Trespassing(18)

“It isn’t this one picture, per se.” The detective shares a glance with his officer, then says to Elizabella, “Did you tell the officer this is where your daddy is?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Where is he?”

“He went to God Land.”

“When did he go to God Land?”

“When I was sleeping. He gave me a kiss bye-bye.”

“He stops in her room to kiss her before he goes out of town,” I explain. If I’d ever stopped crying, the tears are full force again now. I tighten my grip on Elizabella and allow my head to fall on her shoulder.

She gives my hand a pat.

“Elizabella, can you do me a favor?” Guidry asks. “Can you draw me a picture?”

“Yes.” Bella is swinging her legs playfully, but she doesn’t attempt to climb off my lap.

“Can you do it now? I’m not going to be here for very much longer, and I’d like to take it home with me tonight to show my kids.”

He’s a father. A tiny speck of heat warms my heart. He’s a father! He’ll understand how important it is for a man to come home to his family. He’ll help me. And while I can’t bear the thought of releasing my daughter, even to let her draw in a room forty feet away, I loosen my grip. “It’s okay, Bella. Go ahead.”

“Some concerns,” Guidry says when she’s on her way to her table. This time, his gaze settles directly on me. It’s an uncomfortable, thousand-mile deadpan that tells me he could win a staring contest with a corpse.

My heart tightens, and tears storm down my cheeks. I drop my head into my hands, if only to escape the intensity of the stare, which feels accusatory, demanding.

“Your daughter knows something, and she’s trying to communicate it. What I want to know is whether she learned the secret from you.”

I snap my gaze up to his. “Are you saying—”

“Has she ever been on vacation with you? Along the shore of Lake Michigan, perhaps? Ever been to the ocean?”

“She’s seen Lake Michigan—of course, she’s seen it—and Micah took her to his family’s cottage once.”

“You didn’t go.”

“No.” I don’t tell him it was because I’d checked myself into a recovery retreat after the miscarriage. I don’t tell him it was because I thought I was losing my grip on reality. “But it’s on a tiny lake in northern Wisconsin.”

“Any chance she means God’s country?” Guidry licks his lips and squints at me, as if he can bore into my brain with his eyes and learn the truth. “It’s a common euphemism for northern Wisconsin.”

“If he were in Wisconsin, he would’ve told me he was going to Wisconsin. And besides, this isn’t the best time of year to be heading up there.”

“Any chance he called and you missed the call?”

“We’ve been home all day, waiting for the phone to ring. I can’t imagine . . .” My head is spinning and pounding and aching, but I try to think. “We stopped at the park after school the day before yesterday. My friend Claudette and her kids were there . . .” I run through the past two days’ events, offering as much detail as possible, and even admitting that I let Bella sleep last night in the soft, velveteen dress she’d worn to school—that she’d been wearing it since the morning Micah left.

“So your daughter was out of your sight the day before yesterday while you were on the phone with the embryology lab at the park, again while you were napping, and once more yesterday, while you spoke with Diamond Corporation on your screened porch. No one else has seen her, to your knowledge. No one else who may be putting these thoughts and images into her head.”

I nod. The detective is a blurry mass through my tears. The tissues in my hands are drenched with snot, but I wipe them against my eyes anyway. “I’m sorry. It’s been a tough couple of days with Micah’s going MIA, the news from the lab . . .”

Guidry gives me a nearly imperceptible nod.

“Are you going to find my husband?”

He squints at me. “Yes.”

I let out a violent, relieving sob. “Thank you.”

“As long as you tell me everything I need to know.”

“Of course, I’ll—”

He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a small leather billfold, from which he extracts a crisp business card. “This number here”—he points to the one on the very bottom—“is my personal cell phone. You think of anything—anything at all—you call me.”

I sniffle and nod. “Bella told me . . . she has an active imagination, but she said something about there being a man in the kitchen. When she was little.”

“Not recently?”

“Well, she said it recently, but she said it happened when she was little.”

“She ever say anything about that before?”

“No.”

“You have reason to believe anyone could’ve been in your kitchen?”

I think of the rare nights after the miscarriage I’d popped a sleeping pill and could’ve slept through someone coming in. I consider telling him about the feeling I had earlier, a glimpse of a memory about it happening in Old Town, but I don’t want him to think I’m losing it. I shake my head. “No.”