Trespassing(87)

Screw it. For the first time in forever, I’m not trying to get pregnant. I deserve to start living. I draw in the scent of it.

“It’s just black,” he says. “I wasn’t sure how you—”

“I don’t take coffee, period, usually. But I’ll make an exception today.”

“So you don’t usually drink alcohol. You don’t usually drink coffee. Do you have any vices?”

“I’m thinking of investing in a few.”

“I did the same during a rough patch after the drama with my ex. Careful, or you’ll find you like vices.”

“Actually, lately, I’ve been doing a lot of things I don’t normally do. Pottery, painting, installing glass inserts into cabinet doors . . .” Burning bundles of money. Kissing strangers. Lord, it’s been a destructive twenty-four hours.

I hand a napkin to Bella, who has yet to take her eyes from our neighbor. “You’re already working on the pool?”

“I stayed most of the night, keeping watch, on your porch.”

I do a double take and pause to study him. “You didn’t sleep?”

“I was worried. Under the circumstances, I figured I should . . . you know . . . you were pretty shaken up. So just in case.”

He spent the entire night on my property? Outside?

I should thank him. Or I should tell him to drop the caulk gun and walk back through the gate. Option two is probably smarter. It’s either better for me because he’s turning into something of a stalker, or it’s better for him to stay away from the crazy lady in the big yellow house.

Then again, if Christian really was here most of the night, he can confirm whether or not we were alone, whether or not he heard or saw someone enter the house.

“Did you see anyone?” I swallow over a dehydrated lump in my throat. “Or hear anything?”

He begins to shake his head.

“I had this dream, and it was so vivid, so—” I shut up. There’s something in the grass, not far from where Christian is standing.

It’s a cigarette butt.

The police didn’t find any evidence of a smoker on the property when I called them. But I know I saw the glow of a cigarette shortly after we arrived that first night. I know I saw the same thing on the fairway back home. I know I caught the stench of it last night, too, right before my dream about Micah.

And there’s a cigarette butt on the ground. In my yard.

Christian’s gaze follows mine, and I think he probably sees it, too.

“We should talk.” He rubs the outside of his elbow with the hand that was pierced either with a nail gun at the end of his marriage or with a knife at the onset of an underdeveloped date.

Yeah, we probably should talk. But what could I say to make sense of any of this?

“You want to see what I’m doing here? In the pool?” He’s already climbing down the steps into the massive cement crater in my backyard. He travels down the gradual slope, farther into the deep end.

Despite Bella’s protest, I follow him, stopping at the edge of the empty in-ground pool. I opt to sit, as if dipping in only my legs up to my shins. This way, I can keep an eye on my daughter while I try to explain things to the man I slammed into last night.

“So.” He stops somewhere around four and a half feet deep, near a tiny crack in the tiling, which I assume is what he’s been caulking. “You don’t know where your husband is? Technically, you’re still married?” The way he’s looking at me . . . very say-it-ain’t-so.

I break eye contact and busy myself with rubbing at a speck of paint still coating the cuticle of my left thumb. “Before I got here, two men came to my house.” I try again to look him in the eye, but humiliation draws my gaze right back to my hands. “They said they were FBI agents, and they told me he was gone. Dead. You heard about the small plane crash off the coast of Florida last month?”

He shrugs. “I don’t watch much television.”

“Well, they said it was his plane, and I had no reason not to believe them because Micah’s a pilot. Or he was. And he was supposedly flying for Diamond Corporation, only maybe he wasn’t—I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore. And it turns out the children who lived here, in this house, they’re my husband’s children.”

“Is that why you’re here?” Suddenly, he’s right in front of me. His hands fall atop mine. “To figure out what kind of a man your husband was? Or, as the case may be, is? Is that why you’re spending time with me? Because you think I know something about the people who used to live here?”

“You don’t seem to know anything about them.”

“Right.”

“So obviously . . .” I glance up at him again. There’s no nice way to say what I’m about to say: I like him. I just can’t get involved right now.

Not that it’s apparent that that’s what he wants. I kissed him first, after all. And if I tell him I can’t even think of a relationship . . . not only because I don’t know where Micah is, but because I’m a mess right now . . . isn’t that rather presumptuous? Doesn’t it sound as if I’m assuming that he wants me in that regard?

Sorry, lady, you read me wrong.

“I had a dream last night,” I say. “At least I think it was a dream. Micah came back.”