Trespassing(81)

“How old were you?”

I’d just turned seventeen, but admitting that makes it seem either more pitiful, or as if I would’ve been more capable of actually carrying out the acts she’d accused me of. “It’s just something that happened. Just something I survived. I’m not asking anyone to feel sorry for me.”

“No one’s pitying you,” he says. “But I’m telling you . . . that is batshit wrong, and it shouldn’t have happened to you.”

It’s pretty unbelievable, actually—maybe more unbelievable than his stories about acquiring the scar on his hand—and it does sound as if I’m fishing for sympathy. So I go with details. Details make the story harder to dispute. “Just a few weeks later, when they were still reviewing my psychiatric evaluation, she came at me with a kitchen knife. But at the last second, she turned the blade on herself. I didn’t see it happen.”

But I can conjure the picture of the knife in her neck. I see, as clearly as I see the stars reflecting off the waves, the blood spurting like a geyser.

“I was hiding from her, but when I heard her fall . . .” There’s nothing I can do to change the picture in my mind. “She was already gone by the time I came out of the closet.”

“I’m sorry.”

“My prints were on the knife.”

“Of course they were. You lived in the house. She came at you.”

“There was an investigation.”

“You were cleared. Obviously.”

“Doesn’t change the fact that it happened. That I spent a year in a county home, trying to prove I wasn’t crazy. Or that the life insurance company didn’t want to pay out, first because I was under investigation, and second because once I was cleared, her death was ruled an apparent suicide.” I bite my lip. “But they eventually paid, and I got enough to put myself through school. I met Micah, had Bella, and now, I’m going through the same bullshit I survived back then. So that’s that.”

“And you think that makes you vulnerable?”

I shrug a shoulder. “Makes me something.”

“Maybe he chose you because he knew you could handle it.”

“What?”

“Look, I don’t know what’s going on with Micah, but . . . you survived it all once . . . at seventeen. All this time, you’re thinking he chose you because you were more vulnerable than Tasha. What if he chose you because you’re stronger?”

I face him now. The night wind musses his too-long hair. His gray-green eyes reflect the light of the faraway lampposts.

“No one survives what you’ve been through if she’s not strong,” he says.

Does he really believe that?

Or does he have ulterior motives? It wouldn’t be the first time some guy said something amazing to get a woman into bed.

But does it even matter?

It’s not as if it was his idea to come here. He offered to walk me home. I brought him here. I sat down in the sand and started telling him things I don’t usually discuss with anyone.

Not even Micah knows about the faces in the jewelry. Even if I’d shared a few gruesome details of my mother’s suicide and her attempts prior, with my husband, he doesn’t know the police once suspected me of involvement in her death.

Unless . . . what if Micah found out, and that’s why he’s running? In all my accusations about his deceiving me, have I forgotten that I married him without sharing the biggest secret of my life?

Yet I told Christian after a few rum concoctions.

And he’s still looking at me as if he respects me, as if he’d still like to get to know me, as if he still considers me a friend.

“You said before . . . maybe you didn’t admit to believing in ghosts, but you didn’t tell me you didn’t,” I say. “So maybe you don’t think it’s out of the question.”

“Nothing’s out of the question,” he retorts. “Do you believe in God?”

“No, really. Because sometimes, I swear I see Micah out of the corner of my eye, or I smell his cologne, and I swear he’s there. It’s so real.”

“Well, that could be God as much as it is a ghost. But either way, who am I to tell you what you saw or didn’t see? What you experience or don’t?”

And suddenly, the urge to know him—to know him, know him—overcomes me, too.

He licks his lips, and I imagine they must taste like the elixir that stole my inhibitions this evening.

I don’t know the last time I thought of another man in this capacity or even if I ever thought of anyone other than Micah this way.

Micah, whose name is embossed on birth certificates alongside a Misty Morningside named Gabrielle.

Micah, whose life has become as foreign to me as distant lands I’ll never see.

Micah, whom I’m not sure I can forgive or forget.

I’m not thinking straight, or maybe I’m not thinking at all, but I don’t care about regret, revenge, or reconstitution. All I know is the concept of gratification leaves me hungry.

I lean into my companion, land my lips on his, and before I know what’s happening, we’ve joined the other pairs of shadows on the stretch of shoreline. We’re part of the scenery, like the lovers vacationing at the resorts dotted along the coast. My back is against the sand, and Christian’s hand—the one marred with the scar—is on my hip, and his tongue is brushing against mine.