“You informed the responding officer your husband is dead.”
“Yes.” I’m pacing through the hallway now. “Is that classified information?”
A long pause precedes his clearing his throat. “We received the FAA’s investigation report about the small plane crash off the coast of Florida.”
“Right.” None of this is news.
“If I may ask,” Guidry says. “You keep insisting your husband is dead, when we don’t know where he is. You’ve told Claudette Winters your husband is dead. You told your mother-in-law his body would be sent to Paxon Funeral Home and Crematorium, that you’d plan his memorial service. You’ve inferred, when speaking with me, you don’t expect him back. You confirmed it with Officer Laughlin.”
“Detective, I’m . . . I’m sorry. I’m confused. Am I not supposed to . . . ?”
“You’re telling people he’s dead before we have confirmation of that fact.”
“But I thought . . . the federal agents . . . they visited me at home. They told me Micah was dead. Is that not confirmation?”
“Veronica.”
“I told you about the agent. He was at the bank. He was in the kitchen, remember?”
“No federal agents have been assigned to your husband’s case.”
My knees weaken. I slump against the walls in the hallway. “But they were there. At my house. Claudette was there. She can verify what they said.”
I stop myself. Actually, no. She wasn’t there for the conversation. She took the kids to the screened porch while I sat down with two men I’d assumed were federal agents. “I didn’t invent this, detective.”
Or did I? Haven’t I had trouble the past few days determining what’s real and what’s imagined?
Just like Mama at the end, when she told me the voices in her head wanted her to smash my head in with a baseball bat while I slept.
A sob catches in my throat.
What’s happening to me?
What if my entire marriage—my entire life—has been nothing more than illusion? Drama created in my head?
“Why would I . . . ,” I whisper. “Can you give me one good reason why I would prefer to think my husband is dead?”
“I can give you two and a half million reasons.”
“I didn’t even know about the insurance policy.” I’m pleading with him. “And I don’t want it. I don’t want any of it. His life is worth more than that money.” I wipe tears from my eyes. “I wish I had him back. Because then he could explain to you all of the things I don’t know enough about to explain.”
“That’s why you want him back?”
“I need you to be on my side, detective. I’ve been cooperative. I’ve answered your questions, and I’ve called you several times proactively. I’ve opened my home to you and your team and done everything I can to help you get to the bottom of this, and you still insist I’m capable of doing the unthinkable.”
“Say your husband has a secret.”
My heart bottoms out in my gut. He knows. He knows about the children who used to live in this house, and because I didn’t have the chance to tell him, he’s going to think the worst of me. He’s going to think I had motive to make my husband disappear.
Couple that with my telling everyone my husband is dead when maybe he isn’t—he might still be alive—and I’m surprised I’m not in cuffs yet.
“Say your husband tells someone—his mother, maybe, his ex-girlfriend—that if you ever found out about this secret, you’d be angry enough to kill him.”
Oh God, God, God.
“Now say I look into your past. I see the only person close to you before you met your husband—”
Mama.
“She died under mysterious circumstances.”
I can’t answer his accusations. But he’s wrong. I didn’t have anything to do with my mother’s death, and I didn’t have anything to do with whatever happened to Micah.
Guidry continues: “The old case file from Maywood PD suggests something more may have been going on in your mother’s house than you let on. You didn’t tell me about any of that, either.”
My stomach turns, and sweat breaks on my brow. It was so long ago, so far away, but suddenly, I’m back there: My mother is sitting at the table, plying wires and beadwork into art. And out of nowhere, she whips the pliers at my head. She’s hissing like a rabid cat, and I’m terrified. Screaming.
“Veronica.”
I blink.
“You tell me,” Guidry says. “What am I supposed to think?”
I breathe through the confusion, focusing on a crack in the plaster that runs up the wall opposite the stairs.
I startle when I hear Bella’s giggle floating down from her room. “Nini, wake up. Connor’s being silly.”
Connor?
I pull myself to my feet.
Bella is still talking: “Wake up, Nini. Connor’s so silly!”
Does my daughter have another imaginary friend? How many “friends” are normal? Should one friend make an exit before another arrives?
“Veronica?” Guidry raises his voice.
“Yeah, I’m here.” Quietly, I walk up the stairs.
“I may just head down to discuss a few things with you,” the detective says. “About your mother. About Micah. You aren’t planning on going anywhere, are you?”
“You mistake me for someone who has somewhere else to go.”
“There were three bodies identified in the plane crash. They’re not releasing the names of the victims, but your husband is not among them.”
My sob escapes in a hiccup. I should be relieved he’s alive. Grateful. But I’m not. As horrible as it felt hearing his body had been discovered, will it be worse to go on living, possibly for years, without knowing what happened to him? And even if I had him back, I wouldn’t have the man I thought he was. He’s an illusion.
“You’re telling me,” I say on broken breath, “that no federal agents came to my house and declared him dead.”
“Who visited you that day? Why did you believe them?”
“They had badges.” But did they? I don’t remember. Claudette answered the door. “They looked official. They were wearing suits. Listen. I can sit down with you and describe them. The tall one, in particular. I’ve seen him twice now. Lincoln was his name.”
I peek in on Elizabella. In her left hand, she’s holding a little boy figure. In her right, the little girl. She’s talking to Connor and Nini. Just role-playing with her toys.
“Veronica? Have you been in touch with your husband?”
Fresh tears sprout in my eyes. “No.”
Guidry’s commentary echoes in my head: Say your husband tells someone—his mother, maybe his ex-girlfriend—that if you ever found out about this secret, you’d be angry enough to kill him . . .
“But you’ve talked to Shell,” I say.
“She says she didn’t know about the house in the Keys.”
“I already told you. I didn’t even know.”
He lets another unspoken accusation hang in the air.
“I was going to tell her about the house once we settled in. I was going to ask her to come.”
“Really.”
“And I’ve been calling and calling, and she hasn’t called back.”
“Can you save me some time, Veronica? Help me out?”
“I’ll do whatever I can to help. You know that.”
“You know what my men found on the hard drive of that desktop?”
“Not much, I imagine. Elizabella uses it to play her alphabet games, her counting games.”
“Your log in was the primary, the one used most often.”
This silences me for a second. Even if I had logged Bella onto the computer, she has her own separate icon to click on to gain Internet access. I would’ve logged on using her sign in. “That’s news to me.”
He continues. “You searched for—”
“No. If Micah logged in with my account, I can’t verify it. But I’m telling you that I have not had occasion to sit and browse the Internet since my daughter was born. I have a laptop. I need to be mobile because my daughter is mobile. You’re welcome to search it, too. I can send it or drop it off at the station here. But whatever you’ve found, however you assume it was me who navigated there, I didn’t do it.”
“You shared your log-in information with your husband?”