“So are you telling me—”
“I’m not telling you anything,” Guidry says. “I wish I had something to give you.”
Bella’s voice carries from the great room: “That’s mean, Nini! Take it back!”
Guidry looks over his shoulder.
“Fighting with her imaginary friend,” I explain.
He returns his corpselike stare to me. “I’d like to go to the press to get the word out.” The detective gathers his photos. “Maybe someone out there knows something that can help us. Someone might’ve seen something. Sometimes it’s a seemingly innocuous detail that blows a case wide open.”
“Yes. It makes sense, I guess.”
“The press can be especially cruel with spouses in this sort of situation. They may start hounding you with questions.”
“I’ll answer them. I have nothing to hide.”
“Mommy!” Bella screeches. “Nini’s glad Daddy’s gone! She says she’d rather be at God Land, too.”
I’m on my feet now, and my daughter propels herself toward me and catapults into my arms.
Her tears dampen my shoulder. “She needs a time-out!”
“I think she does.” I cradle Bella against me, feel her soft warmth. I resume my seat, rocking her like I did when she was a newborn. “It’s okay. It’s okay. He’ll come back.”
The detective shifts his gaze from Bella to me. “No charges have gone through on his I-Pass. Which means he stayed off the toll roads or removed the transponder from his car and paid the tolls in cash. We can’t trace his route that morning, but we’re looking into his past records. Studying his patterns, so we can approximate where he might’ve gone, what roads he might’ve taken to get there.”
“Do you have a picture of the plane that was found? What was, you know, left?” I can’t say the word. I can’t say remains.
“Yes.” But he doesn’t pull it from his file.
“Can I see it?”
He reaches into his coat pocket and produces his cell phone. Soon, the picture fills the screen: a mangled mass of metal bobbing in the silvery waters of the Atlantic.
My breath catches in my throat. I have no idea if it’s Micah’s plane. I’d have no idea if it were a commercial jetliner or scrap metal, for that matter. “Were there . . . you know . . . any bodies inside?”
He’s shaking his head. “I haven’t seen the report.”
“Is that the water where the plane is?” Bella points to the screen.
“Yes,” I say over a sob.
“And over here . . .” She waves a hand to the right. “Here is where the big house is. At God Land.”
The detective squints.
A chill darts through me, like ice water in my veins.
“Elizabella,” Guidry says. “Do you know where your father is?”
“Nini says he’s at God Land.”
“That’s what your mother told you?”
“I didn’t say—”
Bella interrupts me. “Not Mommy. Nini.” She’s using her frustrated tone. “The girl who lives in my hair.”
“Okay. The girl who lives in your hair,” Guidry says. “Does your mommy know where your daddy is?”
“Uh-huh.”
“No, baby.” I tighten my grip on my girl. “I don’t.” But somehow Nini drew a picture of the plane crash days before it happened.
“She knows?” The detective glances at me but quickly turns back to my daughter. “Your mommy knows where Daddy is?”
“No,” I say again.
“I told you,” Elizabella says over her shoulder to me. Then to Guidry: “I told her. God Land.”
“His mother seems to think she means God’s country. They have a house on Plum Lake in Wisconsin—”
“What town?”
“I don’t know. Just north of Minocqua. Maybe you could ask the police up there—”
“What’s the address of the lake house?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been there. But it’s on Plum Lake.” There can’t be more than one Plum Lake in the northern woods, and there can’t be too many properties deeded to Micah Cavanaugh Senior. If Guidry is any kind of detective, he’ll find it easily.
“I’ll check it out.”
“Thank you.”
“Anything else?”
Again, I shake my head.
He fixes me with a stare that’s almost accusatory. “Are you sure? There’s nothing else you’d like to tell me?”
“I wish I knew what else to tell you, but he’s just . . . gone. I wish I knew where to find him, but . . . look, no one in her right mind would choose to go through this.”
“Okay, then.” He drums his fingertips on the table. “Does he have a computer?”
“A laptop, but I assume he took it with him. And there’s a desktop upstairs, but he hardly uses it. It’s more for Bella. Her games.”
“It would be helpful . . . and this is voluntary, you understand . . . could we take his computer? Analyze the files? The Internet searches, that sort of thing?”
I wipe at my eyes. “If you think it’ll help bring him home, you can take the whole house.” I choke over a sob. “Just bring him home, okay?”
“I’ll send a team of techs.” He moves to get up. “I’ll be in touch.”
But I see it in the detective’s eyes. He thinks I know something I’m not telling.
Chapter 11
November 16
Shower.
Dishes.
Another box of tissues.
News from the lab: a week after fertilization, the embryo is officially gone. I can stop the hormone injections, as there won’t be an embryo transfer this month. Sit back. Wait for a menstrual period. Call the office when it comes and try for another retrieval to see if we get better numbers.
I hear Micah’s voice in my head: We still have two frozen at the lab. All it takes is one.
But does it matter anymore? If Micah isn’t coming home, there’s no reason to have another child. When I lost the twins last spring, everyone at the hospital tried to comfort me with generic sentiments like God has a better plan for you. Or Maybe God is looking out for your family in ways you don’t understand.
For the first time, I consider they might’ve been right. Maybe I lost the boys then to save my sanity now. I’d been beside myself with grief. There’s a limit to what a human being can endure, after all, and I’d felt as if I were well over that limit with the miscarriage. But what position would I be in now with a missing husband and three children to care for instead of one?
As soon as the thought enters my mind, I cast it out. Shame on me for feeling a modicum of relief at losing my sons!
My tears, which never stop but for a minute here and there, intensify.
Elizabella’s been bathed, and half a bottle of detangle spray later, she looks presentable again. She and Nini are watching a morning cartoon.
I’m on hold with our cell phone carrier, who is reluctant to give me any information, as my name isn’t on the account. Everything is in Micah’s name. “I just need to know,” I say. “How many times did he call the number with the three-oh-five area code?” If there’s a connection to the plane found off the Florida coast, I need to know.
“You can access the account online.”
“Only the current billing period. I need to know historically how many times he called the number.”
“And I can’t disclose that information without you being an authorized user on the account, ma’am. I’m sorry.”
“But it’s my phone plan. I should have access to the account information.”
“If that’s true, you’d have the required password.”
“My husband is missing,” I say. “Missing! This information could help me find him!”
“We can release the information with a court order, but—”
“Can you tell me if anyone’s ordered the records yet?”
“I can tell the authorized user of the account whether the records have been ordered, but—”
I hang up in frustration. I’m looking at the past few months of cell phone bills, which Micah apparently hadn’t paid, as we had an outstanding balance of nearly $400 until a few minutes ago, when I paid it by credit card over the phone. Apparently, I’m authorized to pay a bill, even if I’m not authorized to peruse the records. There are no itemized calls or texts on the bill. Just total minutes used, total texts sent, and total texts received for each number.