Unmissing(26)

“What does—” I start to ask another question when he silences me with a lifted palm. I’m not sure he’s ever done such a thing before.

I realize this is a lot to dump on this man’s plate at once, especially when he’s already dealing with the crumbling of his business empire, but I refuse to be muzzled so easily.

“What does this mean for us?” I ask.

Luca stops midstride, his darkened expression intersecting with mine in our lamplit bedroom. Head angled, he exhales.

“Do you even have to ask that?” He uses a tone reserved for unreliable waitstaff, not his loving wife.

But before I respond, everything about him softens, and he closes the space between us, leaning in and brushing his lips against mine in some bizarre pseudo kind of kiss I can only assume is meant to appease me like a silent apology.

“I’m sorry for snapping.” He holds me tighter.

I attempt to swallow, but my throat is dry. “What if she’s making it up?”

Luca says nothing, merely breathing, existing. He’s locked inside that complicated yet beautiful brain of his, which rarely shuts off as it is.

I nestle beneath his arm and rest my cheek against his smooth chest.

His heart thunders in my ear.

“Maybe she’s . . . ill?” I suggest. “Mentally, I mean. She was so casual about everything . . . a person doesn’t go through what she’s claiming to have gone through and then speak about it so offhandedly, you know?”

Was she flippant? Or is that what I chose to see? Everything happened so fast, I barely had time to process any of it. And when I left for a few moments to tend to Elsie, who knows what was said, what I missed . . .

All I know is I was gone for maybe a minute or two, and when I came back, she was suddenly in a hurry to leave.

Something had to have been said.

“Did she ask for anything?” I might as well be talking to myself here.

“No,” he finally says, his chest rising and falling with one hard breath.

“I didn’t tell you this before because I didn’t want to worry you when you were out east,” I say. “But she stopped by earlier in the week. Just . . . showed up at the door, eight o’clock at night. Told me her name and that she wanted to see you. I told her to leave. And I shut the door in her face. I thought she was some lunatic trying to con us.”

He stirs, his body tensing beneath me. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I had it handled.” There’s a sternness in my voice, as if I can force him to read between the lines. To remember we’re a team. And that we’re in this together. Always and forever. “I ran into her again in town. Twice, actually. Talked to her a bit. I wanted to be sure it was actually Lydia before I let her anywhere near you.”

He pinches the bridge of his nose before rubbing his eyes. “After the week I’ve had, it would’ve been nice to know what I was coming home to tonight.”

“After the week you had?” I inch away from him, my skin growing hot.

Over the course of our relationship, I can count on one hand the number of times my husband has used a condescending tone with me—or withheld sympathy. He’s never placed his issues above mine. They’ve always been side by side, the way an equal partnership should be.

Exhaling, I reexamine this from a different angle.

United we stand, divided we fall is a sentiment that can easily apply to marriages.

“Getting upset with each other isn’t going to fix this.” I run my palm over his tightening chest, massaging wide circles into his woven muscles in a subtle attempt to calm him. “If I’d have dumped that on you over the phone, you’d have been stressed the whole way home, and you know it. You’d have driven like a maniac and walked in the door all worked up. Forgive me for wanting you home levelheaded and in one piece.”

He digests my words before placing his hand on top of mine, a move that somehow feels empty in this moment, like he’s simply going through the actions. A second later, he leads me to bed, peeling back the enormous duvet on my side. Is he putting me to bed? Or the issue? I climb in and wait for him to do the same, his feet scuffing against the carpet with an uncharacteristic weight to them.

“What if she’s lying?” I ask again. For her sake—and for ours—this would be much easier if it were a lie. “Maybe . . . maybe she ran away all those years ago for whatever crazy reason she had at the time . . . and then came back with this story because she thinks it’d make us feel sorry for her and maybe we’d give her money or something? I saw the way she looked around our house . . .”

He sits in contemplative silence, though we both know it’s a stretch.

“It’s strange that she hasn’t gone to the police, you know?” I continue. “After everything she’s claiming, a person would think that’s the first place she’d run to.”

Luca exhales. “Regardless of what did or didn’t happen, I don’t think she’s in a good state of mind. We need to be careful. You need to be careful. There’s something off about her . . .”

“Is there a chance it isn’t Lydia?”

“It’s her,” he says without pause.

My heart plummets, overpowering any shred of hope I had left. I breathe him in, close my eyes, and hold myself in the fleeting present for a moment until our unborn son stirs inside me. I place Luca’s hand on my belly out of habit. Fullness floods my body—the manifestation of assurance, perhaps, or a reminder that as long as we’re together, everything’s going to be okay.