Tears burn my eyes, as the scent of my husband’s favorite cologne grows stronger and stronger with every step.
I enter every bedroom, open closet doors, bathroom doors. I shove aside shower curtains and open linen cabinets, and if I could find a way to look under beds with a sleeping child in my arms, I would do that, too. I crouch as best I can and lift bed skirts. The beds in the boys’ room are on pedestals with drawers beneath, but just to be sure, I yank comforters off the mattresses.
Clear, clear, clear.
I hold my breath as I enter the master bedroom, where the scent of Sport is strongest.
But I don’t find him here, either.
“Micah?”
No answer.
There’s not a wrinkle in the duvet. Not a single impression of a foot in the area rug.
I carefully lay Bella on the bed and curl up next to her.
Tears fall silently to my pillow.
He’s not here, but I didn’t know until now just how badly I wanted him to be waiting beyond the door for us. As angry as I am with him, and despite all the secrets he withheld, all the babies he’s kissed while I’ve been shooting my system full of fertility medications, he’ll always be part of me.
And he’s gone.
Yet the scent of him lingers in the air.
“I miss you,” I say to no one as I drift off to sleep. “You have to come home.”
Love you, Nicki-girl.
“Love you, too.”
Am I imagining things? Wanting him so badly to show up that I’m conjuring him out of thin air?
But he seems so real, almost tangible, as if I could reach out and touch him in the empty spaces around me.
Logically, I know it isn’t possible, but he’s here with me, as if he’s part of my aura, part of every inhalation, part of every breath of breeze off the Atlantic, where the plane went down.
The plane he wasn’t flying.
The plane in which his body wasn’t found.
I used to smell Mama in the air, too.
After she died.
Chapter 35
December 4
Here on this island, days pass, one into the next, in a slow, steady, eighty-some degrees. More hours of daylight means more fruitful hours for a woman with too many items on her to-do list, and tackling that list helps me take my mind off Micah’s secrets, which are slowly revealing themselves.
It feels like a violation of someone else’s privacy—Natasha’s—but I comb through every detail of every item I pack, on the off chance it will tell me something about her life these days . . . and in turn, something about my husband.
Sometimes, I’ll come across some trinket, and it’ll leave me tumbling back in time to the days Natasha and I were inseparable. Rollerblades remind me of skating down Lake Shore Drive, eating street-vendor hot dogs while rolling our way along the path. She always asked for ketchup, although everyone knows a true Chicago dog doesn’t come with ketchup.
You’re saying the rest of the city is wrong, I said.
Wrong about ketchup? Yes!
I’ve tried again and again to reach her through social media, but she hasn’t even opened the messages I’ve sent. I wish she’d left her number with Claudette. If only I could reach her, I might know more about what happened to Micah.
Where is he?
Why did he go?
In the early mornings, when I’m still asleep, I sometimes feel him with me. But then the warmth subsides into resentment.
He must know the suspicion he’s putting on me by staying away.
He must not have loved me the way I loved him.
Sometimes, when I allow that realization to swallow me, when I’m feeling sorry for myself, I sit at the potter’s wheel, failing pot after pot, and stare out the window long enough to imagine the Florida blooms withering, the landscape turning gray and misty, the sky clouding over in a permanent winter. When I blink away the glaze in my eyes, however, everything is vibrant and purple and pink and yellow again, and I forge ahead.
Boxes filled with another woman’s belongings find their way to the garage, seemingly of their own volition. I pack a few, carry a few out, and the next I know, half the garage is filled, and hours have passed, and Elizabella is happily riding her new tricycle—sometimes chasing Nini, sometimes with Nini in pursuit—around the roundabout drive. She smells of sunscreen and ocean air, always, and she seems to sleep better at night. Since our arrival, I haven’t discovered her in the midst of a tea party at three in the morning, and it isn’t because I’ve removed toys from her room—Thank you, Dr. Russo—but because this place agrees with her, and she with it.
From my seated position on the front porch steps, with a glass of iced tea sweating on the planks beside me, I watch her ride around and around. I’m suddenly aware that despite all the motion of the past few weeks, we’re standing still, in a sense.
Is Micah out there somewhere? When the police locate him, will I be preparing divorce papers or planning a funeral? Both options are equally abhorrent. I’m perpetually on a pendulum, and we can’t keep swinging back and forth like this. At some point, we have to move on. We have to live normal lives.
The lawyer Christian referred me to suggested I file for divorce. It’s better to distance myself if he’s involved in something illegal. Without a definitive answer as to what happened to Micah, the insurance company isn’t going to pay out even the small policy we purchased shortly after we married. Without a divorce decree, I can’t collect child support, should Micah resurface one day.
I would’ve been better off had he divorced me. The legal system could have protected me through the process. But because he disappeared, I’m out of luck. The authorities can’t make a man support his child, if they can’t find the man.
The saving grace is that I own this house. I found the closing documents in a drawer in the kitchen. Along with the power of attorney I signed over to my husband, there’s a refusal of homestead rights form. Micah signed it at the closing, so he has no legal claim to this property. The lawyer said this house should be free and clear of any of Micah’s debts. Translation: it’s mine, and Micah thought to protect it the moment we purchased it.
I can make things work here if I can find a job. I haven’t worked in almost five years, and it took a while to get a permanent position out of college, so I have a whopping three years of experience on my résumé. Plus, the island is less than seven and a half square miles. Employment opportunities have to be limited.
But the funds from the safe-deposit box are dwindling with every trip to Home Depot, and debts in Chicago are accruing. I have to find something.
“Nini, faster!” Elizabella should be in preschool. She should be socializing with real children, not with made-up ones who live in her head.
I snap a picture on my phone to commemorate this moment. She’s happy.
Normally, I’d forward the picture to Micah and maybe his mother, but under the circumstances . . .
Shell thinks I’m responsible for Micah’s disappearance. I’ve stopped trying to connect with her. She’ll come to her senses when she stops blaming me. I can’t send her a casual text until then.
Well, why not?
Maybe an incoming text will jump-start some activity on Micah’s phone. Knowing he won’t answer hasn’t stopped me from calling every day just in case.
I forward the picture of Bella to both of them on the same thread.
The moment I send it, however, I realize it might look bad. Guidry all but accused me of being in touch with my husband—he thinks I know where Micah is, that I’m going to meet up with him in Italy, Switzerland, or wherever else he was searching with my log in for houses.
I dial Guidry’s cell phone.
“Mrs. Cavanaugh,” he says. “Good afternoon.”
“Hello, Detective.” I wait for him to accuse me of something, but when no accusations come, I continue with my reasons for calling. “Do you have any news?”