Trespassing(23)

Wake up, little Veri.

I’ve been awake for hours, despite the fact that it’s barely four in the morning, but I pretend to be asleep when she’s like this.

I lay as still as possible, even when she sticks the sharp end of the brooch through my nightshirt and drags the straight pin—an accident? Or done purposefully?—over the skin near my clavicle.

She’s humming some strange melody, something I’ve never heard before, and she’s rocking back and forth.

The humming crescendos, and my head starts to ache.

While my little one sleeps, she says.

I feel the pillow come down over my face.

The pressure I feel in my ears, in my chest, when I can’t breathe.

The panic.

I try to relax, try to conjure the sounds of my music box, but I can’t hear anything beyond my own heartbeat.

The blurry line between life and death seems to constrict around my windpipe.

It feels as if my eyes might burst from my head, and the ache is unbearable.

Worse than usual.

In the distance, I hear the pealing of a ringtone.

It jars me from deep sleep. I gasp and struggle to catch my breath.

Back to the here and now.

Ring, ring.

But this ringtone isn’t the one I preset for Micah’s cell, so I don’t make a move right away to answer it. I’m too tired. Too comfortable, despite the fact that I’m sleeping on the sofa in the great room. But it might be news about my husband. I should get it.

I sit up and press a few fingers to my right temple. It’s a wine headache. I had only a glass and a half last night—Claudette drained the rest of the bottle—but through the trials and tribulations of IVF treatment, I guess I’ve forgotten how to imbibe.

“Hello?” Elizabella’s voice echoes in the dim house.

I spin my head toward the kitchen, where Bella has my phone pressed to her ear.

“Ellie-Belle, bring Mommy the phone.”

“Hiiiii,” Bella says into the phone. Gradually, she’s moving toward me. “Nini says Mommy’s sick. Mmm-hmm. She throwed up last night.”

I did. Not because of the wine, but rather because it’s impossible to eat while sobbing hysterically, and between the situation with Micah and the hormones, it’s hard to breathe without hiccupping over tears.

I’m on my feet now, padding over the cold floor to where Elizabella is dawdling in the kitchen.

“Nini,” she says. “The little girl who lives in my hair.”

I take the phone and scoop her up and head back to the sofa. “Hello?”

“Veronica, is everything all right?” It’s my mother-in-law.

“Shell!” My voice breaks a little. Finally, someone who will believe me, someone who loves Micah just as much as I do, someone who will help!

“Are you okay?”

“No. No, I’m not. Micah.” I swallow tears and will myself to keep it together. But I can’t. Fresh tears come faster than I attempt to stop them.

I press a kiss to the top of my daughter’s head—her hair is a mess of tangles, and we both need a bath—and try to compose myself. “Micah.”

“What about Micah?”

“He went to God Land,” Bella chimes.

“Veronica?”

“I’m here. Just . . .” It takes a few long seconds for me to find constitution enough to say what I need to say. “He left for work Tuesday, and I haven’t heard from him since. He was supposed to be back on the thirteenth.”

“That isn’t like him,” Shell agrees. But she isn’t panicking. “Are you sure you had the timeline right? You know, sometimes, when Mick was traveling, he’d run into some flyspeck town, and he’d be hard-pressed to find a pay phone—back when people expected to see pay phones—let alone a cell tower. Maybe it’s just that he’s in an area—”

“He said he was going to New York City.”

“Oh.”

“And he never stays through the weekend. Never.” A few beats of silence follow, while we both let it sink in: if he really is where he says he is, there’s no way he wouldn’t have called.

“The police don’t believe me. They say give him time, that he must have needed a break—from me, from our life—but I know him, Shell. I know he wouldn’t forget to call, and if his cell phone is on the fritz, he’d call from a phone at the hotel—I know he would, and—”

“He went to God Land,” my daughter says again.

“What’s Bella saying?”

“She seems to think he . . .” A violent sob escapes me, despite my attempt to hold it back with a hand over my mouth. “Elizabella seems to think he isn’t coming home. She keeps saying he went to God Land.”

“God’s land?” A wave of static on the line nearly deafens me for a moment. “The north woods of Wisconsin.”

“What?”

“The north woods of Wisconsin. God’s country. His cell phone doesn’t work up at the lake. No one’s cell phone works up at the—”

“That’s what the detective said.” My heart pounds in my ears, a contrast to my mother-in-law’s calm demeanor. “But why? Why would he go there and lie about it?”