Trespassing(72)

“Nini says you can’t help it. People are just mean sometimes.”

“Nini is very smart.”

The “Rock-a-bye Baby” ringtone echoes throughout the kitchen. I’m sure it’s the reception staff at River North Fertility Center, attempting to book another appointment.

Although I can’t think about it right now, I answer the call.

“Mrs. Cavanaugh, I’m sorry for the confusion. It appears the storage fees for Mr. Cavanaugh’s specimen are up to date. The charge came through after my system updated. I apologize. Storage is still due for the embryos.”

“How is that possible?”

“The charge just now came through.”

“I heard you. But . . . how?”

“You must have updated the credit card or—”

“No, I didn’t. Which card is it on?”

I hear the clicking of computer keys in the background. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Cavanaugh. Your name isn’t on the financial clearance form for this particular specimen. I can’t disclose.”

I hang up even more frustrated—is anything easy in the world of infertility?—but then I think. I didn’t pay the fee. There’s only one other person who might’ve. I dial Guidry. “Hi, it’s Veronica. Can you follow up on something with our fertility clinic? Find out who paid the storage fees for Micah’s specimen. Maybe you’ll find my husband at the end of that trail.”





Chapter 38

I dragged a child-size table and chairs—two, of course; Nini needs one, too—from “Nini’s bedroom” to the driveway. Bella colors there, while I balance too many feet off the ground on Christian’s ladder and pry the remaining letters off the archway. I’m going to paint the arch, too. The top trim pieces will stay white, but the rest of it I’ll coat in the same pale yellow as the house.

“I know, Nini.” Bella chatters incessantly to her invisible friend. “But that’s what Daddy said.”

I stop what I’m doing and listen harder.

“I told you,” she continues. “When he came to see me. He said we could swim with the dolphins.” She reaches for another crayon. “But I love my daddy.”

Despite the mid-eighties temperature, a chill pricks the back of my neck. Slowly, carefully, so as not to disrupt my daughter’s chattering, I climb down from the ladder and inch closer.

“He says it’s a house even bigger and prettier than this one. And I could get a new dollhouse.”

“Bella?”

She startles when she hears me.

“When did Daddy say that?”

“Oh.” She brushes a stray coil of hair from her forehead. “He said it when he kissed me bye-bye.”

“When did he say that?”

“I told you, Mommy. I . . . saw . . . Daddy.”

“That was Mr. Renwick. With Emily and Andrea? When you were riding your bike?”

“Yes, Mommy.” She’s exasperated with having to explain it to me again.

“And he gave you a kiss goodbye?”

“In my head.”

“In your head? Or on top of your head?”

“On my nose.”

“On your nose.”

“Yes, Mommy.”

“Are you sure?”

“Nini and I are coloring.” She doesn’t want to talk about it anymore.

“Bella, this is very important. You said Daddy came to God Land. This is God Land. We are at God Land.”

“Daddy’s not here anymore, Mommy.”

“You just said you saw him. So he’s like Nini?”

“Yes. Like Nini. Except Nini is in my hair.”

“Excuse me?”

I turn around to see Officer Laughlin standing next to his parked bike, under the archway.

“Veronica Cavanaugh? Officer Laughlin, Key West Police—”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Lake County asked me to drop by to get your read on something.” He hands me a few pages of printed material.

I glance down at the fruit of Guidry’s investigative efforts.

But quickly, after I register only a few words here and there and focus on the MICAH JAMES CAVANAUGH JR. in the one place I’d hoped it wouldn’t be, I return my gaze to Laughlin’s. “Does this mean . . .”

I glance down at the dates on the paper.

He doesn’t have to answer.

I don’t even have to ask the question.





Chapter 39

I’m sitting at the potter’s wheel, my fingers coated in wet clay, watching earthenware spin.

There’s no denying it now, no way to explain it as a misunderstanding or misinterpretation: the boys in the pictures I’ve packed away are my husband’s sons. Born eight weeks before Elizabella, in Wisconsin, not far from C-Way airport, where Micah’s car turned up.

I think I remember Micah taking a longer trip in my third trimester. Perhaps he went to be with the boys’ mother—someone named Gabrielle—for the birth.

What if he intended to leave me for her when she turned up pregnant with his babies? What if very quickly after he learned of her pregnancy, I was expecting, too?

I wonder how Natasha Markham fits into this mess.