Trespassing(38)

I toss my phone to the mattress and resume packing. I usually keep a small photo album containing pictures of our wedding in the drawer in the bedside table. But since Micah went missing, I’ve kept it on my pillow. I open it now, if only for a glimpse of the happiness we used to share, if only for proof that I didn’t imagine it all, despite the secrets he was keeping from me.

Our wedding was an intimate affair. Micah and me traversing the sand on a Lake Michigan beach with a few guests: Shell, of course, and some friends we’d met at UIC, with whom we quickly lost touch once we graduated. Natasha and I were long estranged. Mick hadn’t come; Micah hadn’t forgiven him for the midlife crisis, during which he’d briefly left Shell.

And now, Micah will never have the chance to mend his relationship with his father. I’d always wanted that for him.

I press the photo book into my suitcase and give it a pat, which seems rather melodramatic. But I want him with me.

I feel him leading me across the kitchen floor in time with his unique cha-cha beat. I want to grasp the memory of those last moments, fold it into a tight square like the notes I used to pass in middle school, and keep it safe and private in my pocket. A piece of us that no one can disturb. Our last dance.

“Mommy?” Bella’s lying at the foot of the bed, freshly bathed and in pajamas, and already fed. It’s only a few minutes past sundown, but I’m planning to put her in the car in an hour or so and make the drive up north just as she’s about to get sleepy. She’ll sleep during the drive, and the trip will be easier. “Nini’s coming, too?”

“Why wouldn’t she?”

“’Cause you don’t like Nini.”

“I like her just fine, baby.”

A big, sweet yawn escapes her. “Me too.”

Plum Lake is about seven hours away. I’ll be practically brain-dead by the time we arrive, but I’ll check into a hotel in Minocqua, try to sleep, and meet Micah’s parents at the lake late Saturday. Just the thought of setting foot in the cottage where Micah spent many a childhood summer warms me, as if he’s sidling up against me, close to me, breathing with me. Or maybe I want to go to see for myself that he isn’t there. That he isn’t anywhere anymore.

I cover a sob—the grief comes in waves, it seems—and sink into the memory of his holding me. It’s the closest I’ve come to feeling him—his presence, his essence—since he walked out the door nine and a half days ago.

“I sleep with you, Mommy, okay?”

I wipe away tears, then press a kiss to the crown of her beautiful head. “You’ll sleep in the car tonight,” I tell her.

Another yawn. “Okay.”

Leaving feels urgent now that I know Micah’s not coming back. I felt this way after my mother died, too—the need to keep moving, to escape, to never sit still. I’d used her meek life insurance to put myself through college at warp speed. Then, before I knew it, Micah and I were getting married, then trying month after month after month for a baby. Then after medication after medication, Elizabella came, then more trying, more medication, then the twins . . .

Within minutes, Bella is asleep, winding a coil of hair around her finger, rubbing the hair with her thumb. I drape her favorite blanket over her tiny body and hope she stays asleep through the transfer down the stairs and to the car.

I carry suitcases down the stairs one at a time and stow them in the SUV. My body is recovering from the IVF retrieval. I’m not nearly as sore; I’m stronger, physically speaking, than I was a week ago. But emotionally? Mentally? I wonder if I’ll ever feel whole again.

The house feels empty now, with three suitcases and a laundry basket full of Bella’s toys and art supplies in the car. With my child asleep upstairs, everything is quiet and still. Funeral-like.

I have a long night ahead of me. I sit for a moment at the breakfast table and stare out at the dusky sky, a private mourning session between me and the great beyond, the sky that stole my forever when it swallowed up my husband.

I crack open a window. Take it all in.

A faint hint of smoke drifts in on a chilly breeze.

I stiffen and glance across the eleventh fairway. Where is the smoke coming from? It’s distinctly cigarette smoke. Not from a grill or a bonfire.

But I don’t see anyone on the course.

I crank the window closed and lower the blinds.

It’s time to leave.

I throw my arms into my parka—it’ll be cold up north—and bundle Elizabella in more blankets before carrying her down the stairs. She’s getting too big to be carried like this. Too heavy.

Once she’s strapped into her car seat, I again check my shoulder bag to ensure the stacks of $100 bills remain hidden at the bottom of it. I don’t know where I assume they’d go, but I feel better once I count five bundles. I catch sight, also, of the ring box and paperwork I found in the deposit box. I wonder what else Micah was hiding from me.

And soon, we’re whisking out of the Shadowlands.

The road stretches before me, still muddled with the last remnants of rush-hour traffic, which spans from three in the afternoon to seven at night, even on the outskirts of Chicago. I’m neck and neck with many of the same motorists, as if we’re fish in a school, all narrowing toward the same current—in this case, the Tri-State Tollway—to carry us to faster passage. Black crossover to my left. Blue two-door to my right. Brown sedan behind me. Inch. Inch. Inch. Stoplight after stoplight.