“Kids?”
“They leave late June, come back late August. I feed Papa Hemingway, take care of things, you know, until she calls to tell me they’re back. Been a little worried, to tell you the truth. They’re not usually gone this long. They’re almost three months late.”
I’m nodding, as if I understand, but nothing makes sense right now. And my back is killing me, but Elizabella clings to me like a monkey to a tree. I can’t put her down.
“So if you’re here,” Christian says, “I guess you’ve decided to put the house on the market after all.”
“Hmm.” It’s a nice nondescript reply, I hope.
“I would’ve thought she would’ve at least come to pack her stuff. Or . . . or is that why you’re here?”
“I . . .”
“Sorry.” He puts up a hand, as if he’s halting traffic. “None of my business. You’d think she’d at least take her cat, but . . . you want him? Or you want me to take him?”
“I’ll . . .” My eye catches a series of framed photos on a long, narrow table tucked against the wall beneath the staircase. I glance at the photos, which appear to be black-and-white images of island-type sites—palm trees, a shoreline. “I don’t mind cats.”
“Well, if you change your mind . . . Hemingway and I are old buds by now. Never thought of getting a cat. A dog maybe, but—”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“If you need help slapping some paint on the walls, whatever, to help get the house ready, give me a call. You’ve got a crack in that pool that needs fixing.”
Of course there’s a pool with a house like this.
“I’ve got time. I’m retired.”
“Retired?” He doesn’t look a day past thirty-five.
“Semi. I’m a writer now. Well”—he shrugs—“to be honest, I do a lot more paddleboarding and surfing than writing.”
For a second or two, we stand there in awkward silence. I wonder if he’s trying to figure out a way to ask me to leave or maybe if I ought to be asking him. It’s my house. I don’t have anywhere else to go.
Elizabella squirms in my arms and murmurs, “Nini’s hungry.”
“I’d better get her something to eat,” I say. “Closest restaurant?”
“Follow Southard.” He karate-chops the air, demonstrating the straight path I ought to take. “It’ll take you directly to Old Town.”
I freeze in my tracks at the irony of it. For all my recent pining to return to Old Town in Chicago, I’ve ended up here, in Old Town, Key West.
“Plenty to choose from,” he’s saying, “once you hit Duval.”
I nod, hoping I don’t look like a deer caught in headlights.
“I’m heading out in a bit,” he continues, “if you want to tag along.”
“I think we’ll find it.”
“All right. Well, if you need anything . . .”
“Thank you.”
“I’m in the pink house. Follow the path through the backyard.”
“Thank you.”
He’s halfway down the hallway. I deduce he’s leaving through the back door.
I follow a few steps behind, to the kitchen, which is open to a living room. More picture frames line the built-in shelves there.
He barely lays a hand on the doorknob before he’s turning around. “Sorry to do this, but you said you had the deed? To the house?”
“Yes.”
“You mind if I see it? Not that I don’t believe you, but if someone showed up at my house claiming to own it, I’d want—”
“Of course.” I place a reluctant Elizabella atop the white marble countertop in the kitchen and drop my purse next to her. Carefully, I dig through the contents of the bag and extract only the deed.
He takes it from the envelope, gives it a glance—“That’s the real deal, all right”—and hands it back. The door is open now, and he’s breezing down the path between his door and mine. “If you need anything . . .” He neither turns around nor finishes his sentence, but he starts to whistle a low, soothing melody.
When he’s gone beyond the vines, I still hear his whistle. I lock the door.
“Well, Ellie-Belle.” I lower my forehead to hers. “Welcome to Key West.”
“Hungry.”
“We’ll find a market.” I kiss the tip of her nose. “Maybe some yummy fruit or—”
“Ronis.”
“I’m sure there’s macaroni in the Florida Keys. I’ll just bring in our things, and then we’ll get you some dinner.” I pull her off the countertop, to the floor. “Stay here, okay? We’ll look around together.”
My car keys still dangle from my index finger. I flip through the extra few keys I’d looped around the ring when I decided this was where I was heading, the keys Micah had hidden with a deed in our safe-deposit box.
I hope one of the keys unlocks this door. I’ll probably change the locks, anyway, but I need to lock the house in the meantime if we’re going to leave it to find someplace to eat dinner. Christian Renwick probably has a key I could borrow. He did say he’d help if I needed anything.
But how could I explain my not having a key to a house I own?
I test the first key.
No dice.
The second won’t even go in.
The third slides in without effort and turns the tumbler. My initial feeling of elation dampens nearly instantly.
Micah had a key to this house. He kept it in our safe-deposit box, in a bank that holds all the accounts we shared.
I bite my lip.
Why did he keep so many secrets from me?
And why did I never think to question anything?
My heart is tearing into pieces. One part longs to feel his arms around me, his whisper in my ear that everything is going to be all right, that we’ll have more children. We still have two frozen at the lab. All it takes is one.
Another part, however, is gushing with the stab of betrayal. What else was he hiding? And why?
“Daddy.”
I spin around when I hear Elizabella’s giggle, but she isn’t in the kitchen where I told her to stay. “Bella?”
“Nini! It’s Daddy!”
Chapter 21
“Daddy, Daddy, and Daddy.”
I follow the sound of Bella’s joyful voice and trek back down the hallway. Through the kitchen. To a small family room strewn with boxy rattan furniture with turquoise cushions.
Elizabella is on her tiptoes at the built-in cabinetry and shelves, all painted a light gray. Her little fingers grip the edge of the wooden countertop as she struggles to see the pictures on the shelves higher than her line of sight.
Assuming they’re more of the same types of pictures as in the hallway—starfish and seashells, maybe—I hardly give them a glance as I lean in closer and wrap an arm around her waist. “No, baby. That’s not . . .” I shut up. There’s a man in the photograph. He’s shown only in profile, looking down at an infant. The baby has a hand on the man’s closely cropped beard. It’s an image that warms my heart. I have a similar picture of Micah holding Elizabella this way in the weeks after she was born, only Micah shaves every day and never grew facial hair.
Just once, actually. When I was pregnant with Bella.
But then I zero in on the eyes of the man in the picture, on the shape of the nose. It’s . . .
“Daddy.” Bella points to the picture on the next shelf up.
My heart kicks into high gear.
I feel dizzy.
“Yeah. That’s Daddy.”
In the second photo, he’s posing on the beach with two beautiful boys—they might be twins, about four years old, maybe five—and in other pictures, he’s with a gorgeous girl, about seven, with strawberry-blonde hair.
“Nini.” Elizabella points to the girl.
Slivers of ice needle my spine. My gaze dances over the frames. The little girl, the twins.
I miscarried twin boys . . . but Micah has them anyway.
Unless . . . did I imagine it all?
I’m losing it. I did miscarry, didn’t I?
My head spins in an alternate universe where Elizabella is seven and her unborn brothers are four, and they’re the ones posing in the pictures with the man I married. Not these children. These strangers.
I think I’m going to die.
I grip Elizabella’s hand and pull her away from the display on the shelves, tuck her behind my body so she can’t see what her father has done.