Trespassing(50)

“Oh.”

“I didn’t see the ring back at the house. I wasn’t looking for it or anything, but—”

“No.”

He shuts up.

“My husband is . . .” Dead. I can’t say the word aloud, despite its replaying in my mind. He’s dead. He’s dead. He’s dead. “He won’t be joining us. He’s . . .” I can’t say it! “We’re not together anymore.”

“My wife—ex-wife, that is—was . . . well, let’s just say I respect the institution of marriage. She didn’t.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So if I’d noticed the ring, I probably wouldn’t have taken it upon myself—”

“He’s dead.” I hiccup over the wave of grief that hits me full force, like the water beating against the red, yellow, and black buoy not far from here. “He was a pilot, and there was an accident—”

“God, I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry.” I dab my napkin at my eyes. “So I don’t know how long we’ll be here, and I don’t know what I’m going to do with the house, and I don’t know how I’m going to exist without him, and—”

The waitress appears with drinks, prompting another uncomfortable silence.

I glance at Bella’s drawing. A sea creature, judging by the waves of blue crayon. Lots of red squiggles around a circular object. A mermaid maybe. Could be an octopus.

Once the server retreats, Christian raises his glass a few inches off the table. “I know something about how that feels.” He clinks the bottom of his glass to mine, which I have yet to touch. “For different reasons, of course. But no matter how it happens, it isn’t easy.” He takes a sip.

“No, I guess it isn’t.” I raise my glass to his and offer a clink in return.

“You know what worked for me? After throwing things and breaking things—”

I stiffen and feel the flush of embarrassment crawling up my neck to my cheeks. I wonder if he heard my destructive tantrum through the vines in the backyard.

“And after a night in the clink?”

“In . . . in jail?”

“One of the things I broke”—he smiles a little—“the guy’s nose.”

I feel more than hear my own laugh, brief as it may be. It isn’t funny. But it is.

“He came at me first, I swear.” His hands rise in an I surrender pose. “The judge saw it the same way. But anyway, the point is . . . it’s hard to be angry forever in a place like this. I mean, look around you. Nothing’s fair in this world, but this place, this island, is a pretty decent consolation prize. You might want to stay.”

Echoing in the caverns of my mind is Micah’s song, the offbeat cha-cha: Stay with me. Stay some more.

“Sway,” I whisper to the memory. Tears bead up in my eyes.

“Excuse me?”

I shake off the memory of my last dance with Micah, shake off the fact that it’ll never feel warm and fuzzy again, and ward off the tears. “So. Tasha.”

My neighbor raises a brow.

“Is she . . .”

This is crazy.

Micah wouldn’t have . . . he loved me, loved our daughter, wanted more children.

But I’ve seen the proof in the pictures I smashed.

I clear my throat. “Is she married? I never met a husband.” It isn’t a lie. If Tasha is Natasha Markham, I never met her husband.

My phone chimes with a voice mail alert. Claudette left a message.

“I . . .” He bites his lower lip and sort of squints at me for a split second. “I don’t know if they were married, but . . .” Again with the squint. “She wasn’t always alone.”

“Alone,” I repeat. I’m alone now.

“I’m sorry for your loss.” There’s something in the way he’s looking at me. Something that tells me I’m a pathetic shadow of what I used to be . . . and lately, I haven’t been much of anything beyond a pincushion for IVF needles. “It’s recent, huh?”

“Yes.”

The warm sensation in my cheeks intensifies, like mercury about to burst a thermometer. I meet the challenge of his stare.

He takes a long draw on his mojito.

His straw becomes a stir-stick, chasing mint leaves around his glass. “I wore my ring for about a year after it was over. Just couldn’t bring myself to take it off. It had been part of me for so long that I just . . . I couldn’t part with it for a while. Couldn’t bear the thought of being with other women, either, but—”

“I heard wearing a ring doesn’t quite deter women.”

“It wards off the ones who are serious about relationships.”

“Oh.” I don’t know if I actually say the word or if my lips just form it. But either way, his message comes in loud and clear: it wasn’t necessarily the company of other women he thwarted, so much as a relationship.

Could I do something like that? Fill the void Micah left with a casual fling? I take a healthy sip of my drink. Sweet rum mixed with a bitter—yet refreshing—elixir of mint leaves. It burns all the way down, but it chases away the thoughts rushing through my head. Of course I couldn’t fill the vacancy with something impermanent, something cheap. I wouldn’t know how.