“Same as Sophie,” Joe said.
“Right. So she was back on dialysis again.” Lucas shook his head, and there was some anger in his eyes. “What a lousy way for a kid to have to live, you know? Needles and machines and the restrictive diet and all.” He looked out the window again, lost for a moment in his own memories. “Anyhow,” he finally continued, “she ultimately died. She was ten. She had an infection that went systemic. Killed her in a couple of days.”
Joe wondered if Lucas was telling tales again, but the fact that his daughter now had a name, Jordan, somehow made her real. It made her very much like Sophie. Besides, Joe recognized the pain in Lucas’s face. He saw that pain each time he looked in the mirror.
“I’m sorry,” he said, starting to believe Lucas was telling the truth.
“Thanks,” Lucas said. He drew in a long breath. “Well, I was actually a botany professor at Penn State back then,” he said. “And…well, I’ll get to that in a minute.” He looked perplexed and offered Joe a half smile. “It’s hard to know what to tell you next. I knew I had inherited my illness from my mother’s side of the family,” he said. “I asked her who else in the family had kidney disease. She mentioned a couple of my cousins, along with an uncle and her father. And then she told me that she’d always worried about a son she’d deserted when she was very young.”
Joe held his breath. What the hell was he saying?
“I’m talking about you,” Lucas said.
Joe stood up. “That’s crazy,” he said.
“You and I are brothers, Joe.”
Joe didn’t know whether to believe him or not. Too many lies had come from this man’s lips, and this one was too far-fetched for him to swallow.
“I don’t blame you for looking so shocked.” Lucas nearly smiled. “I was, too. She was always such a good mother, such a moral person. It seemed completely out of char—”
“Why didn’t she ever try to find me?” Joe asked. He’d never said those words out loud before, but they’d played on his mind every day for over thirty years. “She knew where I was.”
“She was ashamed, and it was very difficult for her to talk about,” Lucas said. “She told me she got married when she was eighteen and that she was a heavy drinker and used drugs. She didn’t get along with her husband and she felt saddled by her baby. By you.”
“So, she left,” Joe said, sitting down again. “I was a year old.”
“Yes, that’s right. She moved to the Philadelphia area and eventually got herself straightened out. She met my father there, and they got married and had me. My father knew about the baby she’d left behind, but he was the only person who did, until she told me. I felt a need to find you, to meet you, to see if you had inherited this disease or…” His voice trailed off, then he shook his head. “Whew. I guess I have to tell you everything. I guess—” He stopped talking as a nurse walked into the room. Joe waited out the silence impatiently, as the nurse checked Lucas’s IV bag, then left the room again.
“We don’t look a bit alike,” Joe said. He was still clinging to denial.
Lucas smiled. “If you could see our mother, you’d know that we’re brothers,” he said. “You have her eyes.”
“Does Janine know any of this?”
“No,” Lucas said. “And please, Joe, the rest of what I have to tell you needs to stay between us. I know you don’t like me, but I’ll have to trust you with this. Please. I think you’ll understand when I tell you. Okay?”
Joe was uncertain how to answer him. “I guess that depends on what it is you’re going to say,” he said. He felt no brotherly love toward Lucas.
“Fair enough,” Lucas said. He eyed the glass of water on his night table, and Joe recognized the same look of thirsty longing that Sophie often wore when she’d already had her allotment of water for the hour.
“When Jordan got sick,” Lucas said, “I began doing some research on my own time. I was very interested in herbs and other plants that were thought to have medicinal qualities, and I did a lot of reading about those that were thought to help people with kidney problems.”
“So that’s why you thought Schaefer might have been on to something with his Herbalina,” Joe said.
Lucas smiled again. “No, that’s not quite it. I actually began taking some of the herbs myself. I noticed no improvement, or at least, very little. But then I began giving some of them to Jordan. There was a definite improvement in her condition. She was able to go longer between her dialysis treatments. I kept playing around with the formula, finally coming up with the idea of using it as an IV infusion, but Sandra wouldn’t let me do that to Jordan. That scared her, understandably. Jordan died while we were still arguing about it, but her death was completely unrelated. Still, it broke up our marriage.” Lucas looked down at his arm, where the IV was attached. He touched the tape holding the needle in place gently, absently, then looked at Joe again. “Sandra always wanted a family,” he said. “Now she’s found herself a guy who won’t pass on any deadly disease to her children.”
Joe winced. “That must hurt,” he said, surprising himself with his sympathy.
“Well, it did at first, but not now,” Lucas said. “Now I’m just happy for her.”
“So…I’m not following you about the herbs,” Joe said.
Lucas nodded. “I knew I was on to something with them,” he said. “I also knew that no one would listen to a botany professor’s theory on using herbs in treating end-stage kidney disease. So I did some research into physicians who might take my work seriously and who would be willing to take the risk of…posing as the head of the study, when I was actually the one doing the research behind the scenes.”
“Are you saying that Schaefer’s study is really your study?” Joe asked, incredulous.
“Yes. Schaefer agreed to head up the study after I told him about the results I’d had with Jordan. He doesn’t really get it, though, but that doesn’t matter, as long as he’s got me working behind the scenes. Herbalina’s working, Joe, whether you want to believe that or not. I don’t care if Schaefer gets the credit for it. I just want to help those kids who are suffering like Jordan and Sophie did.”
Joe shook his head. “You are even more of a crook than I thought you were,” he said angrily. “You lied every which way about the study and you took those children—those little lives—and cut them off from treatment that was proven to work and put them on—”
“The formula we’re using still needs a lot of work.” Lucas ignored his outburst. “And I’d like to find out why it doesn’t work with adults and how I might be able to change it to make that happen. But my time’s running out. I should be getting dialysis four times a week now, for four or five hours each time. It’s getting harder for me to find a way to earn a living with that sort of interruption in my work, and it eats away at my research time, as well. The formula needs tweaking, but I’m having trouble putting enough time into it these days to do what needs to be done.”
Joe shook his head again. “This is just…My mind is boggled, Lucas,” he said.
“Back to you and Sophie for a minute,” Lucas said. “I really wanted to find out if you might have had any children with kidney disease. So, when I found out that you did, I had to figure out a way to get Sophie into the study. I wanted my niece to have a chance at getting P.R.E.-5. That’s Herbalina.” Lucas looked a bit uncomfortable. “I knew how to garden,” he said, “but I certainly didn’t have the background to get the job at Ayr Creek. So I had a friend fake the Monticello reference for me.”
“Man, you are just…You don’t quit, do you? You develop some secret formula, and that gives you permission to break all the rules.”
“I know it must seem that way to you, Joe,” Lucas said. “And maybe you’re right. Maybe I do think that what I’m doing is important enough to allow me to break a rule or two. But the fact is, I got Schaefer to believe in P.R.E.-5. Actually, he and I had planned to do the study under both our names, using his first to give it cre
dibility. But when I found out about Sophie…well, she wouldn’t have been allowed in the study if I had been one of the researchers, since she’d be a relative.”
“You are absolutely crazy.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” Lucas grinned. “I think you’re in for a surprise. Schaefer’s having a press conference this afternoon to announce the two-month results of the study. The results are excellent, across the board. Better than even I had expected.”
“I won’t believe it until I hear someone other than Schaefer—or you—say that the stuff has some merit.”
“I think you should watch the press conference then.” Lucas still wore his grin.
“Will it be on the news?” Joe asked.
“Should be. Definitely.”
“Even if the herbal stuff is the miracle you think it is, I’m still bothered by the way you used Janine,” Joe said. “I realize that you’re not above using anyone if it means advancing your research, or whatever. But you played with her emotions in order to get Sophie into your study.”
“No,” Lucas said. “I fell in love with Janine. For real.”
Joe rubbed his chin with his hand. He wasn’t sure whether to believe Lucas on that point or not. He wasn’t even sure that he wanted it to be the truth. “And how do you explain the porn you had in your recycling?” he asked.
“I don’t know what you could be talking about,” Lucas said. “I just had old mail and newspapers in the recycling. Oh!” He looked as though he remembered something. “Medical journals, maybe? There might have been medical journals in there. Pediatric journals. Could that be what you saw?”
Yes, it certainly could have been. Instantly, the image of the nude child returned to him, and only then did Joe recall that the photograph had been in black and white and rather clinical in its pose.
“I don’t know,” he said, unwilling to give up his anger toward Lucas so easily.
“Your skepticism is completely understandable, Joe,” Lucas said. “I was never playing with a full deck.”
Joe looked at him. “My mother,” he said. “I’d like to hear more about her.”
Lucas smiled. “She’d like to hear more about you, too,” he said. “She—”
“Joe?”
Both men turned toward the door at the sound of Janine’s voice. Joe stood up.
“Hi, Janine,” he said, getting to his feet. “I just stopped in to thank Lucas for helping us search for Sophie.”
“Oh,” she said, but she wore a suspicious expression on her face, and he was certain she didn’t believe him. Then she looked at Lucas, and Joe saw the concern in her eyes, the affection, the sort of loving gaze that she’d never had for him.
He started toward the hallway, touching her arm as he passed her. In the doorway, he turned around to look at them. Janine was standing next to Lucas’s chair, and she waved, but it wasn’t Janine he’d turned around to see. He’d just needed to take one more look at the man who claimed to be his brother.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
“You’re so quiet today,” Paula said. “And you’ve barely touched your dinner.”
Joe was at her town house, sitting next to her on the sofa, watching the six o’clock news in the hope that it would cover Schaefer’s press conference. He looked guiltily at the TV tray in front of him, at the steak Paula had grilled especially for him; she would never eat red meat, herself. But he had no appetite, no interest in food. And no ability to think about anything but his conversation with Lucas that afternoon.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m not very hungry right now.”
“Do you want to try a different channel?” Paula asked.
“No,” he said. “This is fine.” He cut a chunk from the steak. It was perfectly cooked, medium rare, and he raised it to his mouth only to stop it halfway, as the newscaster began to speak again.
“And there’s hope on the horizon for children with kidney failure,” the man said, a lilt in his voice, as though he actually cared. “That story next.”
Joe rested his fork on the side of his plate and reached for the remote to turn up the volume. He’d told Paula that Schaefer was going to have a press conference this afternoon, but he’d said nothing about his conversation with Lucas. He had to sit with that news himself awhile before he could talk about it with anyone else. That secret conversation still felt as though he’d dreamed it.
“What do you think he’s going to say?” Paula asked.
“I’m not sure,” Joe said. “And with Sophie gone, I’m not even sure what to hope for.”
Footage began of the press conference, which had been held at Children’s Hospital. Schaefer was at the podium, with several men and one woman sitting at long tables on either side of him.
Schaefer spoke in his vaguely Boston accent as he described the study. A film was shown of several of his young patients receiving Herbalina—which he called by the more scientific name Joe had heard Lucas use that afternoon: P.R.E.-5. Except for the fact that they were hooked up to IVs, the children looked hale and hearty, and they joked with their parents, with Schaefer and with the camera crew.
“We certainly had hope this treatment would…uh, work, but it has far exceeded our expectations,” the little man said in the halting style Joe remembered from the one antagonistic conversation he’d had with him before Sophie began the study. “Of the seventeen patients starting P.R.E.-5 treatment just, uh, two months ago, normal kidney function has been restored in two of them, and all the others have significantly reduced their dependence on dialysis.”
A pediatric nephrologist from Children’s Hospital took the podium, and Joe recognized him as one of the many physicians who had, at one time or another, consulted on Sophie’s medical treatment. He was one of the doctors, as a matter of fact, who had tried to dissuade Janine from enrolling Sophie in the study.
“I will be the first to admit that I had no faith in this unorthodox treatment,” the doctor said. “But as of this time, having examined fifteen of Dr. Schaefer’s patients, I have to say that their improvement is not only astonishing, but it also seems to be accompanied by very few, if any, side effects. It’s time that we took a more serious look at P.R.E.-5, and move this ground-breaking research to a larger scale.”
Other speakers took to the podium, but the message was the same in every case: amazement that P.R.E.-5 was working, admiration for the unassuming little man they thought to be its creator, and a readiness to move forward with the next stage of the research.
Joe was literally shaking by the time the footage was over. His body felt out of his control, and somehow Paula knew. She hit the mute button on the remote, knelt next to him on the sofa, and wrapped her arms around him.
He let his head fall against her shoulder. “It was going to work,” he said through his tears. “Sophie really was getting better. She would have been all right. She would have…” He shook his head, unable to speak any longer. Lucas had been telling him the truth. His tangled web of lies had been woven for a noble purpose. And he’d risked everything to be able to have Sophie in the study of a treatment he believed in.
“God,” Joe said, “the grief I gave Janine over this!”
Paula held him tightly, as if to stop his shaking. “You didn’t know,” she said. “Who could have? You operated on the best information available. You took the recommendations of Sophie’s doctors. What more could you do, Joey?”
“You yourself thought I should give the herbal stuff more credit,” he said.
“Oh, I don’t know, Joe,” Paula said. “I can truly understand why you would think that strange little guy had no idea what he was talking about.”
“He doesn’t.”
She leaned away from him. “But you just said—”
Joe loosened her arms from around him and shifted away from her so that he could look into her eyes. “You wondered why I’ve been so quiet today,” he began.
“Yes.”
“Well, I had a long visit with Lucas this morning.”
/> She looked puzzled. “And…?”
“And it turns out that Lucas is the brains behind the study.”
“Lucas? What do you mean?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Joe stood up and ran his hands through his hair. “Lucas is the brains. And he would have been Sophie’s savior, too. Just like he’s been Janine’s advocate against me, and against her parents. Against us blockheads. And my big contribution was to stand in Janine’s way and make her life miserable. You said it yourself. She got her support from Lucas. She got jack from me.” He groaned, pressing his hands to his temples. “I can’t believe all the things I’ve misinterpreted!”
“I’m lost,” Paula said. “What are you talking about?” She sat on the sofa, staring up at him, the expression on her face one of both confusion and worry.
He sat down next to her again. “You know that Lucas has renal failure,” he said.
“Yes, and I still think that’s a weird coincidence that he—”
“He’s not actually a gardener.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s a botany professor,” Joe said, “and I guess he played around with some herbs and came up with Herbalina, which he thought would help pediatric patients. He knew no one would pay attention to him if he wanted to head the research, so he found Schaefer to do it for him. Schaefer’s just a front.”
“But isn’t that a bizarre coincidence, that Lucas happened to take the Ayr Creek job, with Sophie living in the cottage there?”
“It was no coincidence,” Joe said. He drew in a long breath, then let everything Lucas had told him that morning spill out of him. He described the loss of Lucas’s own daughter, his discovery that he had a half brother named Joe, and his manipulation of every law in the books to get Sophie into the study. By the time he’d finished talking, Paula was crying.