“Ma. Ma. Ma,” he said.
I pointed at Teresa’s picture. “Mama,” I said. “That is Taylor’s Mama. She is with God and the angels.”
Taylor looked at Teresa’s photograph from boot camp in San Diego. She was wearing her Marine fatigues. He turned and pointed at me. “Ma. Ma. Ma. Ma.”
Something large swelled up in my throat and leaked out my eyes. Where would he get that? I had always been Kay Kay to him. Maybe he got it at Mother’s Day Out, where he saw other kids and their mommies.
“Now’s the time to ask me for a Porsche when you turn sixteen,” I advised him.
I gathered him up in my arms and rained kisses on his face, which tasted syrupy. No wonder Oso rarely left his side. So much for my mothering skills, I thought. The kid needed a face-washing. I wetted a paper towel and gave him a quick one. Riding an emotional high, I grabbed Oso’s leash and we headed out the door into the nippy exterior hallway. I pushed the stroller down the short sidewalk to street, then took a right instead of our usual left, feeling adventurous. I’d seen an elementary school just down the way. Elementary schools equal playgrounds.
We walked down a block of apartment buildings with narrow strips of grass and identical hedges, then came into a neighborhood with fall-brown front lawns and wider streets. My heart broke into song. I needed space to combat my cabin fever. I serenaded my boys with a few lines from Sheryl Crow’s “Soak Up the Sun,” missing Ava.
We passed a pretentious red-brick middle school with carefully cultivated ivy growing up its three-story façade. BMWs and Jaguars were delivering kids for an expensive day of private-school tutelage. Spoiled kids, I thought. My mother drove us to school in a wood-paneled station wagon.
Class hadn’t started yet, and on the far end of the school kids had congregated. The smoking corner. I heard youthful voices—the girls giggly and high-pitched, the boys yelling instead of talking—but the kids’ looks didn’t match them. It was like a trashiest-outfit competition, with stretchy midriff-baring tops à la Miley Cyrus, outfits that would have earned me two weeks in Connell Solitary. The boys were a mixed lot. Some were still pre-growth-spurt-short, and skinny. A few of them had facial hair and grown-man musculature. I couldn’t imagine Taylor at their age. Cigarette smoke wafted through the air, giving the corner a cheap pool-hall smell.
I averted my eyes and moved Taylor and Oso past as quickly as I could, but I watched through my peripheral vision. The action orbited around one boy in particular who was passing folded notes to some of the other kids. Or maybe they were packages.
And then it hit me. He was selling drugs. If I could see it, where were the cops? I leaned down and tipped the canopy of the stroller back and pressed my face into Taylor’s soft hair, thinking that the world was a dangerous place for kids. I detoured around a block then hurried back in the direction we’d come, trying to outrun my fears. We visited a city park instead, and I let Oso and Taylor play for an hour while I bit my nails down to the quick.
When we got back to the apartment, I put Taylor down for his nap and dialed my realtor. All night the night before, after I had recovered from my seasickness, Nick and I had agonized over the offer on Annalise and its unsettling implications. But we decided that Annalise was a unique property in a unique location, and buyers weren’t going to queue up at the gate bidding against each other.
Betsy answered.
“Tell the buyers yes,” I said, hating myself.
“That’s great,” she said. “I’ll get on it right now.”
We hung up.
I put three hotdogs in a pan of water and set it on the stove, then emptied a can of Wolf Brand Chili into a saucepan over another burner and turned the knobs to medium-high, but nothing happened. I flipped a light switch. Nada. The power was out. I sighed. It was like being home at Annalise. It made me miss her, in a wacky kind of way. I’d have to call the power company.
I scraped the food into Tupperware and tried to run water into the pans, but nothing happened when I pushed back the lever.
“Nooooo.”
It was ridiculous, like I had stepped through a time-space continuum into my rainforest kitchen. Next I’d have to kill a centipede.
My phone rang, playing the constant refrain of my life. It was Rashidi! I picked up.
“Rashidi?”
I heard static, then the call dropped. The universe had truly sent me back to the islands, through a wormhole to power outages, dropped calls, and empty cisterns.
The phone rang again, and I picked it up. “Rash?”
“Do I sound like Rashidi John to you?” Ava asked.
I couldn’t believe it was her. Maybe she wasn’t mad at me anymore. “Not so much.”
“Good. I hear your news about the house selling. Now that settled, you can come to New York with me.”
“Ava, it’s not going to happen,” I said.
The call ended. She was definitely still mad.
After Nick and I settled Taylor into bed that night, we finally had some us time. Nick lay on top of the covers in boxer briefs with stripes in the colors of a Tabasco bottle while I slipped on silky lavender pajama pants and a matching long-sleeved top with a pair of his tube socks. I flipped off the overhead light so the room was lit by the bedside lamp and plopped down facing him. I rested my head in my hand.
“Taylor called me Mama.”
“Oh, baby, that’s wonderful,” Nick said. He rolled up on his elbow and faced me. He touched the space between my eyebrows. “Why the lines?”
“I’m worried that it’s disrespectful to your sister.”
“I don’t think so. And he needs a real live mother. We won’t let him forget Teresa.”
“But what if the court rules against us?”
“It doesn’t matter. Even if they do, it won’t change anything.”
I was going to have to wrap my head around it. I was Mama to Taylor. It felt pretty good.
Nick rolled onto his back again and patted his shoulder. I positioned my pillow in the spot he’d patted and put my head half on it and half on his chest. It wasn’t just right yet, so I sat back up and repositioned it. It took three tries, but it was worth it. Nirvana.
“I love it when you do that,” Nick said. He spread my hair across his chest.
I shook my head. “I’m like a dog arranging its bed, and you know it.”
“A very beautiful dog that I love. Like an Irish setter.”
“You’re not supposed to agree with me.”
“A Pekingese?”
I thumped him on the chest. “Did you get anywhere today with Derek?”
Nick rubbed his chin. He had forgotten to shave that morning and his five o’clock shadow had a ten o’clock look to it. “Nothing solid yet, and it’s driving me crazy. I want to hurt him.” I tensed, and he added, “I won’t, of course, but I want to.”
“I understand.” I did, but I was still worried he might indulge in a little face-smashing if he got the chance. I told him about the kid I’d seen selling drugs to change the subject. “It’s scary to think how young these kids go bad, and how dangerous it makes the schools.”
“Very dangerous,” Nick said. “If he’s really selling, the supplier is probably lurking around, too.” The thought chilled me, and I burrowed against him.
“Where was it?” he asked.
“Parker-Johnson Prep.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. Why?”
He sat up on his elbows so I had to scooch off of him. There went my perfect spot. “That’s the school Derek’s little brother goes to.”
“I didn’t know he had one.”
“Yeah, he does. But Teresa said that when Derek’s parents cut him off, they cut him off from the brother, too. So there may not be a relationship.” He lay back down and I rooted around until I got comfortable on his shoulder again.
“Still, that’s a really unpleasant coincidence. I think I’ll scratch that route off our list.”
He turned his face down i
nto my hair. “Well, be careful. You’re precious to me.” He nudged my head in the other direction and nibbled at my neck. “You’re delicious, too.” He nibbled again. “Do you want me to shave?” He rubbed his stubble lightly against me.
“No, you’re fine. Your fancy moisturizer softens the whiskers.”
He rose up and turned off his lamp. “I really think we’ve talked enough for one night, don’t you?” he asked.
I smiled in the dark. “It’s OK when there’s nothing more to say to me.”
“What?” he asked, distracted by the serious business of liberating us from unnecessary clothing.
“Some song lyrics. You keep the world at bay for me.”
He kissed his way downward from my neck. “Hmmm?”
“I said I love it when you do that.”
I felt his lips curve upward against my skin. “That’s music to my ears.”
Chapter Forty-five
Over the next week, Nick tailed Derek as often as he could. I was a stakeout widow, but it gave me and my St. Marcos contractors time to get Annalise ready for the sale. I couldn’t believe how much effort and money it was going to take to close the deal, but I had committed.
I did get something important in return for my concession to the buyers on their punch-list items: a quick close, only three weeks from the date of the contract. A sulky Ava arranged for packing, pick-up, and shipment of our last few household items. She called late Friday afternoon to let me know the pallets were on their way.
That night, I woke up screaming again. Middle-of-the-night, horror-movie, scream-your-throat-raw screaming. Or so Nick told me, because I didn’t remember it.
“I grabbed you and you stopped, but you just stared out the window,” he said the next morning. “You scared me to death.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “Was it at three o’clock?” I already knew the answer.
“That’s the weird part. It was before midnight, eleven forty-seven, to be exact.”
It didn’t make sense. I would remember it if it had really happened, wouldn’t I? I’d never sleepwalked or anything like that before, so I tried to convince myself Nick was wrong, that he’d just had a bad dream.
It didn’t work.
Two days later, I got a call from Betsy, who had gone up to the house with the buyers and a contractor. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but the house was vandalized and burglarized, Katie, completely stripped of every appliance on the premises.”
“What? Burglarized? What do you mean?”
“Refrigerator, stove, microwave, washer, dryer, ovens, air conditioners, everything. They took hinges and doorknobs. They did serious damage to the cabinetry and countertops in the kitchen where they manhandled some of the stuff out, like the trash compactor and dishwasher. They left weird holes all through the house in the walls, too.”
I had forgotten to talk to Crazy and Egg about busting up the treasure myth. Big mistake. “How could it all just be gone? Ava is house-sitting. This had to have taken a long time, maybe multiple trips.”
“Ava left for New York on Friday after the shippers picked up your pallets. She drove out right behind the truck that was carrying your stuff. I thought you knew.”
Oh, Ava, oh, Ava.
If the packers knew the house would be empty, they or anyone else they’d told about it on the island knew they could come back and take Annalise apart at their leisure.
Did Annalise even try to stop them? I wondered. I couldn’t imagine that even a jumbie house could hold off determined thieves for long. And then it hit me like a fist to the throat: my screams the other night had come from Annalise. My poor Annalise. A teardrop fell into my lap. I touched my face. It was awash in them.
As for me, insurance would cover the loss—or most of it, I hoped—but it wasn’t just about the cost of replacement and repair. Putting Humpty together again would be a long and difficult process. And the buyers had seen the horror firsthand.
“The buyers?” I choked out.
“I’m sorry, Katie, but they’re pulling out of the deal. They know they’ll forfeit their earnest money. I couldn’t get them to change their minds.”
I hung up and slumped into a kitchen chair and dropped my head into my hands. I had to call Nick. I dialed his number. He didn’t answer, but a second later, my phone rang. I picked up and through gasping breaths told him what happened.
“Katie, I’m so sorry.”
My breath stopped. Not Nick’s voice. I held the phone away from me and checked the incoming number. It was from St. Marcos.
“Leave me alone, Bart.”
“Wait. I know we didn’t part on the best of terms, but I still care about you. I heard what happened up at Annalise, and I can help. I can house-sit, do construction, whatever you need. No strings attached.”
“No, Bart. No, no, no.”
“The last few times you saw me, I wasn’t at my best, but I’m myself again. Really.”
According to his sister, being himself would just be more of the same. “Absolutely not. I’m hanging up to call my husband now.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow, then.”
“No. I’m going to be at my in-laws. Don’t call. Not tomorrow, not ever.” I clicked off, wishing for an old rotary phone so I could slam it down, maybe even do it over and over until it broke into a million pieces. I seethed. How great would that be, my phone ringing at the dining room table when I was with Nick and his parents, with Bart on the other end? Awesome. Just awesome.
How the hell had he even known about the burglary? Bad news traveled fast on that island. My phone rang again. This time I double-checked before I answered. It was Nick.
“Oh, baby,” I said, then poured out the whole story again, this time with less wailing.
“I wish I was there,” he said. “I’m turning around now. I’m so sorry, honey.” He switched into fix-it mode. “But it’s going to be OK. We’ll get orders for new appliances put in right away. You know Crazy and Egg will help. I’m great on insurance issues.”
I cut him short. “I don’t care about any of that right now. I can figure out how to hire contractors. I’ve done it before. What I don’t understand is how Ava could do this to us, to me. Why didn’t she tell me so I could come down there or get another house sitter? She knew how important this was. Why, Nick, why did she do this?”
He was silent for a few seconds, then said in a gentle voice, “I don’t know, and I’m mad at her, too. I’m sure she’s pretty angry about New York. But, Katie, she wasn’t the one who robbed the house.”
I stopped him before his logic could get in the way of my righteous indignation. “It wouldn’t have been robbed if she hadn’t broadcast the opportunity to the movers! She might as well have put a sign in the yard! I didn’t deserve that, even if she is mad at me.”
“No, you didn’t. But you know her, and Ava was just being Ava.”
This explanation only made me feel guilty, and something just went off in me, something angry and raw. “So are you saying it’s my fault that Annalise was raped and pillaged? Ava will be Ava, so Katie was wrong to ever trust her? Under your own rationale, I should never have left St. Marcos. Only I came here for you. I came here FOR YOU.”
Nick didn’t budge from his high ground. “You came here for us, yes, you did, and I am glad you did, and it was the right thing to do. I’m not blaming you. Maybe there’s something we could have done differently. And maybe not. It doesn’t matter.” I started to interrupt him, but he stood his ground, firm but calm. “It doesn’t matter whose fault it is, Katie, it really doesn’t.”
He was right, and I was spinning round like a record on a turntable with no needle. Dizzy. Frustrated. Completely ineffective. I wanted to hate him for being so damn logical. But I loved him for it. I loved him. And I wanted to kill Ava.
That night I called Rashidi, who had just returned from Puerto Rico. He pledged to be at Annalise before nightfall.
“I promise Jacoby’s grandmother I look out for
her. She make it OK without me a few nights, but best you look for someone who can stay there longer.”
Another wave of guilt washed over me. Jacoby’s grandmother had wanted my help, too—something about Jacoby’s death hadn’t felt right to her, and what had I done? Nothing. My own junk had cluttered my mind so badly that I couldn’t even find the memory of what she had asked me to do.
Well, I could atone for that sin by getting Rashidi back to her place as fast as I could. Most of St. Marcos was chronically underemployed, so I put out the midnight bark for a project manager/house sitter. That was all I could do from Corpus at night. In the morning I’d tackle police reports, insurance, and reconstruction.
I crawled into bed with Nick without changing out of my gray sweatpants and sweatshirt. He wrapped his arms around me and locked his hands.
“I love you, Katie. Good night,” he said, kissing me firmly on the lips.
“That’s a tight hug,” I replied.
He didn’t answer, just checked his grip. Soon he was snoring rhythmically in my ear. I stayed awake. As the minutes dragged on with nothing to keep me from staring into the black pit of awful that the day had been, Ava’s betrayal began to consume me. I’d called her all afternoon with no answer. I tried to get up, thinking I could make a few more calls. Someone would know how to reach her. And when I found her, well, Ava better be the one to bar the door.
Except I couldn’t move. My husband had me trapped.
“Nick, are you awake?” I whispered.
No answer. But I knew better. And so, it appeared, did he.
Chapter Forty-six
When we awoke at six thirty the next morning, I stumbled straight to my laptop, straightening my sweatsuit while I booted up. Nick went to take care of Taylor. My stomach boiled, a cauldron of stress. Start-up seemed to take five times as long as normal, but finally I was on. I found an email from [email protected]: “My friend tell me to contact you about house in rainforest. She say you need helper. Please call me. Stefania.” Her number followed.
Leaving Annalise (Katie & Annalise Book 2) Page 24