“That’s why I wanted to do this for you, Mart,” she said. “I wanted to help you prove your innocence, but the lawyers I hired blew it.”
“No kidding.” Marti rolled her eyes.
“So, I came up with this plan. I figured neither of us had much left to lose. I’d try to…spring you.” She smiled at the expression. “And if we succeeded, great. If we didn’t, we were back where we started.”
“Mom…” Marti leaned forward. She rested her hand on Zoe’s arm and tears filled her eyes again. “I can’t go back there, ever, Mom. Please don’t let that happen to me.”
“I won’t, sweetie,” she promised, pulling her daughter, her own little girl, into her arms. And she knew that somehow, Sophie would have to heal herself. Zoe was giving up on her, turning her fate over to a force greater than any of them. There was nothing more she could do for the child.
“Hey, look!” Marti said now. She pointed toward the edge of the clearing, and Zoe and Sophie looked up from their beans and franks to see what had attracted her. A huge turtle had lumbered out of the woods, making slow but steady progress across the clearing.
“Is it a turtle or a tortoise?” Marti asked, walking across the clearing to get a better look.
“What’s the difference?” Zoe asked.
“I don’t have a clue,” Marti said.
“It’s a snapping turtle,” Sophie said with authority.
“How do you know that?” Zoe asked.
Sophie shrugged. She was not a happy little camper this evening. “I just do,” she said. She was using her penknife to spread peanut butter on a piece of Melba Toast.
“So,” Marti said, as she neared the turtle. “Do they snap?”
“They can break your finger right off,” Sophie said.
“Oh, they can, can they,” Marti said. She picked up a stick from the edge of the forest and held it in front of the turtle, and Zoe saw her slowly reach into her shorts pocket and pull out a survival knife.
“Oh, don’t hurt it, Marti,” Zoe said, but she was too late. The turtle stretched out its long neck to bite down on the stick, and with one quick blow, Marti decapitated it.
“Turtle soup for tomorrow night!” she crowed.
“Oh, Marti.” Zoe felt shaken, actually sick. She found herself unable to look at the turtle and averted her eyes. Yet she had killed animals out here. Why did this feel so different? She looked across the clearing at Sophie, whose face was a mixture of fear and horror.
“Why did you do that?” Sophie asked Marti. “He wouldn’t hurt you if you just left him alone.”
Marti tossed her knife on the ground and sat down on one of the rocks again. “Because turtle soup is delicious,” she said. “That’s why.”
“And how are you going to make turtle soup without a fire?” Sophie asked. She set down her penknife and got off the rock. Carrying the Melba Toast, she hopped across the clearing toward the shanty.
Marti watched her go. “Sensitive little thing, isn’t she?” she said to Zoe.
Zoe cleared her throat. “I have some books in the shanty that will tell you how to clean a turtle.”
“We can’t have turtle soup,” Marti said. “Sophie’s right. We’d need a fire.”
“So, you killed that turtle for nothing,” Zoe said. Anger surged inside her, and she did her best not to let it come out in her voice.
“Don’t go getting all sappy on me, all right?” Marti stood up and headed for the shanty. “You and Sophie make quite a team,” she called back over her shoulder. “It was just a turtle.”
Zoe sat still on the rock after Marti went into the shanty, her can of beans in her hand, her eyes averted from the slaughtered turtle on the other side of the clearing. She was annoyed at herself. So, it’s okay for you to kill animals, but not for Marti to do it? she asked herself. But then, suddenly, she knew why her hands were shaking, her heart pounding.
She remembered the kitten, the white ball of fluff, that Marti had been given as a birthday gift for her seventh birthday, or maybe her eighth. She’d been thrilled with the kitten, or so it seemed. But one day, the cat disappeared. The nanny found it a few days later, beneath Marti’s bed, its neck broken. Marti denied knowing anything about the kitten’s death, and Zoe had believed her.
At least, she’d pretended to believe her. Zoe was an actress. She was very, very good at pretending.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Lucas’s house was dark. Joe was parked down the block, not certain what he should do next. Lucas’s car was in the carport, and Joe’s best guess was that he was with another woman up in his tree house. Why else would he desert Janine at a time like this?
Night had finally fallen over Vienna, and Joe got out of his car under the cover of darkness. He heard music coming from the amphitheater at Wolf Trap National Park, followed by rowdy applause and whistles that cut through the still air, and he wondered who was performing there tonight. Not the symphony, obviously.
Moving quietly, he slipped into the woods at the edge of Lucas’s property. He had never been to the tree house before, but he knew its approximate location, since he’d seen it from the road in winter when the leaves were off the trees. After a moment or two, he was surrounded by the darkness of the woods and a bit disoriented. Is this how Sophie felt in the woods, night after night? It was unfathomable. He was a thirty-five-year-old man in the safe confines of Vienna, just blocks from traffic, with the civilized sound of music wafting through the trees, and he still felt spooked. How could Sophie survive this?
The reality was that Sophie probably had not survived. When he was being honest with himself, Joe knew that was the truth. Even if she’d been able to tolerate the emotional anguish of being lost, even if she’d somehow found the courage to make it through four nights alone in the forest, and even if she’d somehow managed to find food that was safe to eat, she could not survive. Her kidneys would not let her. And if Herbalina was the miracle drug Janine thought it to be—something he did not for a moment believe—she still would have needed dialysis by now. Oh, Sophe. What a cruel way to die. No one deserved to die afraid and alone, least of all his little girl.
Ahead of him, a light flickered through the trees. He walked toward it as quietly as he could and was relieved to see that it was coming from the tree house. The two-tiered house was in darkness except for one brightly lit room, and from where he stood, Joe could clearly see Lucas sitting at a desk in front of a computer monitor. Just the gardener and the machine, no sign of another woman. For this, Lucas had given up a night with Janine? Maybe he was an Internet junkie in need of a fix.
Joe leaned a bit to the left to try to see the screen of the monitor more clearly, and his foot came down on a dead branch as he shifted his weight. It cracked in two, the sound so loud that Lucas turned his head toward the window.
Joe held his breath. Lucas stood up from the computer to look through the window into the darkness, then he disappeared from the room. He’s walking out to the deck, Joe thought. Any minute, Lucas would turn on an outside light to look for the intruder.
Having no desire to be found spying, Joe turned around and headed swiftly back to the road. This is, without a doubt, the weirdest thing you’ve ever done, he told himself, as he moved through the woods. And he sure as hell didn’t want to be caught doing it.
He was perspiring by the time he reached the street and was about to head toward his car, when his gaze was drawn to the two bags of recycling sitting on the curb in front of Lucas’s brick rambler. He walked over to the bags and peered inside them. There were no streetlights on this side of the road, but Joe was still able to see that one of the bags was filled with a week’s worth of the Washington Post. The second seemed to contain junk mail and magazines. Leaning over, he tore the paper on the second bag, curious to see if its contents might contain any clues to Lucas Trowell.
The paper spilled from the bag onto the curb, one of the magazines falling open, and Joe blinked in horror. The magazine had opened to a picture of a nude child.
A girl, Joe thought, although it was hard to tell in the dim light. He moved the magazine with the toe of his shoe, trying to get more light on the picture, but a rustling noise from the woods stopped him. Looking up, he saw a light flickering through the trees. A flashlight. Lucas was on his way out here.
Joe backed away from the torn bag of paper and ran toward his car. His hands shook wildly as he climbed into the driver’s seat and turned the key in the ignition, and he pressed on the gas, leaving Lucas’s neighborhood behind him as quickly as he could.
When he neared Ayr Creek, he pulled to the side of the road, turned off the ignition and rested his head against the back of the car seat. He wanted to wipe the last half hour from his mind. Shame filled him. He was a spy, a voyeur. He was, as Paula had so kindly pointed out to him, obsessed with Lucas Trowell.
Okay, so he’d done the deed. He couldn’t take it back. He just needed to let it go.
He started the car again, and by the time he turned into the Ayr Creek driveway, he’d managed to erase most of the escapade from his mind—all except the shadowy image of a naked little girl.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Janine was standing on the tarmac at the small airport, talking with the rental agent, as she waited for Lucas to arrive. She’d called Lucas at five-thirty that morning, when she’d made the decision to rent a helicopter, and asked him to meet her at the airport rather than the motel. It was barely 8:00 a.m. now, and she was early, but she simply could not stay cooped up in her motel room another moment.
She’d had to beg Joe to give her a ride to the airport, since she had no car with her, and she must have hit him at a weak moment, because he didn’t put up much of a fight before agreeing to drop her off. She’d also persuaded him to stop by the command post, so that she could leave Herbalina in the trailer’s small refrigerator and tell Valerie Boykin her plan. Valerie didn’t think a helicopter would do much good, given the dense cover in the area, but Janine could not tolerate another day of sitting and waiting. They wouldn’t let her in the woods to look for Sophie, but there was not much they could do about her being in the air.
“I think you’re amazing,” the rental agent said. His name was Tom. Janine figured he was probably in his forties, although he looked considerably older with his long, gray ponytail.
“You do?” She smiled politely, as she walked around the helicopter. She was anxious to get inside it and up in the air.
“I think if my girl had gone missing, my wife would have buckled under, you know what I mean?” Tom said. “Just hid herself away until they found her. But here you are, out here, ready to fly a helicopter yourself to go lookin’ for her.”
“I can’t stand feeling helpless,” she said.
“Well, I think you’re something else,” Tom said. He offered her a salute and started walking back to the rental office. “You let me know if there’s anything else I can do for you,” he called over his shoulder.
“I will,” she said. “Thanks.”
Janine leaned against the side of the helicopter and watched the road for Lucas’s car. She’d hesitated before calling Lucas early that morning, still feeling unsure of him after his desertion of her the night before. She’d been relieved when he responded to her call with warmth and willingness, the concern in his voice making her feel foolish for thinking she might have misinterpreted his love for her and Sophie. Their relationship was only seven months old, but those months had been rich with a caring so deep she felt ashamed of herself for doubting it. Lucas was a giver. How could she have forgotten that?
After he’d helped her break into her house, Lucas had become a regular visitor to the cottage at Ayr Creek. At first, she was careful with him around Sophie, but she soon grew to believe that his interest in Sophie was honorable, tied to his feelings for his beloved niece. He treated Sophie almost as though she were an adult, asking her opinion on books and movies and what she’d like for dinner. He taught her riddles. He asked her about her hopes and dreams. A couple of times, he’d had both Sophie and Janine up to his tree house, that world of awe and adventure, and Sophie had lit up at finding herself in the midst of the bare winter trees, able to see all the way to the Filene Center at Wolf Trap, and nearly to Ayr Creek in the opposite direction. Yes, Lucas was a giver, in every meaning of the word.
The true gift he’d given, though, was not to Sophie, but to Janine.
Early one morning, just before Christmas, and a month or so after Lucas had helped her break into the cottage, Janine was awakened before sunrise by a sound that always made her shiver. It was a low-pitched keening, spilling from the woods near the cottage, loud enough to pierce the windows of her bedroom. She’d heard the keening several times before, but only in the warmer months, and each time she heard it, she would lay frozen in her bed, imagining Orla as she traipsed through the forest in search of her daughter. This time, though, Janine felt a longing to know what was truly making that heartrending sound.
She got out of bed, pulling on a chenille robe over her flannel pajamas. Slipping into her sneakers, she walked quietly out the back door of the cottage to the porch. The sound stopped, as though Orla might have seen her emerge from the house and did not want to be discovered. Then she heard a noise from the side of the cottage. Walking around the path, she spotted Lucas carrying a bundled string of Christmas lights in his arms.
He started when he saw her. “You’re up early,” he said.
“Did you hear that sound?” she asked.
“What sound?”
“The wailing. Crying. Orla.”
He looked toward the woods. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “It is a bit creepy. But I think you were right when you said it was a possum or something.”
She shivered and pulled the robe tighter around herself. “I’ve never heard it in the winter before,” she said.
“Where’s Sophie?” Lucas asked. “Still in bed?”
“She’s at Joe’s for the weekend.”
“Ah,” Lucas said, adjusting the string of lights in his arms. “I’d like to meet Joe sometime.”
That surprised her. “Why?” she asked.
“Just ’cause he’s Sophie’s dad. And I’m supposing that, like your parents, he doesn’t trust me much. I’d like him to know I’m not an ogre.”
Or a pedophile, Janine thought. She felt a strong need to keep her friendship with Lucas from her parents and Joe. His visits to her cottage were made on the sly. Neither of them spoke about it, but they both understood the need for discretion. Although she had absolute trust in him, she knew her family would have no faith in her judgment.
“I’m about to make some coffee,” she said. “Would you like to come in for a cup?”
“Sure, in a minute. I just want to add these lights to the spruce out front. It looked a little bare to me last night.”
Inside the cottage, she quickly changed into jeans and a sweater, then busied herself making the coffee. She felt as though she were about to do something illicit. Not just because her parents would strongly disapprove of her socializing with the gardener, but because this would be the first time she’d been with Lucas alone, without Sophie as a buffer between them. Without Sophie to keep her growing desire for him in check. There had been a few times when she’d felt that desire was mutual, when she’d felt his gaze resting on her as she braided Sophie’s hair or made supper for the three of them. She wondered, though, if she might be imagining his interest.
She opened a box of donuts and set them on the table just as Lucas walked in the back door.
They sat in the kitchen, sipping coffee, nibbling donuts and talking, and she wondered if he felt any attraction to her at all. She wished she’d taken a moment to comb her hair, still tousled from sleep, and smoothed some cover-up under her eyes. While she felt the power of being alone with him in the cottage, he seemed intent on talking about Sophie, as he usually did.
“What will she be doing this weekend with Joe?” he asked.
“Not sure,” she said, pouring
herself another cup of coffee. “Joe said that he and his friend, Paula, might take her to Bull Run tonight to see the Christmas lights. And he usually takes her to an afternoon movie when he has her.”
“You know,” Lucas said, reaching for a napkin from the holder on the table, “I heard this little blurb on the radio about a study just starting up, and I thought of Sophie. I don’t know for sure, but I think she might qualify. It was something to do with kids with end-stage renal disease.”
Janine shook her head. “If Sophie was a candidate, her doctor would have told me. He keeps up with all the research that’s going on.”
“Well, this was something about alternative medicine,” Lucas said. “I didn’t get all the details, but I did memorize the phone number, just in case it might apply to Sophie.”
“Her doc would never go the alternative route.”
“Wouldn’t it be worth looking into, though?” he asked. “At least checking it out to see what it’s all about?”
Janine felt tired. People were always telling her that Sophie should be doing this or doing that to get better. Join a prayer circle, drink water mixed with molasses, take some special, expensive supplement that had cured someone’s sister’s best friend’s father of shingles and tapeworm.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“You’re worn out from all this, aren’t you?” Lucas looked sympathetic.
She nodded.
“Well, just to satisfy my own curiosity, would it be okay if I checked into it a little further? I’ll get the information and pass it on to you, and you can decide if it’s worth anything or not. The study sounded legit and kind of exciting. Really, it did.”
“Sure,” she said. “Just please don’t give me any grief if I don’t want to pursue it. Okay?”
“It’s a deal,” he said.
Without any warning, and without really knowing why, she suddenly began to cry. She turned away from him, raising a tissue to her face, embarrassed by how little control she had over her emotions these days.