Trespassing(89)

Is there any way he could have hidden it from me? “No.” But lately, I’ve been wondering. The glow of the light on the fairway . . . the butt in the grass this morning . . .

Was I so wrapped up in fertility treatments that I didn’t notice my husband had picked up a habit?

An officer on the wicker says, “Do you know where your daddy is?”

I interject: “Please don’t interrogate my daughter about—”

“My daddy came to see me last night,” Bella announces to the officers keeping her company.

“What did you say, Bella?” I meander toward her.

She points to her drawings. “He says we’re going to be by the dolphins.”

My innards go hollow under the pressure of Guidry’s stare. I ask Bella for clarification: “Have you ever been by the dolphins?”

“No, Mommy. Nini goed there once.”

“With your daddy?”

“That’s what he said.”

“When did he . . . Bella, when did he tell you that?”

“I told you, Mommy. He kissed me bye-bye on the nose again.”

“Something you want to tell me, Veronica?” Guidry clicks his pen open and closed.

I spy the bottle of rum on the countertop, its blue ribbon daring me to numb the pain. How much rum could make me forget? How much could distort my reality?

Was it a dream? Or was Micah here? And who put the rum on my porch, welcoming me to the neighborhood, if not Christian?

I rush to the back door, throw it open, and lunge toward the grass, where I saw the cigarette butt. Maybe they can test the butt for saliva samples and prove it’s Micah’s.

Or maybe it isn’t. Maybe it was someone else smoking out here last night, every night for all I know, but even then, the police will know I’m not crazy, that I’m not putting crazy ideas into my child’s head.

I have to find it.

On my hands and knees now, I rake through the blades in search of what I know I saw. What I’m sure Christian saw, too.

But whether or not it’s here now—What happened to it? Did a gecko run off with it?—I know it was here five minutes ago!

Or maybe I really am seeing things, hearing things.

Maybe I really am losing my mind.

“Mommy?”

Seeing me like this must be frightening for Bella.

All of this must be terrifying.

What will happen to my daughter if I’m really crazy?

“Veronica.” Guidry places a hand on my shoulder. “If you don’t talk to me, we don’t get to the bottom of this.”

Maybe I’m crazy. Maybe I’m not.

Maybe I did something in a fit of rage that I don’t remember.

Or maybe I’m a victim of circumstance.

The only way to make it all stop is to tell Guidry everything I can possibly think to tell him. Even if I know it’s going to make me look crazy, even if I know it’ll make me look guilty.

“I had a dream.” I wipe away tears with the back of my hand. “At least I thought it was a dream. But then, considering what Bella said . . .”

“Maybe someone’s putting ideas in her head.”

Through tears, I meet the detective’s stare. “You think it’s me. That I’m putting ideas into her head.”

“You think it’s Micah,” he counters, deadpan.

“Do you think there’s a chance he was here? That he’s running from something, and he’s trying to lure me to run with him?”

“Anything’s possible.” Guidry nods. “Tell me why you ask.”

“My dream. Micah was in it. He kept saying something about blue. About the color blue.”

“Blue.”

“And Shell . . . maybe she knows where Micah is, maybe she knows he’s coming for us. I keep going over it in my mind, and we grieved together on the phone when I told her he was dead, but when I first told her about Micah’s being missing, she was sort of casual about it.”

“Casual?”

“If anyone had called me with the news that Bella didn’t come home, I would’ve been halfway to the airport and on my way home, but Shell was rational.”

He nods.

“And my neighbor, Claudette . . . she sent me a picture of Natasha Markham on my doorstep. I haven’t seen her since college, and she showed up right after Micah left. She told Claudette she’d left me a message, but when I called the voice mail at Shadowlands, there weren’t any messages. None. Not even a telemarketer. Someone must have retrieved the messages and deleted them.”

“Micah?”

“Or someone trying to follow his trail. Someone with access to the house. And his name is on those boys’ birth certificates . . .”

“I’m sure that was a hard thing to face.”

“And I keep thinking I’m seeing someone smoking outside. It happened here. It happened back home.”

“Can I get a description?”

“Of what? A shadow? The little round orange flicker of light you see when someone inhales through a cigarette? If I could describe him, I wouldn’t be worried that I’d imagined it. And the whispering caller . . . that’s twice now it’s happened to me and—”

“Mmm-hmmm.”

“And this morning, I opened the kiln—”