“Tell Jacob I’ll call him,” Val said, and Raoul had simply nodded. So he knew about Jacob. Kayla wondered if that was what he and Val were discussing in the truck: Val’s secret was a secret no longer.
Well, now Kayla had a secret, too. Antoinette was more than just a missing woman. She was a missing woman with a long-lost daughter showing up; she was a missing woman with a house that had been ransacked; she was a missing woman who, at the age of forty-four, was pregnant. By whom? It wasn’t as if Antoinette had been celibate since she divorced-she had flings every once in a while, the most notable with a man who stumbled across her house by accident when he was on his bike looking for Jewel Pond. But these were week-long summer flings, or one-night stands, no one sticking around, and certainly no one leaving behind anything as lasting as a baby. Kayla was at a loss. Who had fathered the baby? That part of the secret Antoinette had taken with her, wherever she went.
Kayla woke Val up when they reached her house. Kayla didn’t know what to say. “Get some sleep? We’ll talk later?” The pregnancy test was practically glowing in her pocket, but she wasn’t ready to tell Val about it. Not yet, anyway.
Val nodded. “I want to leave John.”
Kayla groaned. “Oh, Val.”
“What?”
“Not today, Val, okay? Don’t leave him today.”
“I’m miserable with him. I’d like to be less miserable. I’d like to do something drastic, something dangerous.”
Kayla looked at the perfect façade of the house; it was hard to believe so much unhappiness lived inside. “Do you think Antoinette disappeared on purpose?” she asked. “Do you think she did this to be drastic?”
“Of course not,” Val said.
“So you think she’s dead?”
“They didn’t find her alive, Kayla.”
“They didn’t find her dead, either. They didn’t find her at all. It’s like she vanished into thin air.”
Val smiled sadly, and with obvious fatigue. “You’re right. Call me later.” Val shut the car door and limped across her manicured lawn to her house. Kayla sat in the driveway until Val disappeared inside, and then she headed for home.
Kayla’s house looked the same, which seemed odd, given all that had happened. It was almost as though she expected it to be burned down or torn apart, but it stood solid and steady. She had beaten Raoul home, and from the looks of it, Theo had already left for work. Island Air flights started at six, and since this was when Raoul usually began his day, Theo didn’t mind getting up early. He and Raoul rose together and drank coffee quietly in the kitchen before going to their respective jobs, although since his outbursts started, Theo had taken to getting up half an hour earlier and drinking his coffee at Hutch’s at the airport. Or so he told Kayla the one time she was brave enough to ask.
Kayla extracted herself wearily from the car, looked in the back at all the picnic stuff-the towels, the tub of lobster shells that would start to stink as soon as the sun came up, the empty Methuselah- but she didn’t have the energy to deal with it. The lobster shells, though. She opened the back of the Trooper and managed to lower the tub to the driveway, where she could just leave it for now. And then she saw Antoinette’s black Chuck Taylors and she welled up with tears and hurried into the house. She needed sleep.
As soon as Kayla entered the kitchen, she remembered that Jennifer was sleeping at a friend’s house, which meant Luke and Cassidy B. were here alone. An eight-year-old and an eleven-year-old-she was one hell of a mother. True, Theo had probably only left twenty minutes before, but still. She was lucky the house hadn’t burned down. Before she went upstairs, she checked the answering machine. There was one new message. Kayla imagined hearing Paul Henry’s voice pumped with the adrenaline of victory, We found her! Or better still, Antoinette’s voice. But it was dead air, a hang up: Kayla calling from the Wauwinet.
She checked on Luke and Cassidy B. All four of her children had Raoul’s thick, dark eyelashes, which curled against their cheeks when they slept. God, she loved them. She stumbled into bed herself, too tired to even take off her clothes. The sun was up now, peeking through the rosewood blinds. She put Raoul’s feather pillow over her head and let the waves of sleep wash over her.
Twice Kayla tried to float to the surface of her sleep and break into consciousness-once when Raoul joined her in bed, and once when Luke padded in wearing his blue pin-striped pajamas, like a little business suit-and both times she failed. Her eyelids fluttered, and she was sucked back down.
She finally awoke with Raoul shaking her. “Kayla. Kay-la.”
Kayla focused her eyes. The blinds were up, the room filled with sunlight. It was hot, and she felt sticky and hazy and uncomfortable. She had a pounding headache; the inside of her mouth was powdery and tasted like egg yolk, her hair was stiff with salt. Then it all flooded back: too much champagne, Antoinette gone.
She blinked. “Are the kids okay?”
Raoul touched her cheek. He was showered, dressed, his dark hair damp. “Of course they’re okay. Jennifer came home and left again to sit for the Ogilvys. She ate a banana, but that was all I could interest her in. Cass and Luke are downstairs watching TV. I told them it was okay until you got up. They want to see you. They’re worried about you.”
“What did you tell them?” Kayla asked. “Do they know Antoinette is gone?”
“Gone is a strong word. I said you had a rough night. I said Antoinette got lost and we’re having trouble finding her.”
“Fair enough,” she said. “Can you get me some water? What time is it?”
Raoul went into the bathroom and brought her water in the green plastic cup that held their toothbrushes. Not a cup she wanted to drink from, but she kept quiet. “It’s twenty past eleven,” he said.
Kayla drank the water, handed Raoul the cup, and swung her legs so that they rested on the floor. It felt wildly luxurious to have him at home waiting on her like this, and she wanted to stay and enjoy it, but she couldn’t. With effort, she stood up.
“I have to go,” she said.
“Kayla.”
“I have to go to the airport to meet Lindsey,” she said.
“Lindsey who?”
“Antoinette’s daughter,” Kayla said. “A daughter that she gave up for adoption a long time ago and who is coming to visit today. I can’t explain it all to you right now, but I have to go meet her.”
“Whoa,” he said. He stuffed his hands in the back pockets of his jeans. He was wearing a crisp white polo shirt instead of his usual MONTERO CONSTRUCTION T-shirt. He looked so beautifuclass="underline" clean, tan, barefoot in his jeans and white shirt. What a handsome, lucky man. Kayla felt sure right then that she would never get enough of him, even if they both lived to be a hundred, and especially not if he continued to work the way he did. “What are you going to tell her?”
“I don’t know,” Kayla said. “But if she wants to stay here tonight, I’m going to let her.”
“She’ll stay where-on the pullout?”
“We’ll put her in Luke’s room,” she said. “Luke can sleep in here with us.” Luke would pretend not to like that-he would say he was too old to sleep with his parents, but secretly he’d enjoy it. Kayla’s mind traveled a predictable path: changing the sheets on Luke’s bed, vacuuming, clearing space in the closet. God, she was such a housewife.
“She might not show up,” Kayla said. This was, of course, her hope-that this girl the color of a wine cork would get cold feet about seeking out her birth mother and find an excuse to miss her plane. Nantucket was tricky to get to, she reasoned, especially on a holiday weekend.