The Courage Tree Read online

  The Courage Tree

  Also by Diane Chamberlain

  BEFORE THE STORM

  THE SECRET LIFE OF CEECEE WILKES

  THE BAY AT MIDNIGHT

  HER MOTHER’S SHADOW

  KISS RIVER

  KEEPER OF THE LIGHT

  CYPRESS POINT

  THE COURAGE TREE

  SUMMER’S CHILD

  BREAKING THE SILENCE

  Watch for Diane Chamberlain’s

  SECRETS SHE LEFT BEHIND

  June 2009

  DIANE CHAMBERLAIN

  The Courage Tree

  You cannot be a hero without being a coward.

  —George Bernard Shaw

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

  PROLOGUE

  She would have no music where she was going.

  Zoe stood in the center of her living room, with its vaulted ceilings, white carpeting and glassed-wall view of the Pacific Ocean, and stared, transfixed by the huge speaker in the corner of the room. She’d come to terms with the fact that she would lose the beach and the smell of the sea. She knew she could live without television—gladly without television and its bevy of new, young talent—and she could live without newspapers and magazines. But no music? It suddenly seemed like a deal breaker. But then her eyes drifted to the picture of Marti, where it rested on the top of the baby grand piano. Marti had been twenty in that picture, standing next to Max on the beach. She was near Max, but not touching him, and there was no sense of connection between father and daughter, as though each of their pictures had been taken separately and then spliced together. It disturbed Zoe to see that distance between them. If the picture had been of herself and Marti, would they look equally as detached from one another? she wondered. She feared that they would. It was time to change that.

  In her boyish way, Marti looked beautiful in the picture. Zoe studied the short cap of blond hair, the compact, small-breasted body, huge blue eyes and long dark lashes that gave away Marti’s identity as a female, and Zoe knew she was making the right decision. In a choice between music and Marti, there was no contest. Everything else in the universe paled in comparison to Zoe’s need to save her daughter.

  She turned away from the wall of stereo equipment and began climbing the broad spiral staircase to the second story, her resolve once again intact. It was quite simple, really, leaving forever. She had planned well ahead and now had no need even to pack a suitcase. What could she possibly put in a suitcase that would last her the rest of her life? Besides, someone might realize a suitcase was missing. Unlikely, since she had an entire room on the third story filled with luggage; but still, it was possible, and she couldn’t take that chance.

  She walked into Max’s bedroom. She and Max had slept together for the forty years of their marriage, but they’d each had their own bedroom in addition to the master suite they’d shared. Their separate rooms had been for times alone, times of renewal and refreshment, for reading without disturbing one another, for making phone calls late into the night when one of them was working on a project. It was in Max’s room where she knew she would find exactly what she needed.

  Opening the door to Max’s walk-in closet, she was startled by the spicy aroma that enveloped her. Max’s aftershave still filled this room, four full months after his death. She had not touched the clothes that hung in neat rows along the walls of the closet since that miserable day in November, and they slowly took on a blurred, surrealistic shape before her eyes. How was it that scent could instantly evoke so much pain? So many memories? But no time for them now. She brushed her hand across her eyes as she pulled the step stool from the corner of the closet toward the shelves in the rear. Climbing onto the stool, she reached toward the back of the top shelf.

  Her hand felt the soft-sided rifle case, and she wrapped her fingers around it and drew it down from the shelf. Climbing off the stool, she rested the green case containing Max’s rifle carefully, gingerly, on the carpeted floor of the closet, then returned to her perch on the stool. Reaching onto the shelf once again, she found the box of bullets, then the Beretta pistol and a few loose clips. Never before had she touched these guns, and she hadn’t approved of Max having them. Probably the only thing they’d ever disagreed about.

  “Max Garson’s death marks the end of one of the longest running and, by all accounts, most harmonious marriages in Hollywood,” People magazine had written.

  For the most part, that had been a highly accurate assessment. And right now, Zoe was glad Max had defied her when it came to the guns. She was doubly glad she had told her friends about the rifle and the pistol and where they were hidden. They would tell the police, and the police would discover the guns were missing. Perfect.

  The police would no doubt talk to Bonita, the therapist Zoe had seen for “grief counseling,” as well. Zoe had not needed to employ her acting skills to fake her symptoms of depression.

  “Do you think about suicide?” Bonita had asked her on one recent visit, when Zoe had been particularly tearful.

  “Yes,” she had nodded truthfully.

  “Do you have a plan?” Bonita asked.

  The question had shaken Zoe for an instant. How could Bonita possibly know? But then she realized Bonita was asking her if she had considered how she would end her life. Nothing more than that.

  “No,” she had answered, knowing full well that if she said she had a plan, Bonita would arrange to have her locked up someplace, and wouldn’t the tabloids have a field day with that. Zoe most certainly did have a plan. Just not the sort of plan to which Bonita was alluding.

  She carried the guns into the bedroom and caught sight of herself in the mirror above the dresser. The image horrified her. She looked completely ridiculous. Her long blond hair fell across the rifle case, her deep bangs hung all the way to her eyelashes, and there was something about the lighting in the room that made her skin look sallow, her eyes sunken. She was a large woman. She’d always been tall and full-figured, and back in her James Bond days, she’d been considered voluptuous, but now she was simply big. Amazonian. An aging sex goddess. She had bristled when
she’d read those words about herself somewhere, but suddenly, she understood them to be the truth. Who had she been trying to kid, still wearing her hair the way she had when she was twenty-five, coloring the heck out of it to mask the gray? She looked away from the mirror and headed for the stairs. There would be no more two-hundred-dollar trips to the beauty salon in her future, and the thought was rather liberating.

  Downstairs, she walked through the kitchen and out into the garage, where she rested the guns on the back seat of her silver Mercedes. Returning to the house, she sat down at the dining room table and gave her attention to what would be her final—and most difficult—task in this home she had cherished for so many years.

  Staring down at the sheet of cream-colored parchment on the table in front of her, she picked up the Pelikan fountain pen Marti had given her several Christmases ago, on a day when the world had still seemed benevolent and the future still held promise. She rested the nib of the pen on the paper.

  I see no choice but to end my life, on this, the eve of my sixtieth birthday, she wrote. Leaning away from the paper, cocking her head to the side, she noted that her penmanship looked like that of an old woman. Her hand quivered above the page.

  “Pathetic old cow,” she muttered to herself, then continued writing.

  My life is not worth much anymore. My beloved husband is dead; my daughter has been wrongly, cruelly imprisoned for the murder of Tara Ashton; the tabloids persist in noting each new wrinkle on my face, and I’m losing my singing voice. Although my acting skills are at their peak, they go unrecognized these days. Parts that once would have come to me are now given to actresses much younger than myself.

  Zoe stopped writing for a moment and looked out the window toward the ocean. That last sentence made her sound small and bitter. She could leave it out, but then she would have to start the letter all over again. And what did she care what anyone thought of her at this point? She laughed at the bruised ego, the irritating narcissism that had dogged her these past few years and that seemed intent on following her to her counterfeit grave.

  What do I have left to live for? she began writing again. I hope to take my life somewhere where I won’t be found. I don’t want to be seen in that condition. Marti, I’m sorry, darling. I’m so sorry I failed you. I tried every possible avenue I could to help you prove your innocence, but the system has failed both of us. The tears were quick to come this time. One fell on the paper, and she blotted it from the word innocence with the side of her hand.

  She had failed Marti—in far too many ways—choosing the demands of her career over the needs of her daughter at every turn, placing Marti’s day-to-day care in the hands of nannies, sending her off to boarding school to let someone else deal with her moods and her mischief.

  Suspicion would never have fallen on you had you not been my daughter, she wrote. Zoe’s daughter. I love you, dearest. Zoe’s breath caught in her throat, and she stared out the window at the sea for a long moment before continuing. Be strong, she wrote. All my love, Mother.

  Moving the sheet of paper to the center of the table, she stood up, blotting her damp palms on her khaki-covered thighs. Her knees barely held her upright as she walked toward the garage, and her entire body trembled now, from the gravity of the lies she had just committed to writing, and from the fear of the journey she was about to make.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The guest cottage seemed stuffy, its four small rooms over-flowing with sunlight. At two-thirty, Janine turned off the air-conditioning and opened all the windows, starting in her bedroom and Sophie’s room, then the kitchen and finally the living room. Although it became instantly warmer in the cottage, the air was arid, a remarkable phenomenon for June in northern Virginia, and the faint breeze carried the scent of magnolia and lavender into the rooms.

  Janine sat sideways on the sofa in the living room, her back against the overstuffed arm, bare feet up on the cushions, gazing out the window at Ayr Creek’s gardens. In fifteen minutes she could leave, she told herself. That would make her early, but there was no way she could wait here any longer.

  The view of the gardens was spectacular from this window. Bands of red and violet, yellow and pink dipped and swirled over more than two acres of rolling landscape before losing themselves in the deep woods between the cottage and the mansion. The nineteenth century, yellow frame, black-shuttered mansion could barely be seen at this time of year due to the lush growth on the trees, allowing Janine to imagine that she was master of her own life and not living on her parents’ property. Not that Ayr Creek truly belonged to her parents, who were little more than caretakers. The house was owned by the Ayr Creek Foundation, which was operated by the descendants of the estate’s original owner, Angus Campbell. The Foundation had deeded enough money to the county to keep the garden and a few of the mansion’s rooms open to the public on weekends. And through some quiet arrangement, Janine’s mother, Donna Campbell Snyder, had been given the right to live in the mansion until her death, although she did not otherwise have a cent of her family’s fortune. This, Janine had always thought, was the source of her mother’s bitterness.

  Nevertheless, Donna and Frank Snyder adored the Ayr Creek estate. Retired history teachers, they relished the task of over-seeing the upkeep of the house and gardens. And they willingly allowed Janine and her daughter, Sophie, to live rent-free in the “guest cottage,” a euphemism designed to masquerade the true history of the diminutive structure: it had once been home to Ayr Creek’s slaves.

  There was a tear in the window screen. Just a small one, and if Janine closed one eye and leaned nearer to the screen, she could see one perfect, blue-blossomed hydrangea captured in the opening. If she leaned a little farther to the left, she could see the roses Lucas had planted near the wishing well. She should get up and repair the hole instead of playing games with it, she thought briefly, but shifted positions on the sofa and returned her attention to the gardens instead.

  This restlessness, this stuffy, claustrophobic feeling, had been with her all weekend and she knew it was of her own creation. She had not drawn a full breath of air since Friday evening, when she’d watched her daughter ride away in the van with the rest of her Brownie troop. Sophie had grinned and giggled with her friends, looking for all the world like a perfectly healthy eight-year-old girl—except, perhaps, for the pallor and the delicate, willowy, white arms and legs. Janine had waved after the van until she could no longer make out Sophie’s red hair against the tinted window. Then she offered a quick smile to the two other mothers in the parking lot of Meadowlark Gardens and got into her car quickly, hoping that the worry hadn’t shown in her face. There hadn’t been a day in the last five years that she had not worried.

  She’d planned to use this weekend alone to clean the cottage from top to bottom, but she’d gotten little done. She’d spent time on Saturday with her mother in the mansion, helping her research historically accurate wallpaper patterns on the Internet for one of the mansion’s bedrooms, and listening to her complain yet again about Lucas, the horticulturist in charge of the gardens. Janine knew, though, that she and her mother were both preoccupied with thoughts of Sophie. Was she all right? Eight years old seemed far too young to be spending the weekend at a Girl Scout camp nearly two hours away, even to Janine, and she knew her mother was furious with her for allowing Sophie to go. Sitting in the office, which was part of the mansion’s twentieth-century addition, Janine had tried to concentrate on the computer monitor while her mother leaned over her shoulder.

  “It’s hot out and she’ll drink too much water,” her mother said. “She’ll forget to take her pills. She’ll eat the wrong things. You know how kids are.”

  “She’ll be fine, Mom,” Janine had said through gritted teeth, although she couldn’t help but share her mother’s concerns. If Sophie came back from this trip sicker than when she went, the criticism from her parents would never end. Joe would be furious, as well. He had called last night, wanting to know if he could come over to
see Sophie after she got home tonight, and Janine knew he was feeling what she did: the deep love and concern for the child they both treasured. Like Janine’s mother, Joe had expressed strong disapproval over Sophie’s going on this trip. One of many things Joe was angry with her about. Joe’s anger was hard for Janine to ignore, because she knew it came from a place of caring, not only about Sophie, but about herself, as well. Even in the ugliest moments of their separation and divorce, she’d been aware that Joe still loved her.

  At two-forty-five, Janine left the cottage and got into her car. She drove down the long gravel driveway, banked on both sides by boxwood as old as the estate itself, and looked toward the mansion as she passed it. Her parents would be inside, waiting anxiously for her to bring their granddaughter home. She hoped she’d have some time alone with Sophie before she had to share her with them and Joe.

  Meadowlark Gardens was less than half a mile from the Ayr Creek estate, and the parking lot of the public gardens was as full as she’d ever seen it. As Janine turned into the lot from Beulah Road, people dressed in wedding regalia spilled out of one of the brick buildings, probably getting ready to pose for pictures. In the distance, Janine could see another wedding taking place in the gazebo by the pond. A beautiful day for a wedding, she thought, as she drove toward the southeastern corner of the lot, where she was to meet the returning Brownie troop, but her mind quickly slipped back to her daughter. Suddenly, all she could think about was scooping Sophie into her arms. She pressed her foot harder on the gas pedal, cruising far too fast through the lot, and parked her car near the corner.

  Although Janine was early, one other mother was already there, leaning against a station wagon, reading a paperback. Janine knew the woman, whose name was Suzanne, vaguely. She was pretty, a bit older than most mothers of children Sophie’s age, and it was hard to tell if her chin-length hair was a pale blond or actually gray. Janine smiled as she walked toward her.