Trespassing(73)

I scrape this crock off the potter’s wheel and place it with the others on the shelf. I look to the kiln. So far, I’ve been hesitant to use it. But what do I have to lose? I open its heavy door, which is on the top, like a lid.

I place two vases, ones that have dried, into the cavern and close the lid. I pull the lever to lock it and turn up the temperature to cone four—it’s the setting the guy on YouTube used—set the timer for four hours, and turn the machine on.

I migrate to the kitchen and check on Bella, who is napping on the sofa in the next room.

All is quiet.

It feels as if the walls are closing in on me, as if I’m suffocating here. It’s ridiculous. The place is large and airy.

But this place is also a reminder of Micah’s infidelity.

Starting tomorrow, I’m making drastic changes. And I’m starting with paint. Instant gratification, instant visual improvement.

Mama used to say that.

I remember the day she dipped a paintbrush into a can of cobalt blue. She’d mixed the paint with plaster dust to give it a chalky, matte finish, and in no time at all, our table looked brand-new. I can do that sort of thing here, and my life will be brand-new, too.

If Micah were to materialize before me right now, would I throw my arms around him? Or would I take Claudette’s advice, slap him good across the cheek, and make him pay?

I reach for my phone and dial Claudette.

She answers instantly. “Honey, I’ve been so worried. What’s going on?”

“I can’t begin to tell you.” I spy the bottle of rum Christian dropped off to welcome us to the island that first night. Dare I have a drink? I fill her in on the computer searches, on Guidry’s theory about the Xanax. I tell her the men that came to tell me Micah was dead weren’t really federal agents.

“So . . . he might be somewhere out there?” she asks. “No wonder that cop looked at me funny when I told him about the night we found out Micah was dead.”

“If he’s out there, he’s in way over his head.”

“You know, I told the detective this . . . that taller one came back after you left. He was poking around, looking in the windows. And I started thinking that maybe I’d seen him around the neighborhood before. Before the whole thing began.”

I think of the cigarette on the eleventh fairway. I wonder how long they’ve been watching me. And why.

“There’s more. Suffice it to say you were right about Misty Morningside, and now they say I have motive.”

“I knew it! I knew she wasn’t here for you that day. I could see it in her eyes. She wasn’t mourning for your loss. She was mourning her own.”

“You might be right, but that’s not the only woman I’m talking about.” I give her a quick rundown about the boys’ birth certificates. “Their names are Connor James and Brendan Micah. Their mother—not the redhead on my doorstep—is Gabrielle.”

“I knew it!”

“Their father? Micah. James. Cavanaugh.”

“I’m assuming not Senior.”

“You got it.”

“In the middle of the night, I’d wake up for a glass of water, and there he’d be: your husband, walking the streets, chatting on that damn mobile phone. But I never dreamed he’d be stupid enough not to prevent other children.”

I pinch my eyes closed. “Yes, he kept a lot of secrets.”

“Do you think that’s why he’s gone? Because of these other kids?”

“Maybe. But who are these men, then? The ones who told me he was dead?”

“Maybe they’re his friends. Maybe he was trying to leave without owning up to anything. Maybe he figured if the world thought he was dead, he could start over.”

My phone blips with an incoming text.

It’s from Shell: You have Bella?

Of course I have Bella. Where else would Bella be?

Unless . . .

I sent the picture of my daughter to both Shell and her son. Could she have assumed she was replying to Micah?





Chapter 40

It’s a possibility, Guidry says.

When you’re struggling with infertility, these words give you hope . . . sometimes an undeserved sense of optimism. But now that I’m struggling with a search for the truth, these words instill only an unnerving sense of frustration.

It’s a possibility that Shell has been in touch with her son. It’s possible Shell assumed Micah sent the picture of Bella.

Until the detective manages to talk with her again, and until he secures her phone records, there’s no way to know for certain.

It’s a possibility Micah is looking to connect with our daughter, but unlikely he’s looking to flee with her. If that’s what he wanted, Guidry rationalizes, wouldn’t he have taken her with him when he left?

It’s possible Micah wants to be presumed dead.

It’s possible he’s dead already.

It’s also just as possible, in Detective Guidry’s opinion, that I know where my husband has been the past twenty-three days since he last kissed me goodbye. I’ve lost track of time, which isn’t hard to do in Key West. Guidry hasn’t found anything connecting a seven-year-old child named Mimi, or Nini, to my husband, and there’s no telling who Tasha is, if not Natasha Markham. But he did say he’d been in touch with my college roommate on a lead he wouldn’t share with me, and he said he’d give her my cell phone number and ask her if she would please call me.