Trespassing(37)

I suppose time will tell. If this money was obtained illegally, they know where to find me.

I pull into the garage and close the door before we get out of the car, so as to avoid any glances from the neighbors, and once Elizabella is settled with some gummy bears, I start to look through the things I found in the safe-deposit box.

I don’t remember discussing the purchase of a house in Key West, but my signature is on the form that gives Micah power of attorney to conduct the transaction without my presence. According to the deed, I own it, free and clear. Just me. Not Micah. I purchased the house four and a half years ago. We’ve been paying property taxes twice a year ever since.

I would have been newly pregnant with Bella at the time and completely preoccupied. It’s possible, I suppose, that Micah slid the form in front of me and asked me to sign it at some point, but I’d think I’d remember buying a house. Especially when we apparently paid nearly $1.3 million—cash—for the place.

Cash!

Elizabella now colors at the table next to me, while I search online for a property deeded to me, on Elizabeth Lane, in Key West.

When the house in question pops up on my laptop screen, my heart nearly stops. I’ve never been to Key West. Elizabella has never been to Key West. But there it is, online—the house she’s been drawing since the last night she spent with her dad.

It’s pale yellow, with arched windows.

I leaf through my daughter’s drawings. Page after page. Yellow house with light-purple flowers in the window boxes.

Bella’s voice in my head. This is the water where the plane is, and over here is the big house.

I stop paging through the stack of drawings when I hit on the red, black, and yellow sketch that looks something like a lighthouse.

I open another window on my laptop screen and search for Key West lighthouse image. While a lighthouse pops up onto the screen, it doesn’t resemble Elizabella’s drawing. It’s pure white, for one thing.

I conduct another search: Key West lighthouse red black yellow.

Suggested websites pop up instantly. I click on one, which directs me to tourist sites in Key West. The first image to materialize is the southernmost point in the continental United States, marked with an oversize, concrete buoy, cemented at the corner of South and Whitehead Streets. The page claims this is one of the most photographed sites on the island.

Its horizontal stripes are red, black, and yellow.

I compare it to the crayon rendition.

Her rudimentary shapes, among what appears to be a rocky shore and waves behind it, led me to believe Bella had drawn a lighthouse, but in fact, it’s this concrete buoy, a Key West landmark.

“Bella, have you ever seen this? In person?”

“We’re coloring.”

“Bella.” I pull her onto my lap.

A splat of pink, sugary gummy bear drool lands on my sleeve.

“Mommy!”

“Behave,” I tell her. “Look.” I point to the screen. “Have you ever been there?”

“No.” Chomp, chomp, chomp on her gummy bear. She wiggles to climb off my lap.

I tighten my grip. “Ellie-Belle, this is important. Why did you draw this?”

“I didn’t.”

Deep breath. “Was it Nini’s drawing?”

“Yes.”

“Has Nini been here?” I again point to the buoy on the screen.

“Nini goed there once.”

I glance at my shoulder bag, sitting atop the island and stuffed with insurance policies and five bundles of large bills.

My gaze travels to the suitcase I brought up from the basement storage room. I was going to pack for Plum Lake tomorrow morning. But perhaps we should go sooner. Plans are changing quickly these days.

One minute, I’m shooting up progesterone, rooting down in this house, ready to live here until babies number two and three and maybe four graduate from college.

Now I’m shoving things into suitcases, as if I’m not sure I’ll be returning.

And maybe I won’t have to. We paid too much for this house, and I don’t like living at the Shadowlands, anyway, and Micah’s driven us up to our elbows in debt.

But I have fifty grand and a house in Key West. No family beyond Bella and the demonic Nini. I have no friends here, save the lone, slightly overbearing but good-hearted acquaintance across the street, and there’s a detective who was half a comment away from accusing me of offing my husband before the feds declared him dead. I ought to walk away. Be rid of this place forever.

But this bed beneath my suitcase . . . it’s our first. Our queen-size mattress, which barely fit in the bedroom at our college apartment and damn near reached wall-to-wall at our condo in Old Town. It’s where Micah made love to me both the first time and the last. It’s where we began and ended.

Maybe I can’t leave for good, but I can stay up at the lake for a while, either in a hotel or with my in-laws. And after I’ve had time to think, I’ll decide what to do with the mini-mansion on the island. I’ll decide what to do with this place . . . and the fifty grand. I wonder if I’ll even have to make a decision or if the police will swoop in and take everything I have.

“Shell, it’s me again.” I lose my composure every time I leave her a message. “Please call as soon as you can. Bella and I”—I swallow over a lump in my throat—“we’re heading up north, to Plum Lake, early. I hope that’s okay. So if you don’t get me on my cell, please just . . . we’ll meet you at the lake house when you get there.”