Trespassing(91)

After I received the strange phone call on the beach, and all that followed that night and the next day, I’ve changed the locks.

The days edge closer to Christmas, and I’m another week closer to D-day with the embryos at River North Fertility Center. I call to tell them I haven’t forgotten about the storage fees. They’ll have my decision by the end of the week.

Another coat of paint here.

Another box out to the garage there.

Another blob of clay tossed onto the potter’s wheel and transformed into some new formation.

Guidry took the charred bundles of cash and cleared the ash from the kiln, so I’m free to use it again, should I get more adept at this art form.

I find a Jimmy Buffett CD on a dusty shelf. I slip it into a player in the art studio and get ready to work. But I’m not sure I should pack these things away. They aren’t mine, but if Gabrielle won’t be coming back for them . . .

I’ve grown accustomed to spending time in the studio. There’s comfort in the solitude, in the things I create within it. The cat butts my shins with his head. I pick him up and snuggle him as I look around. Now that I know Gabrielle won’t be coming back for her things, I feel less urge to get rid of them. She and I have something in common—something more than our sleeping with the same man. We both lost Micah’s twin sons. She died along with her children, and I felt like I was going to die when I miscarried the boys.

I wonder, and not for the first time, if Micah, like Gabrielle, is a victim of foul play, if his body will eventually wash up on the Atlantic coast. Or if Micah arranged the plane crash, if he flew out to the ocean with the bodies, then parachuted out of the plane—D. B. Cooper style. What if living a life so outrageous that he needed two identities to do it became too much for him to handle? Add to the mix whatever secrets he shared with Natasha, the mess of my unexplained infertility, the money, and the debt . . . would he have done something drastic to escape it all?

The fourth finger on my left hand itches beneath my wedding ring. I place the cat back on the floor and twist at the band. It still won’t slip over my knuckle.

I go to the kitchen, lube my finger with dish soap, and tug at my wedding ring until my finger hurts, but it still won’t budge.

My pool stands dormant, in the same state in which Christian left it a few days ago, when Guidry showed up with the news about Gabrielle and her sons’ death in the plane crash.

And when Christian left that day, he stayed gone. Maybe because I haven’t been honest with him or maybe because all of this is too intense for a guy who spends his days paddleboarding and tapping out words on a laptop. Either way, I suppose I can’t blame him. But I’m going to try to make it right. I’ll apologize, at least, for my secrecy.

“Ellie-Belle.” I dry my hands on a towel and glance at the new television I purchased so Bella can watch the plethora of Disney DVDs Gabrielle left behind. “Come on, baby. We’re taking a walk to see Emily and Andrea.”

“After the movie?”

“Now.”

Her eyes light up.

“Excited to see Emmy and Andri?” I ask.

“Can we play one, two, three, fly?”

“We’ll see.”

The autograph tree near the door now bears the markings of Emily and Andrea on its leaves. While we wait for someone to answer the door, I busy myself perusing their sketches and the artful ways they wrote their names.

“Hi!” It’s the one with the purple hair. She’s still in her pajama bottoms, but she looks alert enough that I don’t think I woke her.

“Hi, Andrea.” I squeeze Bella’s hand in a subtle reminder for her to be good. “Is your uncle free?”

“Yeah. Come on in.”

“One, two, three, fly?” Bella asks.

I look down at her. “Bella, you don’t have to always play that game—”

“Sure. Let’s go find Em.” Andrea juts her chin toward the back of the house. “He’s writing.” After a roll of her eyes, she continues, “I’m sure he’d love the interruption.”

As I near the back bedroom, I hear him humming—a Jimmy Buffett classic. The door is half-open. “Knock, knock.” I nudge the door open a bit more when he doesn’t answer.

He’s standing at the window, shirtless, staring out at his rear garden.

“Hi.”

He turns toward me, one thumb hooked into a belt loop and the other grasping a coffee mug. A look of surprise registers in his eyes but quickly mellows. “Hey.” One corner of his lips turns up in a grin.

Contagious.

I feel a smile coming on, too. “It’s funny. I was just listening to Buffett.”

His warm, bare chest melts against me, and he cups my face in his hands, kissing me.

“I told myself not to crowd you.” He rests his forehead against mine and whispers at my lips. “I figured, let you come to me. God, it took you long enough.”

“I wasn’t sure you’d want to see me, after . . .” Out of the corner of my eye, I see papers strewn about a desk situated next to the door, not far from where I’m standing. Pictures. Of Micah. His boys. A dark-haired woman. “What are you—”

He seals his lips over mine again, effectively shutting me up.

But I keep my eyes open. Addresses in Plum Lake, Wisconsin, in the Dominican Republic . . . satellite images: A red circle in the Atlantic Ocean, I assume where the plane went down; an overhead view of the house in the Shadowlands. And an image of Goddess Island Gardens.