“Some concerns,” Guidry says when she’s on her way to her table. This time, his gaze settles directly on me. It’s an uncomfortable, thousand-mile deadpan that tells me he could win a staring contest with a corpse.
My heart tightens, and tears storm down my cheeks. I drop my head into my hands, if only to escape the intensity of the stare, which feels accusatory, demanding.
“Your daughter knows something, and she’s trying to communicate it. What I want to know is whether she learned the secret from you.”
I snap my gaze up to his. “Are you saying—”
“Has she ever been on vacation with you? Along the shore of Lake Michigan, perhaps? Ever been to the ocean?”
“She’s seen Lake Michigan—of course, she’s seen it—and Micah took her to his family’s cottage once.”
“You didn’t go.”
“No.” I don’t tell him it was because I’d checked myself into a recovery retreat after the miscarriage. I don’t tell him it was because I thought I was losing my grip on reality. “But it’s on a tiny lake in northern Wisconsin.”
“Any chance she means God’s country?” Guidry licks his lips and squints at me, as if he can bore into my brain with his eyes and learn the truth. “It’s a common euphemism for northern Wisconsin.”
“If he were in Wisconsin, he would’ve told me he was going to Wisconsin. And besides, this isn’t the best time of year to be heading up there.”
“Any chance he called and you missed the call?”
“We’ve been home all day, waiting for the phone to ring. I can’t imagine . . .” My head is spinning and pounding and aching, but I try to think. “We stopped at the park after school the day before yesterday. My friend Claudette and her kids were there . . .” I run through the past two days’ events, offering as much detail as possible, and even admitting that I let Bella sleep last night in the soft, velveteen dress she’d worn to school—that she’d been wearing it since the morning Micah left.
“So your daughter was out of your sight the day before yesterday while you were on the phone with the embryology lab at the park, again while you were napping, and once more yesterday, while you spoke with Diamond Corporation on your screened porch. No one else has seen her, to your knowledge. No one else who may be putting these thoughts and images into her head.”
I nod. The detective is a blurry mass through my tears. The tissues in my hands are drenched with snot, but I wipe them against my eyes anyway. “I’m sorry. It’s been a tough couple of days with Micah’s going MIA, the news from the lab . . .”
Guidry gives me a nearly imperceptible nod.
“Are you going to find my husband?”
He squints at me. “Yes.”
I let out a violent, relieving sob. “Thank you.”
“As long as you tell me everything I need to know.”
“Of course, I’ll—”
He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a small leather billfold, from which he extracts a crisp business card. “This number here”—he points to the one on the very bottom—“is my personal cell phone. You think of anything—anything at all—you call me.”
I sniffle and nod. “Bella told me . . . she has an active imagination, but she said something about there being a man in the kitchen. When she was little.”
“Not recently?”
“Well, she said it recently, but she said it happened when she was little.”
“She ever say anything about that before?”
“No.”
“You have reason to believe anyone could’ve been in your kitchen?”
I think of the rare nights after the miscarriage I’d popped a sleeping pill and could’ve slept through someone coming in. I consider telling him about the feeling I had earlier, a glimpse of a memory about it happening in Old Town, but I don’t want him to think I’m losing it. I shake my head. “No.”
“You sure about that?”
“I just don’t know why she’d say it.”
“You’re in a gated community. We should have record of anyone coming in.”
“Unless they came in with the gate code. Or came through the county forest preserve. But we haven’t lived here very long. I wonder if she might even mean our kitchen in Old Town.”
“When did you leave Old Town?”
“This past spring.”
“Is there anyone who can help you out tonight? Anyone who can come stay with you while you wait for him to come home?”
“You think he’ll come home.”
For the first time, Detective Guidry cracks a smile. “I do.”
I hope he’s right, that I’ve overreacted, that I did contact the wrong company.
“Can you call your mother maybe?”
My heart plummets to the hollow of my gut. “I wish I could.”
He continues. “Even if she isn’t local—”
“She died when I was eighteen.”
“I’m sorry. Father? Siblings? Aunt? Cousins?”
I shake my head. There’s no one. I never knew my father, and when my mother died, I officially became a wolf without a pack.
“Your friend . . .” He checks his notes. “Claudette Winters. Give her a call maybe.”
I take a deep breath and mentally debate whether or not I should explain the difference between friends like my estranged college roommate and friends like my neighbor. Some friends you can entrust with anything and everything that crosses your heart and mind. Others, you tread carefully with, in order to decide what information to disclose. I just don’t know Claudette well enough yet to determine which of the two categories she falls into. However, given my lack of options here . . . “Yes. That’s a possibility.”
“Keep calling him, check credit card statements, cell phone records, what have you, for recent activity. Keep me informed. But in the meantime, you shouldn’t be alone. This IVF business sounds like quite an ordeal. Maybe that’s why your husband checked out. Maybe the news about this embryo—”
“He was gone by the time I got the call. He still doesn’t know.”
“Lieutenant?” The call comes from across the house.
Guidry raises a finger to delay whatever the beckoning officer needs, then pockets his notebook. “You’ll call Claudette Winters?”
“Sure.” I won’t do it tonight. I’m not together enough for a visit from Claudette. But I don’t see an end to the conversation without my acquiescing.
“Got a minute, Lieutenant?”
I’m already on my way to the great room when Guidry falls in step behind me.
Elizabella is sitting at her table with a uniformed officer, pointing out details in her drawings. “This is the water where his plane is. And over here is where the big house is, by the big boat. And here’s my daddy at God Land and my baby brothers, who went to God before they were born.”
“Where’s Nini?” the officer asks.
“Silly. Nini is on your lap.”
“On my lap?”
“She’s being good.”
“Is she usually naughty?”
“She gets us in trouble all the time.”
“And she’s the one who told you Daddy went to God?”
“Not to God. He’s at God Land.”
“Does Mommy know he’s at God Land?”
“Yes.”
“How does Mommy know?”
I stiffen. This officer is insinuating that I know what happened to my husband. Furthermore, that I’m responsible.
“She watched. He kissed me bye-bye, and she watched.”
Chapter 9
November 14
“I need to leave a message for Lieutenant Jason Guidry.” I say the name as articulately as I can, given I’m choking on tears. I pull the phone away for a split second, to blow my nose again.
“I can connect you to his voice mail,” the switchboard operator says, “but the schedule has him out until Tuesday.”
“Out? As in . . . on vacation?” I’ve tried his cell phone. I left three messages for him already. “How can he be on vacation when my husband is missing?”
No one can tell me Micah isn’t missing now. He was supposed to be home over twenty-four hours ago. There’s been no activity on his credit cards. No activity on his cell phone. And Diamond Corporation—I’m certain I’ve reached the correct company after calling at least seven others with similar names—still denies knowing him.
“Would you like his voice mail?”
After a stuttering inhalation, I say, “Yes. Thank you.” I wait for the machined voice to prompt me to leave a message.