Trespassing(64)

“Hi, Uncle Chris.”

“Hey, there.” His feet come down from the table, and he makes a move to stand up when he sees me.

“Sorry to drop in like this,” I say.

“You met my nieces.” He nods at Emily as she puts my casserole on the counter and leaves to join her sister and Elizabella.

“Yeah. They gave my head a little bit of a whirl. Thought I was seeing things for a minute there. With the hair . . .”

“They’ve been pulling that prank since they were in kindergarten. They’re good girls, though. They’re taking a gap year. You ever hear of such a thing?”

I start to nod. Lots of kids do it now.

“They take a year off, spend some time living in different places. So I thought . . . why not fly them in for the winter? Let them enjoy the weather.”

“Nice.”

“And with the holiday . . .”

I feel a frown coming on. Holiday? “Oh, that’s right. Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving.”

“Thanksgiving”—he chuckles a little—“is today.”

“Today?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

God, I’ve lost track of the days since we’ve been here. “Wow, and here I am dropping in on you on Thanksgiving. I’m sorry I—”

“This island has that effect on people.” His smile brightens his eyes. “Don’t worry about it.”

We’ve been here a week now. If I hadn’t caught sight of that brown sedan in my rearview mirror, I wonder if we would’ve made it to Plum Lake. How different our lives might have been, if we hadn’t found sanctuary here. Would we be sharing turkey with Shell and the father-in-law I’ve never met? Would she have allowed me to explain my side of the story, had we been standing face-to-face? Or would she have turned us away, considering she assumes I’m hiding something? Or worse, that I’m responsible for her son’s disappearance.

“Hey, you’re welcome to join us, if you don’t have plans,” Christian says. “Just me and my nieces.”

“I couldn’t impose.”

“What’s to impose? We’re just having squash—can you imagine requesting squash for Thanksgiving? But that’s my Emily—and whatever bakes for thirty minutes at three fifty.”

I feel a blush creeping over my cheeks. I didn’t make the casserole to finagle an invitation to dinner. Surely, he doesn’t think so, given I didn’t even know what day it was until he told me. “I . . . in return for dinner at Fogarty’s, I thought I’d . . . it’s just a simple casserole.”

He nods. “Thank you.”

“Well, you didn’t have to pay our tab.”

“Just seemed like you’d had a rough few days. Someone did that for me once, when I’d had a rough go, so I thought I’d pay it forward.”

“Speaking of rough days . . .”

Bella’s giggle silences me, as it reverberates throughout the house. I find myself smiling. Only a child can find happiness in the midst of this muddy river we’re trudging through.

“You want to take a walk?” he asks. “They’re good with kids, have younger sisters, a lot of experience babysitting.”

“I don’t know if she’ll allow it, but . . .” I take another peek into the adjacent room, where Bella is playing well with my neighbor’s nieces. And truthfully, I don’t want to leave her.

My conversation with Shell yesterday still has me feeling raw and vulnerable. And Guidry really shook me up with all his talk about overdosing and drowning.

And then Bella’s odd commentary, the things she knows . . . the man with the cigarette.

The thought of letting her out of my sight long enough for someone to swoop in and steal her away from me . . .

“Or we could talk here,” Christian suggests.

“I was just wondering . . . the cat.”

“Hmm.”

“You called him Papa Hemingway, but his tag says . . .” Now that I’m in the thick of this inquiry, I feel a little foolish, accusing my neighbor—a man who selflessly purchased my dinner our first night in town and flew his twin nieces out to the island during their gap year—of lying. Would a man so generous be snooping around my house and inventing reasons to be there? I’d guess not, but I’ve been wrong and fooled before.

“His name is James Brolin,” I say.

“You notice he has six toes on his left front paw?”

“I have, but . . .” I don’t see what that has to do with anything.

“He’s a Hemingway cat. Cats at the Hemingway estate sometimes have six toes.”

“Okay.”

“Hemingway named his cats after famous people, so six-toed cats on this island . . . people honor the tradition.”

“Oh.”

“But I think if you’re going to name a cat after a famous person, why not name the cat after the man who started the tradition? I call all six-toed cats Hemingway.”

I suppose it makes sense. But something is still off.

I think of the automatic feeder in the laundry room.

The few days’ worth of soiled cat litter in the art studio.

The matted fur on the cat’s back.

Either Christian is the worst cat sitter of the century, or he never had reason to be in the house.