow wasn’t surprised when he reached over to touch her arm, lightly, briefly. “I want her to be able to take some pleasure in the time she has left,” she said.
“Of course you do,” he said. “But don’t close your mind to all possibilities. I believe in miracles.”
She brushed the tears from her cheek with the back of her hand and smiled at him ruefully. What a surprise he was turning out to be! He was certainly kinder than she’d expected, and far smarter than she ever would have guessed. And he was on her side.
“I have to ask you something,” she said.
He raised his eyebrows, waiting.
“This is going to sound…blunt, but I don’t think I have the strength right now to figure out a better way to say it.”
“Go for it,” he urged.
“My parents warned me not to speak to you or to let Sophie near you.”
“Why?” He looked truly surprised.
“My father said that when you first came here to look over the grounds, you showed…well, you seemed inordinately interested in the fact that a little girl lived here. And they’ve told me that whenever Sophie and I walk past you and they happen to be watching, you stare at her. Is that their imagination?”
He smiled and looked down at his hands. “No, it’s not their imagination, but I didn’t think I was being that obvious. I had no idea anyone thought I was—” He shook his head. “This is crazy. I could tell your parents didn’t like me. They treat me like I’m no better than the manure I spread in the garden. I thought it was some…class thing. The lowly gardener. At least now I know why.”
“So why would you stare at her?”
“I have a niece Sophie’s age,” he said. “My sister’s little girl. She lives in northern Pennsylvania, and I only see her on holidays. I don’t have any kids of my own, so she’s, in a way, the closest thing I have to my own child. I adore her. Spoil her rotten. When your dad told me there was a little girl living at Ayr Creek, I suppose my eyes did light up a bit.” He laughed. “I realized quickly, though, that Sophie and I weren’t going to get to be buddies, because you weren’t letting her anywhere near me. I thought you were a pretty cold fish. Now I know why. And I also know you’re anything but cold. I’ve read you completely wrong.”
“I guess that makes two of us.” She touched her fingertips to his splint. “I apologize.”
“Accepted.”
“What’s wrong with your wrist?” she asked.
“Carpal tunnel.”
“Do you wear the splint all the time?”
“Uh-huh. The latest research has shown that if you work and play and sleep in the splints, the better off you’ll be.”
“Is it from repetitive movement?”
“Oh,” he sighed. “I don’t know. It’s from some gardening task, I suppose.”
“Have you ever been married?”
He grinned at her. “Twenty questions, huh?”
She nodded. Suddenly she was very hungry for information about him.
“Yes, I was married for twelve years,” he said. “We’re still friends. She’s a terrific woman.”
“Why did you split up?”
“We got married too young.” He sat back on the ottoman, letting out a long breath. “We were both twenty. We still had a lot of maturing to do, and when we finally did grow up, we discovered that we didn’t have a heck of a lot in common. She was a psychologist, and I hung around plants a lot. She wanted a nice colonial home she could decorate, and I wanted to live in a tree.”
Janine laughed. “Where does she live?”
“Pennsylvania. She calls from time to time, or I call her. We e-mail. She got married again a couple of years ago, and fortunately her new husband understands our friendship.”
“You’re very lucky,” she said.
“Yes, I am. And what about Sophie’s father? Joe, is it? Are you two still friends?”
“Only when it comes to Sophie,” she said. It was hard to explain her relationship with Joe. “He’s still very close to my parents, since he really has no parents of his own. And they’re crazy about him. They still call him my husband. I think they blame me for our divorce, even though he had an affair. They don’t know that, though.”
“Ouch,” Lucas said.
She had told no one, other than her two closest female friends, about Joe’s affair. She’d let her parents think her decision to end their marriage was just another one of her impulsive, selfish acts. Joe had begged her not to poison their feelings about him with the truth.
She looked up at the
ceiling. “I can’t believe I’m telling you so much,” she said.
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to.” She went on to tell him about her high school pregnancy and the shotgun marriage to Joe. She told him about the canoe trip, and her stillborn baby boy.
“All right,” he said. “So you showed some poor judgment when you were eighteen, when most kids have poor judgment. You’re still blaming yourself for that all these years later?”
“Are you always this supportive of everybody?” she asked.
“Only people who deserve it,” he said.
Her gaze was drawn to activity in the driveway, near the mansion. She stood up and, through the bare trees, could see her father’s car pull into the garage.
“My parents are home,” she said.
Lucas stood up as well. “I’d better get back to work, then,” he said. “I’ll fix the pane in your door tomorrow. “
She realized she didn’t want him to go, but she didn’t want her parents to discover him there, either. “Thanks for breaking into the house, and for listening. And for the encouragement,” she said, as she walked him to the door. She glanced toward the hallway leading to Sophie’s bedroom. “Unfortunately, though, I don’t believe in miracles.”
He stepped onto the front stoop, then turned to look at her, a small smile on his lips. “I’m not talking about religious miracles,” he said. “I’m not talking about a sign from heaven. I’m talking about man-made miracles. I think human beings can do anything they set their minds to, and somewhere, right now, some scientist is trying to figure out a way to help Sophie and other kids like her. And maybe he—or she—will succeed. All I’m saying is that you need to be open to that possibility. Don’t give up hope.”
She nodded. “I’ll try not to,” she said. “Thank you.”
She watched him pick up the bucket and walk toward the mansion, where he turned on the hose. Then she walked into Sophie’s room to check on her. Sophie was still in a deep sleep, and Janine watched her for a few minutes, making sure she was breathing. How often she was doing that these days! She got up a few times each night, just to make sure Sophie was still with her.