Trespassing(108)

“You should have had more faith in him,” she says. “In the way he feels about you.”

“Shouldn’t you have had more faith in me?”

She looks down at the plate of food she’s barely touched. “I’m sorry about that, Veronica, but I was hysterical. Think of Bella. If anything happened to her, wouldn’t you be irrational, too?”

“Your son lied to me,” I remind her. “About everything. You knew what he did for Natasha and Gabrielle, and you chose to hide that from me. You knew your husband was putting him in a tough position—”

“I didn’t know the extent of that.”

“And you didn’t wait to hear my side. You thought I did something unthinkable to the man I loved. You were ready to send me to the gallows.”

“Veronica, I knew he was in over his head, but Micah said he was getting out. And then he was gone without you and his daughter.”

“So you assumed I’d killed him.”

“Maybe not killed him. But there was so much to consider, given what happened to the boys and Gabby.”

“Whom your husband ordered his henchmen to kill.”

“But at the time, I assumed the worst: that you’d found out about his deception, that you’d snapped.”

“Like my mother?”

She ignores that one. “Mick’s going away for a long time,” she says quietly.

As for the rest of it? The money Micah supposedly stole? It’s phantom money. Diamante kept no records of their illegal shipments. The only evidence of wrongdoing is in the suspiciously high amounts they paid their pilots for the transfer of goods, but it isn’t enough to build a case.

“Yes, I know.”

“You and Bella are the only family I’ve got . . . unless Micah comes back.”

I nod.

“Can we work through this?”

I truly don’t know. “It’s a lot to ask me to forget.” She turned her back on me when I had no one else.

“I think he’ll buy that place in Tuscany,” Shell says. “It was just darling.”

I stare at her. Does she realize she’s just admitted to being in contact with her son since he left? That she just admitted to knowing he was looking at houses overseas?

“I think he’ll come for you.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. I do.”

“Well, I won’t go with him if he does.”

Shell pinches the bridge of her nose. “He’s still your husband. He never meant for this to happen. He only wanted to take care of you and Bella, to provide for you. Why do you think he took that money to begin with?”

I don’t tell her, but I doubt he was thinking in my best interests. Considering Micah’s cell phone—the one he’d registered in my name—was found on the boat at Simonton Harbor, I have to believe he was comfortable allowing suspicion to fall on me.

Considering he was in my home and didn’t bother to shake me awake and take Bella and me with him, I’d guess he’s never coming back.

And he’s guilty of worse: although he must have known what had happened to Gabrielle when Mick’s thugs descended on Plum Lake, he still risked our lives to use us as a distraction for his own escape.

I wonder if he intended to take us with him but changed his mind because of Christian. I didn’t know I was being unfaithful to Micah, but he would have seen those kisses on the beach as unforgiveable. “He’s not coming back anyway.”

“He’ll come for you. For Bella. He’s your husband.”

“He may be my husband. But he’s not the man I married.”

That man is gone, stolen away by greed and untruths. When I met him, I felt as if he were the only man on the face of the earth that I could ever want. I’ve learned over the past month and a half just how untrue that is.

In the silence, Shell sips at her glass of wine. “I’d like to see my granddaughter.”

“You’ve got a plane to catch.”

“Please, Veronica.”

“I’ll think about it. I’ll let you know.”

I pay the tab and walk back through the streets of Old Town, Key West.

I saunter up Thomas to Southard, the sun on my shoulders and ocean breeze in my hair. By the time I pass Whitehead, I’ve already made up my mind: Shell knows more than she’s telling. She hasn’t earned the right to see my daughter. And I don’t trust that she won’t steal her away to wherever Micah is hiding.

Maybe we’re the only family Shell has, but she’s not the only family we have.

Natasha and Miriam are back in Chicago, mourning their losses, but we have plans to get the girls together here in March. We were friends before Micah tore us apart, and while we still have a long way to go, and many fences to mend, we’re willing to put in the time.

Claudette and the kids are coming next month for a long weekend.

And Emily and Andrea still have a good eight months before their gap year comes to a close, and they’ll be spending some of that time on this island . . . with their uncle, who happens to live on the quieter side of town, closer to the airport.

I stop at the corner of Southard and Bahama, just as I was instructed to do, and I pretend to check my phone.

Guidry is there on a bench, pretending to read a novel. Really, he’s been listening in on the conversation I shared with Shell at Blue Heaven. That’s right . . . I’m wearing a wire.