I conduct another search: Key West lighthouse red black yellow.
Suggested websites pop up instantly. I click on one, which directs me to tourist sites in Key West. The first image to materialize is the southernmost point in the continental United States, marked with an oversize, concrete buoy, cemented at the corner of South and Whitehead Streets. The page claims this is one of the most photographed sites on the island.
Its horizontal stripes are red, black, and yellow.
I compare it to the crayon rendition.
Her rudimentary shapes, among what appears to be a rocky shore and waves behind it, led me to believe Bella had drawn a lighthouse, but in fact, it’s this concrete buoy, a Key West landmark.
“Bella, have you ever seen this? In person?”
“We’re coloring.”
“Bella.” I pull her onto my lap.
A splat of pink, sugary gummy bear drool lands on my sleeve.
“Mommy!”
“Behave,” I tell her. “Look.” I point to the screen. “Have you ever been there?”
“No.” Chomp, chomp, chomp on her gummy bear. She wiggles to climb off my lap.
I tighten my grip. “Ellie-Belle, this is important. Why did you draw this?”
“I didn’t.”
Deep breath. “Was it Nini’s drawing?”
“Yes.”
“Has Nini been here?” I again point to the buoy on the screen.
“Nini goed there once.”
I glance at my shoulder bag, sitting atop the island and stuffed with insurance policies and five bundles of large bills.
My gaze travels to the suitcase I brought up from the basement storage room. I was going to pack for Plum Lake tomorrow morning. But perhaps we should go sooner. Plans are changing quickly these days.
One minute, I’m shooting up progesterone, rooting down in this house, ready to live here until babies number two and three and maybe four graduate from college.
Now I’m shoving things into suitcases, as if I’m not sure I’ll be returning.
And maybe I won’t have to. We paid too much for this house, and I don’t like living at the Shadowlands, anyway, and Micah’s driven us up to our elbows in debt.
But I have fifty grand and a house in Key West. No family beyond Bella and the demonic Nini. I have no friends here, save the lone, slightly overbearing but good-hearted acquaintance across the street, and there’s a detective who was half a comment away from accusing me of offing my husband before the feds declared him dead. I ought to walk away. Be rid of this place forever.
But this bed beneath my suitcase . . . it’s our first. Our queen-size mattress, which barely fit in the bedroom at our college apartment and damn near reached wall-to-wall at our condo in Old Town. It’s where Micah made love to me both the first time and the last. It’s where we began and ended.
Maybe I can’t leave for good, but I can stay up at the lake for a while, either in a hotel or with my in-laws. And after I’ve had time to think, I’ll decide what to do with the mini-mansion on the island. I’ll decide what to do with this place . . . and the fifty grand. I wonder if I’ll even have to make a decision or if the police will swoop in and take everything I have.
“Shell, it’s me again.” I lose my composure every time I leave her a message. “Please call as soon as you can. Bella and I”—I swallow over a lump in my throat—“we’re heading up north, to Plum Lake, early. I hope that’s okay. So if you don’t get me on my cell, please just . . . we’ll meet you at the lake house when you get there.”
I toss my phone to the mattress and resume packing. I usually keep a small photo album containing pictures of our wedding in the drawer in the bedside table. But since Micah went missing, I’ve kept it on my pillow. I open it now, if only for a glimpse of the happiness we used to share, if only for proof that I didn’t imagine it all, despite the secrets he was keeping from me.
Our wedding was an intimate affair. Micah and me traversing the sand on a Lake Michigan beach with a few guests: Shell, of course, and some friends we’d met at UIC, with whom we quickly lost touch once we graduated. Natasha and I were long estranged. Mick hadn’t come; Micah hadn’t forgiven him for the midlife crisis, during which he’d briefly left Shell.
And now, Micah will never have the chance to mend his relationship with his father. I’d always wanted that for him.
I press the photo book into my suitcase and give it a pat, which seems rather melodramatic. But I want him with me.
I feel him leading me across the kitchen floor in time with his unique cha-cha beat. I want to grasp the memory of those last moments, fold it into a tight square like the notes I used to pass in middle school, and keep it safe and private in my pocket. A piece of us that no one can disturb. Our last dance.
“Mommy?” Bella’s lying at the foot of the bed, freshly bathed and in pajamas, and already fed. It’s only a few minutes past sundown, but I’m planning to put her in the car in an hour or so and make the drive up north just as she’s about to get sleepy. She’ll sleep during the drive, and the trip will be easier. “Nini’s coming, too?”
“Why wouldn’t she?”
“’Cause you don’t like Nini.”
“I like her just fine, baby.”
A big, sweet yawn escapes her. “Me too.”
Plum Lake is about seven hours away. I’ll be practically brain-dead by the time we arrive, but I’ll check into a hotel in Minocqua, try to sleep, and meet Micah’s parents at the lake late Saturday. Just the thought of setting foot in the cottage where Micah spent many a childhood summer warms me, as if he’s sidling up against me, close to me, breathing with me. Or maybe I want to go to see for myself that he isn’t there. That he isn’t anywhere anymore.
I cover a sob—the grief comes in waves, it seems—and sink into the memory of his holding me. It’s the closest I’ve come to feeling him—his presence, his essence—since he walked out the door nine and a half days ago.
“I sleep with you, Mommy, okay?”
I wipe away tears, then press a kiss to the crown of her beautiful head. “You’ll sleep in the car tonight,” I tell her.
Another yawn. “Okay.”
Leaving feels urgent now that I know Micah’s not coming back. I felt this way after my mother died, too—the need to keep moving, to escape, to never sit still. I’d used her meek life insurance to put myself through college at warp speed. Then, before I knew it, Micah and I were getting married, then trying month after month after month for a baby. Then after medication after medication, Elizabella came, then more trying, more medication, then the twins . . .
Within minutes, Bella is asleep, winding a coil of hair around her finger, rubbing the hair with her thumb. I drape her favorite blanket over her tiny body and hope she stays asleep through the transfer down the stairs and to the car.
I carry suitcases down the stairs one at a time and stow them in the SUV. My body is recovering from the IVF retrieval. I’m not nearly as sore; I’m stronger, physically speaking, than I was a week ago. But emotionally? Mentally? I wonder if I’ll ever feel whole again.
The house feels empty now, with three suitcases and a laundry basket full of Bella’s toys and art supplies in the car. With my child asleep upstairs, everything is quiet and still. Funeral-like.
I have a long night ahead of me. I sit for a moment at the breakfast table and stare out at the dusky sky, a private mourning session between me and the great beyond, the sky that stole my forever when it swallowed up my husband.
I crack open a window. Take it all in.
A faint hint of smoke drifts in on a chilly breeze.
I stiffen and glance across the eleventh fairway. Where is the smoke coming from? It’s distinctly cigarette smoke. Not from a grill or a bonfire.
But I don’t see anyone on the course.
I crank the window closed and lower the blinds.
It’s time to leave.