Trespassing(85)

It’s a side effect of my hormones balancing out after I’d taken such extreme doses in an attempt to conceive. And now that the first menstrual cycle after retrieval has passed, the elevated hormones are wreaking havoc on my system.

Or maybe this time, it’s the price I pay for a good mojito.

Vomit splashes into the toilet, but Bella’s still there behind me, chattering about Brendan and Connor and Nini. Her lack of reaction to my throwing up is also a side effect of IVF: my daughter is so used to seeing me toss my cookies it doesn’t bother her to see it.

Now, in the light of day, all the demons of yesterday seem impossible. It was just a bad day. Too many things hitting me all at once. I don’t know who called me on the beach. But I have to stay strong, have to move on. Have to trust that Guidry and his team will do what they’re supposed to do.

I flush the toilet.

I’m feeling a little better.

“You know what we’re going to do today, Bella?”

“Go to the park with Connor and Brendan?”

“We’re going to probably see a park, and maybe we can play at one. But first, we’re going to look at some schools.”

“No school.” She crosses her arms over her chest and sticks out her bottom lip so far I fear she’ll trip on it.

“We won’t even go inside. It’s Saturday. We’re just going to look.”

“Just look?”

“School can be fun, Ellie-Belle. Your other school . . . not so much, right? But that’s why we’re going to look and spend some time playing there first. Before you enroll.”

“No school.”

“You can help Mommy choose the school this time, and maybe you won’t go every day, but you have to go.”

She’s emphatically shaking her head.

“One step at a time. Brush your teeth.”

“Nini says no.”

“Mommy says yes. Remember what we talked about yesterday? About listening?” I hand over her toothbrush, and she reluctantly climbs the steps in front of her sink. She brushes as I count aloud the number of times her brush passes over her teeth.

We then walk the length of the hallway to the master suite, where I splash water onto my face and brush my teeth and pull another sundress over my head. A lovely breeze passes through the open window over the claw-foot soaker tub. I turn into the breeze, which carries the scent of jasmine vines and summer. “Let’s have breakfast on the porch,” I suggest.

“Nini, too?”

“Nini, too.”

Before I get breakfast together, I enter the studio and cautiously test the exterior of the kiln. While it’s been off for at least twelve hours, it’s finally reasonably cool. I learned yesterday that the metal sides of this appliance could pass for a radiator, even hours after the timer goes off. I don’t know if it’s hot to the touch at that point, but I didn’t want to learn the hard way. I unlock the lever and lift the lid.

My weird, amateurish creations are a whiter gray now. But they’re sturdy and solid. No longer brittle.

I did it!

I created oddly shaped ceramic coffee mugs. Or flowerpots. Or topless canisters.

My victory is short-lived, as a sinking feeling returns to me.

I smell something burning. And while I suppose it’s to be expected—this kiln at cone four had to have gotten pretty hot to have morphed clay into something unbreakable—should the scent of fire linger?

There’s an ashy residue at the bottom of the kiln, a fine dust. And some larger flakes, like paper incinerated.

Is something still burning? I can’t risk a fire hazard.

And wouldn’t that be just my luck? I try my hand at the arts, and it results in devastation? If I burn the residence I own to the ground, Bella and I will truly be on the streets.

I follow my nose to the floor, where the odor grows stronger.

Soon, I’m on my stomach, with my cheek to the travertine floor, peering beneath the kiln, which stands on four legs, like a piece of furniture.

There’s something beneath it, something rectangular, which I fish out.

I gasp when I realize what it is: two bundles of cash, now singed and blackened.

I peel away the layers; bill after bill crumbles in my hands.

I feel sick.

A few of the bills at the bottom of the first stack are salvageable and many in the second. A partial Ben Franklin stares up at me. Smiling. Smirking.

My eyes tear up. If these charred blocks were bundles of hundreds, I just ruined $10,000 per bundle. Given about half the second bundle is in decent condition, I figure I’ve burned $15,000.

Wait. The ashy flakes in the kiln . . . they’re similar to the flakes crumbling off these brittle bills.

I scramble to my feet to compare the residue within the kiln to that in my hands. The matter is too consistent for me to assume it’s a coincidence.

“My God,” I say aloud. “How much did I burn?”

Worse yet, if these are hundreds . . .

Jesus, is this my money? From my safe-deposit box? Did I, in one of my sleepless, out-of-my-mind moments, think hiding this money in a kiln I couldn’t possibly ever use was a good idea?

I tear out of the studio and fly up the stairs.

I yank my suitcase out from under the bed and unzip the top compartment, where I’ve been storing the cash.

“Oh, thank God.” It’s all there. Whatever I’ve yet to spend is still right where I left it, along with the mysterious velvet box that holds the blue-stone ring.