“I’m following up on the boys’ names you offered up last week. There is no record of any children with the last name of Cavanaugh or Markham in the Key West school system.”
I’d told him about Bella including Connor and Brendan in her games, as well as my theory that she met a little girl named Mimi and is mispronouncing it as Nini. The longer things carry on without Guidry finding answers, though, the more I’m certain he’s going to accuse me of sending him on a wild goose chase.
“I’m searching birth records here,” he continues. “And in Florida. It took some time, but I may have hit on something.”
“Good. You’ll let me know?”
“I’m e-mailing Key West PD. Officer Laughlin should be by sometime this afternoon to show you what I’ve got.”
“Okay.”
“The other searches are proving more difficult. We’ve followed up with real estate agents in Europe, but there are no records of a Micah Cavanaugh inquiring about properties. Still no word on any unidentified John Does in the tri-state area, and I’m still waiting for more details about whether he applied for employment in Europe. But as far as whether anyone has confirmed sightings of your husband since he left . . .”
I’m holding my breath, hoping against all that’s holy that someone has seen him.
“We have none.”
I release the breath. “I want you to know I texted a picture of Bella to Micah’s phone and to his mother’s. I thought if either replies . . . you know, maybe it’ll tell us something.”
“Let me know what happens.”
“I will. But if Micah’s choosing to be gone, he has a good reason, and Shell won’t take my calls.”
After a pause, Guidry clears his throat. “You wouldn’t, by any chance, want to tell me what business you had at a lawyer’s office, would you?”
Every time he hits me sidelong with something like this, it makes my head spin.
“I told you I’d have eyes on you,” he says.
“I saw a lawyer, yes.”
“You’re looking to get your ducks in a row.” The words alone aren’t terribly accusatory, but based on his tone, he may as well have said you’re covering your ass, aren’t you?
“Is there any question in your mind,” I say, “that whatever happened to Micah, he’s put me in a difficult position? That whatever Micah is doing now, it’s pretty apparent that what he was doing before is unacceptable? I have to protect myself. Whether he’s setting me up or whether he’s left me for another woman. Technically, I don’t even have a home to go home to because my father-in-law owns it. No matter what comes to pass, I have to protect my daughter.”
“That’s valid,” he says. “I finally got a track on that phone call you got . . . the caller who told you to listen to your daughter?”
“Yeah?”
“Turns out”—he coughs a dry cough—“the number has a Key West area code . . . and it’s registered to you.”
“What?”
“The number is—”
“No, no, I heard you. But how is that possible?”
“Did you know you can sync a phone line with a computer and generate calls even if you’re not holding the phone in your hand? You could’ve made that call to yourself.”
I feel a sickening drop in my gut.
A dramatic pause precedes “How are things at God Land?” There’s a sarcastic lilt and an emphasis on the name of the house, which tells me he isn’t merely wondering how things are going.
Great. I wonder if I forgot to tell him the house I didn’t know I owned ended up bearing the name of the place my daughter insisted her father had gone. If he’s had eyes on me, I’m sure the detail has found its way back to him by now. No wonder he thinks I’m hiding something. My truth is stranger than fiction.
“I’m hanging in there.”
And I realize it’s true. Elizabella ventures farther down the driveway, calling to Nini to hurry up. She’s still in my sight, not anywhere near the road, but she’s inching farther from the house. I stand to follow her.
“When are you planning to come back, Veronica? Maybe we could discuss this in person. Or are you making a clean break from the life you led here?”
Who could blame me if I was?
“Considering Mick owns the place in the Shadowlands, and you already had a second phone, with the Key West area code, established in your name—”
“I didn’t establish anything. Do you think I would call myself, knowing you could trace the call’s origin even if I’d blocked the number, then report it? Why would I do such a thing?”
“To convince me you were scared? To give yourself good reason to leave town? Who knows.”
“You think I’d go through all the trouble of—”
“The call originated through a cell tower immediately to the south of the Shadowlands. The mobile number is registered to your name. What am I supposed to think when you skip town after I asked you to stay?”
“I’m not avoiding you.” I’m pacing on the driveway now. “I’m making the best of a shitty situation, but of course I’ll come back. I have to at least clean out my closets, don’t I, before my father-in-law sells the house? Or is the bank entitled to take my socks, too, when they assume ownership? I’m sure you’ve been through the place top to bottom by now. If I were hiding anything, you’d know.”
He’s silent.
“Did you find my Xanax?”
“No.”
“So he must have taken it with him.”
“One of you took it, if you insist it was there. Have you received any more calls from the blocked number?”
“No.”
“I’ll let you know if we come up with anything,” Guidry says. “In the meantime, if you think of anything else you maybe forgot to tell me . . .”
I look up again, to catch sight of my daughter, but all I see is her tricycle, overturned, wheels spinning, abandoned on the driveway.
I drop the phone.
Chapter 36
She was right here.
Where could she have disappeared to in the blink of an eye?
Her weeks-old commentary revisits me now: I’m gonna go be with Daddy.
“Elizabella!”
This happened at Centennial Park, too. Right before my world imploded, I lost sight of her.
“She’s okay,” I say to myself, but I’m not convinced. “She’s okay. She’s okay.” She has to be.
If I don’t see her in a second or two, I’ll call the police. She’s on an island. She can’t go far.
But could someone leave with her? By boat maybe?
“Bella!” My throat is raw from screaming, and my vocal chords vibrate. “Bella!”
I hear her in the distance: “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!”
The modicum of relief at hearing her voice quickly trips back into panic when I realize that if he’s here, he may want our daughter more than he wants to be back in my life. At the bend in the drive, halfway between my front door and Elizabeth Street, beneath the archway, I spin in every direction, praying for a glimpse of her high ponytail, her pink-and-white sundress. “Bella!”
“Not Daddy, not Daddy!”
Oh no. Who has my baby?
“Elizabella!”
A moment later, her shrieking giggle rings in my ears. “Again, again!”
“Bella!” I scream.
“We’ve got her.”
I turn toward the voice behind me and see Christian Renwick approaching up the sidewalk near the road. Several paces behind are his nieces, Emily and Andrea, each holding one of Bella’s hands, playing one of her favorite games: “One, two, three, fly!”
I brush past him and run to my daughter, who rebounds into my arms after landing. “Mommy!”
“Bella, you can’t run away like that! You can’t just—”
She shrieks again and plants a sloppy kiss on my cheek. “Saw Daddy,” she whispers.
I brush her hair from her cheeks to look her in the eye. “What did you say?”
“I . . . saw . . . Daddy.”
“What? Where, Bella? Tell Mommy.”
“I think she may have mistaken me for . . .” Christian’s words trail off when I meet his gaze. “She came running after us, yelling for her father.”
I close my eyes to get my bearings and take a few deep breaths to calm the beating of my rampant heart. I try to picture Micah, but for the first time since I met him at Lollapalooza when I was twenty years old, I can’t remember his face, can’t remember his eyes, his lips. The only face that enters my mind is one I just saw: Christian’s.