Trespassing(63)

“I don’t know. You have to believe me. You have to trust me. You know I love your son. More than anything.”

“You know the last person I’m inclined to trust? The person who has to remind me to trust her.”

I pull the phone from my ear for a second. I can’t bear to listen anymore. When I bring the phone back to my ear, however, I hear the worst of it:

“You won’t be raising my son’s daughter. Not if I have anything to say about it.”

No, no, no, no, no. She wants to take Elizabella away from me.

“I love you,” I manage. “Someday, you’ll realize you’re wrong about me.”

I hang up.





Chapter 32

November 27

God, it’s warm. It’s probably not more than mid-eighties, but it’s an oppressive heat. There’s barely a breeze today, inland from the shore, and I’ve just spent an hour in my kitchen. My dress is sticking to my back, and my hair is out of control in this humidity, even when tied back.

With a chicken casserole balanced in my arms, my cell phone in its case dangling off my wrist like a party purse, I walk past the emptied in-ground pool in my backyard, toward the gate at the farthest corner of Goddess Island Gardens. Bella runs ahead of me, then doubles back and circles around me—she’s making me dizzy—and we pass through the gate.

I pause at the end of the path and scrutinize the houses, most of which seem to be a single story or a story and a half with dormers, their grounds abundant with foliage. Christian said he lived in the pink house.

Did he mean the peach house with the mint-green door? Or the white one with the pink trim? I look up and down the street. There’s a pinkish house down the road a piece, but didn’t he say right through the gate? So which is it? Peach? Or pink trim?

Bella tugs on my dress. “Mommy, let’s go.”

I opt for door number two. It has a charming covered front porch, with a dormer situated above it and shuttered windows. There’s a small tree, or maybe it’s a bush, rooted near the single step up to the porch, and its leaves bear etchings—autographs, sketches of shapes. It appears that where pen or pencil—or fingernail?—scrapes the thick, sturdy leaves, the chlorophyll dissipates, leaving a yellowish tan impression.

Interesting. I wonder if all visitors who have crossed this porch have left their marks here. I take a quick inventory of the names etched onto the leaves. No Natasha, as far as I can tell.

I knock on the door. Rock music—indie pop, or alternative, at least—sounds through the door.

“Go inside,” Bella says. “Hot out here.”

“We will if he answers.” I’m starting to think I chose the wrong house, but a millisecond before I turn around to make my escape, a girl, about eighteen, with silvery purple hair and pale-blue eyes, cracks open the door.

“Can I help you?”

“Ummm . . .”

She stares at me.

I stare back at her.

Elizabella grips my elbow.

“I think, actually, I have the wrong house. I’m sorry.” I’m just about to take a step off the porch, when she says, “You’re looking for my uncle Chris.”

“Christian Renwick?”

“Yeah. One second.” The girl with purple hair steps away.

A moment later, she appears again, this time as a blonde. I blink hard. Either the heat is getting to me, or I really am starting to lose my mind.

“Let me take that for you.” She holds open the door, and I unload the casserole into her awaiting arms. “Come in. Are you joining us for dinner?”

“Oh, I don’t think so. I just wanted to ask your uncle . . .” I take a step over the threshold onto brilliant white tile painted in a geometric pattern of blues and yellows. Bella hangs back. I step to the side. “Come on, Ellie-Belle.”

A voice from within the house: “Do you like blocks?”

I glance to see a clone of the girl holding my casserole dish—the one with the purple hair. I do a double take. One is to my right, blonde and smiling, and one is crouching at Elizabella’s level, tucking a purple tendril behind her ear, now asking if my daughter likes crayons.

“Oh, you’re twins.” I breathe a sigh of relief. I’m not losing my mind after all.

“Sorry about that,” the blonde says. “Andrea still likes to freak people out.”

“Well, you do look very much alike.”

“Thus, the hair. It’s exhausting correcting people all the time. I’m Emily.”

“Veronica Cavanaugh. I live . . .” Do I live there now? I clear my throat. “I’m staying in the house through the alley.”

Emily tosses her head toward the innards of the house, which is bright and airy. “C’mon in.”

Bella sticks by my side, but when Andrea pulls out a bin of crayons, she inches across the room and decides to trust the girl with the purple hair.

“It’s okay,” I tell her. “Go ahead.”

I follow Emily around a corner.

Christian is in the kitchen, feet propped up on a bright-blue table—it steals my breath for a second; Mama once painted our table that same blue—situated beneath a window, laptop open in front of him. He’s staring out the window, massaging his chin—cleanly shaven today—and appears to be deep in thought.