The wind is temporarily knocked out of me. So he might be dead. “Okay.” I glance at my daughter—I don’t want her to hear this—but she’s happily coloring.
“But certain things can also give us false positives, such as excessive cigarette smoke in an enclosed space, and a car would certainly qualify. So while the tests are being done, and before I definitively go on thinking it’s blood . . . Have you ever known your husband to be a smoker, Veronica?”
Is there any way he could have hidden it from me? “No.” But lately, I’ve been wondering. The glow of the light on the fairway . . . the butt in the grass this morning . . .
Was I so wrapped up in fertility treatments that I didn’t notice my husband had picked up a habit?
An officer on the wicker says, “Do you know where your daddy is?”
I interject: “Please don’t interrogate my daughter about—”
“My daddy came to see me last night,” Bella announces to the officers keeping her company.
“What did you say, Bella?” I meander toward her.
She points to her drawings. “He says we’re going to be by the dolphins.”
My innards go hollow under the pressure of Guidry’s stare. I ask Bella for clarification: “Have you ever been by the dolphins?”
“No, Mommy. Nini goed there once.”
“With your daddy?”
“That’s what he said.”
“When did he . . . Bella, when did he tell you that?”
“I told you, Mommy. He kissed me bye-bye on the nose again.”
“Something you want to tell me, Veronica?” Guidry clicks his pen open and closed.
I spy the bottle of rum on the countertop, its blue ribbon daring me to numb the pain. How much rum could make me forget? How much could distort my reality?
Was it a dream? Or was Micah here? And who put the rum on my porch, welcoming me to the neighborhood, if not Christian?
I rush to the back door, throw it open, and lunge toward the grass, where I saw the cigarette butt. Maybe they can test the butt for saliva samples and prove it’s Micah’s.
Or maybe it isn’t. Maybe it was someone else smoking out here last night, every night for all I know, but even then, the police will know I’m not crazy, that I’m not putting crazy ideas into my child’s head.
I have to find it.
On my hands and knees now, I rake through the blades in search of what I know I saw. What I’m sure Christian saw, too.
But whether or not it’s here now—What happened to it? Did a gecko run off with it?—I know it was here five minutes ago!
Or maybe I really am seeing things, hearing things.
Maybe I really am losing my mind.
“Mommy?”
Seeing me like this must be frightening for Bella.
All of this must be terrifying.
What will happen to my daughter if I’m really crazy?
“Veronica.” Guidry places a hand on my shoulder. “If you don’t talk to me, we don’t get to the bottom of this.”
Maybe I’m crazy. Maybe I’m not.
Maybe I did something in a fit of rage that I don’t remember.
Or maybe I’m a victim of circumstance.
The only way to make it all stop is to tell Guidry everything I can possibly think to tell him. Even if I know it’s going to make me look crazy, even if I know it’ll make me look guilty.
“I had a dream.” I wipe away tears with the back of my hand. “At least I thought it was a dream. But then, considering what Bella said . . .”
“Maybe someone’s putting ideas in her head.”
Through tears, I meet the detective’s stare. “You think it’s me. That I’m putting ideas into her head.”
“You think it’s Micah,” he counters, deadpan.
“Do you think there’s a chance he was here? That he’s running from something, and he’s trying to lure me to run with him?”
“Anything’s possible.” Guidry nods. “Tell me why you ask.”
“My dream. Micah was in it. He kept saying something about blue. About the color blue.”
“Blue.”
“And Shell . . . maybe she knows where Micah is, maybe she knows he’s coming for us. I keep going over it in my mind, and we grieved together on the phone when I told her he was dead, but when I first told her about Micah’s being missing, she was sort of casual about it.”
“Casual?”
“If anyone had called me with the news that Bella didn’t come home, I would’ve been halfway to the airport and on my way home, but Shell was rational.”
He nods.
“And my neighbor, Claudette . . . she sent me a picture of Natasha Markham on my doorstep. I haven’t seen her since college, and she showed up right after Micah left. She told Claudette she’d left me a message, but when I called the voice mail at Shadowlands, there weren’t any messages. None. Not even a telemarketer. Someone must have retrieved the messages and deleted them.”
“Micah?”
“Or someone trying to follow his trail. Someone with access to the house. And his name is on those boys’ birth certificates . . .”
“I’m sure that was a hard thing to face.”
“And I keep thinking I’m seeing someone smoking outside. It happened here. It happened back home.”
“Can I get a description?”
“Of what? A shadow? The little round orange flicker of light you see when someone inhales through a cigarette? If I could describe him, I wouldn’t be worried that I’d imagined it. And the whispering caller . . . that’s twice now it’s happened to me and—”
“Mmm-hmmm.”
“And this morning, I opened the kiln—”
“The kiln?”
“There’s a kiln here, yes, which is weird enough on its own. But I tried to make a few pots, and this morning, when I opened the kiln, there was ash. And I found charred bundles of money under the kiln, so I’m scared now. What if I burned the money Micah stole from his father? Or what if he stashed it there to pay debts? I mean, he didn’t have a job, right? So where’d all the cash come from?”
“I’ll need what’s left. It might be traceable.”
“There’s not much, but I put it aside for you. And he’d been using his father’s social security number, at least to buy a house, right? All of this . . . it has to mean something. Why would he hide all this cash? Why would Bella say these things? That her father came back for her, that he’s taking her by the dolphins? It doesn’t make sense unless she’s seen him.”
Daddy said Nini goed there once.
“We need to find Nini,” I tell Guidry.
“You think your daughter’s imaginary friend has something to do with this.”
“Yes.”
He sighs and shakes his head in muted exasperation.
“I think Nini is a real little girl. I think Bella met her with her father at some point, and the only way she can make sense of this confusing situation is to bring the most relatable part—a little girl—with her wherever she goes. A few days after we first got here, she started talking about Connor and Brendan. Then you sent Laughlin over with birth certificates for Connor and Brendan. You need to find out if Gabrielle had a daughter. Even if she isn’t Micah’s daughter, Elizabella might have met her at some point. Or Natasha Markham. Does she have a little girl with red hair?”
“First”—Guidry shakes his head—“Natasha does have a little girl, so there’s a possible correlation there.”
“Have they been here? To this house?”
“From time to time, yes.”
I remember Micah’s mocking my concern over our daughter’s imaginary friend. And if he knew Natasha was spending time here and if he introduced Bella to Natasha’s daughter . . . Would he rather I fear I’m crazy—or that our daughter is—than explaining? But I wouldn’t have understood. How could he have told me he’d been seeing his ex-girlfriend?
“Second,” Guidry continues, “Gabrielle and her two sons—Micah’s sons—died in the plane crash off the coast of Florida.”
My fingers are numb.
“Seems they, too, spent time on this island from time to time.”
I think of the art supplies, the kiln, and my reluctance to believe Natasha might have had any occasion to use these items. But if Gabrielle was here, maybe she did use these things.
“Veronica?”
I snap out of it and meet Guidry’s gaze. “Who was flying the plane?”
“That’s a good question. Only three bodies were discovered. Could be the pilot parachuted out. Could be the pilot’s body is lost at sea.”