“Thus, the hair. It’s exhausting correcting people all the time. I’m Emily.”
“Veronica Cavanaugh. I live . . .” Do I live there now? I clear my throat. “I’m staying in the house through the alley.”
Emily tosses her head toward the innards of the house, which is bright and airy. “C’mon in.”
Bella sticks by my side, but when Andrea pulls out a bin of crayons, she inches across the room and decides to trust the girl with the purple hair.
“It’s okay,” I tell her. “Go ahead.”
I follow Emily around a corner.
Christian is in the kitchen, feet propped up on a bright-blue table—it steals my breath for a second; Mama once painted our table that same blue—situated beneath a window, laptop open in front of him. He’s staring out the window, massaging his chin—cleanly shaven today—and appears to be deep in thought.
“Hi, Uncle Chris.”
“Hey, there.” His feet come down from the table, and he makes a move to stand up when he sees me.
“Sorry to drop in like this,” I say.
“You met my nieces.” He nods at Emily as she puts my casserole on the counter and leaves to join her sister and Elizabella.
“Yeah. They gave my head a little bit of a whirl. Thought I was seeing things for a minute there. With the hair . . .”
“They’ve been pulling that prank since they were in kindergarten. They’re good girls, though. They’re taking a gap year. You ever hear of such a thing?”
I start to nod. Lots of kids do it now.
“They take a year off, spend some time living in different places. So I thought . . . why not fly them in for the winter? Let them enjoy the weather.”
“Nice.”
“And with the holiday . . .”
I feel a frown coming on. Holiday? “Oh, that’s right. Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving.”
“Thanksgiving”—he chuckles a little—“is today.”
“Today?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
God, I’ve lost track of the days since we’ve been here. “Wow, and here I am dropping in on you on Thanksgiving. I’m sorry I—”
“This island has that effect on people.” His smile brightens his eyes. “Don’t worry about it.”
We’ve been here a week now. If I hadn’t caught sight of that brown sedan in my rearview mirror, I wonder if we would’ve made it to Plum Lake. How different our lives might have been, if we hadn’t found sanctuary here. Would we be sharing turkey with Shell and the father-in-law I’ve never met? Would she have allowed me to explain my side of the story, had we been standing face-to-face? Or would she have turned us away, considering she assumes I’m hiding something? Or worse, that I’m responsible for her son’s disappearance.
“Hey, you’re welcome to join us, if you don’t have plans,” Christian says. “Just me and my nieces.”
“I couldn’t impose.”
“What’s to impose? We’re just having squash—can you imagine requesting squash for Thanksgiving? But that’s my Emily—and whatever bakes for thirty minutes at three fifty.”
I feel a blush creeping over my cheeks. I didn’t make the casserole to finagle an invitation to dinner. Surely, he doesn’t think so, given I didn’t even know what day it was until he told me. “I . . . in return for dinner at Fogarty’s, I thought I’d . . . it’s just a simple casserole.”
He nods. “Thank you.”
“Well, you didn’t have to pay our tab.”
“Just seemed like you’d had a rough few days. Someone did that for me once, when I’d had a rough go, so I thought I’d pay it forward.”
“Speaking of rough days . . .”
Bella’s giggle silences me, as it reverberates throughout the house. I find myself smiling. Only a child can find happiness in the midst of this muddy river we’re trudging through.
“You want to take a walk?” he asks. “They’re good with kids, have younger sisters, a lot of experience babysitting.”
“I don’t know if she’ll allow it, but . . .” I take another peek into the adjacent room, where Bella is playing well with my neighbor’s nieces. And truthfully, I don’t want to leave her.
My conversation with Shell yesterday still has me feeling raw and vulnerable. And Guidry really shook me up with all his talk about overdosing and drowning.
And then Bella’s odd commentary, the things she knows . . . the man with the cigarette.
The thought of letting her out of my sight long enough for someone to swoop in and steal her away from me . . .
“Or we could talk here,” Christian suggests.
“I was just wondering . . . the cat.”
“Hmm.”
“You called him Papa Hemingway, but his tag says . . .” Now that I’m in the thick of this inquiry, I feel a little foolish, accusing my neighbor—a man who selflessly purchased my dinner our first night in town and flew his twin nieces out to the island during their gap year—of lying. Would a man so generous be snooping around my house and inventing reasons to be there? I’d guess not, but I’ve been wrong and fooled before.
“His name is James Brolin,” I say.
“You notice he has six toes on his left front paw?”
“I have, but . . .” I don’t see what that has to do with anything.
“He’s a Hemingway cat. Cats at the Hemingway estate sometimes have six toes.”
“Okay.”
“Hemingway named his cats after famous people, so six-toed cats on this island . . . people honor the tradition.”
“Oh.”
“But I think if you’re going to name a cat after a famous person, why not name the cat after the man who started the tradition? I call all six-toed cats Hemingway.”
I suppose it makes sense. But something is still off.
I think of the automatic feeder in the laundry room.
The few days’ worth of soiled cat litter in the art studio.
The matted fur on the cat’s back.
Either Christian is the worst cat sitter of the century, or he never had reason to be in the house.
And if he wasn’t really cat sitting, why was he there?
“I don’t mean to accuse.” I take a deep breath. “I’m just trying to figure out what happened before I got here, so if you wouldn’t mind, level with me. You weren’t really there to take care of the cat.”
“I was actually. Every once in a while, I refill the feeder, clean up after the little guy . . . oh. I didn’t get to it that day. You came, and I left before . . . I’m sorry you walked into such a mess.”
“It’s fine. I don’t mind changing the litter. I’m not worried about that.”
“I’m sure you’re capable, but to be honest with you, I’ve been busy, and I didn’t expect her to be gone this long.”
“Do you know the names of the boys—Tasha’s boys—who were living in that house?”
He shakes his head.
“Do you know any of the neighbors who might’ve?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know many people here. It’s a touristy city. People come and go. Some stay a week, maybe less. Lots of houses on this street are rented by different families week to week. Hard to keep up.”
“But Tasha asked you to watch her cat? You don’t know her children—”
“I met the little girl in the garden. Mimi-something-or-other. It was short for something. I never met any boys.”
Frustration builds inside me. How is it he can’t know anything about the woman who’d impose upon him to watch her cat? Indefinitely?
I pull my phone from its case, the strap of which is still looped around my wrist. “Maybe you can tell me . . .” I start swiping the screen, flipping through pictures until I land on a picture of Micah and our daughter. “Have you ever seen this guy?”
He takes the phone from me, licks his lips, and studies the screen. He glances up at me, but our eyes meet for only a moment before he redirects back to the picture. “This is your husband?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh.” His brow crinkles, and he’s about to look me in the eye, then averts his glance back to the screen.
A funny feeling swirls in my gut, as if my stomach is an empty gum-ball machine, slowly being filled, ball by ball ricocheting around my innards. And my cheeks are flaming hot.
“I’m sorry.” I take my phone back.
“Why are you sorry?”