Diane Chamberlain - The Courage Tree

“Right,” he said. He sat down and took a long drink from his water bottle.

“But you still can’t admit that it’s that herbal treatment that’s made the difference, can you?”

“Oh, I’m willing to concede that it might be,” he said. “But everyone says—everyone except the doctor in charge of the study—”

“Schaefer,” she said. “And I know what you’re going to say. That everyone else thinks her improvement is just a temporary effect of the herbs.”

He guessed he was beginning to sound like a broken record. “Right. So who would you believe?” he asked. “Sophie’s type of kidney disease has been around a long time, with bona fide researchers looking at it from every angle. Should I believe them, or some alternative doctor who appeared out of nowhere with his bag of weeds?”

“But she’s doing so much better,” Paula argued.

“I’ll admit that those IVs she gets have made her feel better. That doesn’t mean she is better.”

“Are you going over to Ayr Creek to see her tonight?”

“Uh-huh. Want to come?”

Paula nodded. “If that’s okay with you,” she said. “Unless you want to spend the time alone with her and Janine.”

He appreciated her consideration, but he also knew how much she cared about Sophie.

“No, I’d like you to—”

They both turned toward the small parking lot at the sound of a car door slamming shut. The tennis court was surrounded by trees, and Joe stood up to try to peer through the branches. A woman was running from the parking lot toward the tennis court.

He frowned. “That looks like Janine,” he said.

“Joe!” the woman shouted as she pulled open the chain-link door of the court, and he could see her clearly then—clearly enough to see the fear in her face.

He froze where he was standing. Sophie. Something was very wrong. Paula stood up next to him, clutching his arm as Janine ran toward them.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, finding his voice as he took a step toward her. “Is Sophie all right?”

Janine glanced at Paula, then back at Joe again. “She’s late returning from camp.” Janine was winded. “She’s riding with another girl and one of the leaders. I’ve been waiting at Meadowlark Gardens for her, but she hasn’t shown up yet.”

“What time was she supposed to get back?” he asked.

“Three.”

Joe looked at his watch. It was six-thirty. “She’s three and a half hours late?”

“Yes.”

“We need to call the police and—”

“They already know,” Janine said. Tendrils of her strawberry-blond hair were matted to her damp forehead. “They want everyone to come to Meadowlark Gardens to try to sort out what might have happened.”

“Damn it!” Joe punched the fence with the side of his fist, and he saw Janine flinch. “I knew she shouldn’t have gone on this trip!”

Paula rested her hand on his arm. “Not now, Joe,” she said softly. “We’ll follow you,” she said to Janine. “Where in the parking lot should we meet?”

“In the front, close to Beulah Road,” Janine said. She turned away from them and headed back to the gate at a run. “You’ll see the leader’s white van.”

Scooping their equipment into their arms, Joe and Paula ran down the court after her.

“Maybe she’ll have arrived by the time we get there,” Paula said as they got into Joe’s car. Paula was always like that—rational and optimistic. She’d been Joe’s co-worker at the accounting firm for the past four years. Co-worker and closest friend. Sometimes he didn’t know what he’d do without her to keep him sane. Right now, though, even Paula could not quiet his anger.

He pounded the steering wheel with both hands. “I should have taken Janine to court over this idiotic study,” he muttered. “I never should have allowed my daughter to be a guinea pig.”

“The study really doesn’t have anything to do with Sophie returning late from—”

“It has everything to do with it,” he snapped. “If she hadn’t been feeling better, she never would have gone.”

“That doesn’t make sense, Joey.” Paula’s voice was calm. “Don’t you think it’s even a little bit terrific that she’s feeling so much better?”

“The disease is still there, Paula,” he said. “It’s still raging. Still killing her.”

Those words shut her up as she fell silent next to him. This had been the major area of disagreement between them in recent weeks, and he knew she was tired of the argument.

Sophie’d had an entire cadre of nationally renowned physicians treating her over the last three years. When Janine had told him that she planned to enroll Sophie in the alternative medicine study, Joe had asked those doctors to dissuade her. One of them told Joe, far too bluntly, that Sophie was going to die, anyway, so it mattered little what sort of treatment she received now. The other doctors, however, spent hours talking with Janine, on the phone and in person, but she wouldn’t budge on her plan to subject Sophie to Schaefer’s snake oil.

Joe had even gone to see Schaefer himself, determined to try to understand exactly how he thought his Herbalina could help. Schaefer was a nerdy little man, unable to make eye contact, and seeing him had done nothing to ease Joe’s discomfort about the study. Even Schaefer’s voice was weak and hesitant. But he told Joe he was “almost certain” that he was onto something that would help children like Sophie. That was his reply to each one of Joe’s questions. Johnny One-note.

In early April, Sophie’s primary nephrologist contacted Janine to tell her about a new study at Johns Hopkins, one using a more conventional approach to treat Sophie’s illness. Joe had pleaded with Janine to allow Sophie that chance, but she seemed positively driven in this. She refused to let Sophie suffer any longer if she could find a way to give her some relief, she’d said, and she’d found support for her intentions from an unlikely source.

“It’s the gardener’s fault,” he muttered, as he turned the car onto Route 7.

“What?” Paula asked.

“The gardener at Ayr Creek. You know, Lucas Trowell. The guy Janine’s parents think is a pedophile?” He could picture the thin, bespectacled gardener pruning the azaleas or mulching the trees at Ayr Creek. The few times Joe had seen him there, Lucas had looked up from his task to stare at him. Not glance at him, but literally stare, as though Joe were a member of a species the gardener had never seen before. There was definitely something odd about that man.

“How on earth is this his fault?” Paula asked.

“He told her the study sounded like a great idea. He told Janine it made sense to him. He’s a gardener, for Pete’s sake. And probably certifiable, too. He lives in a damned tree house. I can’t believe she would listen to him instead of to Sophie’s doctors.”

He and Janine’s parents had joined forces to try to dissuade Janine from putting Sophie in the study, and again from sending her away this weekend, but they had failed on both counts. Janine seemed to be under the spell of a lunatic doctor and a persuasive gardener.

“I can relate to how Janine must feel, though,” Paula said, in her most careful, not-wanting-to-upset-him voice. “She’s concerned about quality of life for Sophie right now. The way I was about my mom before she died.”

“Well, I think she’s lost her mind.” He honked his horn at a driver who pulled in front of him, cutting him off from Janine. “She never had most of her mind to begin with.”

“Look, Joey.” Paula adjusted the chest strap of her seat belt so that she could turn to face him. “You’re angry and upset, and it makes sense that you’re trying to find someone to blame, but the truth is, if Sophie is late getting back from camp, it isn’t the fault of the study, or Schaefer, or the pedophile gardener, or Janine, or—”