“Everything is fine. I’ll be back in the morning.”
“Okay.”
I take the stairs rather than wait for the elevator and emerge into chilly fall air that carries the faint hint of woodsmoke. Nat loved this time of year—pumpkin spice everything, hay and jack-o-lanterns on the front porch, chrysanthemums and Halloween costume planning that went on for weeks. I miss her desperately and wish she was here to tell me what I ought to do about this plea deal that would mean justice for her and our girls.
But since she can’t help me, I’m forced to do what I’ve done since I lost her and figure it out for myself.
Somehow.
17
IRIS
I wait all day to hear back from Eleanor, but she doesn’t respond to my text. I wonder if she got it. I’ve kept busy with laundry, cleaning, changing beds and posting to TikTok, which is how I kept from obsessing about whether I’d hear from her.
Maybe I shouldn’t have reached out. I should’ve listened to Gage and Rob and left that to the lawyers, I suppose.
Ugh. I hate this. I hate that there’s another woman out there who was involved with my husband and who gave him a son. Does their son have Mike’s last name?
Mike’s parents will want to know that. His dad has told me since I first started dating Mike that he needed one of his boys to have a son—or two—to keep the family name going. As an only son, Lou is obsessed with making sure the Levington name lives on. Since Rob shows no sign of settling down or having his own family, they’ll be thrilled to know that Mike produced a spare before he left us.
That thought makes me bitter—and it’s probably not fair. His mother will be outraged that he was unfaithful to me. Once she got over me being biracial, and that took more time than it should have, she became one of my biggest fans after witnessing how much I loved her son.
And I did love him, from about the first minute I ever laid eyes on him at a college football game at Virginia Commonwealth University. He was rooting for James Madison, and we had a friendly “fight” about why my school was better than his that lasted into the evening. We were pretty much together from that day on, even with more than two hours separating Richmond from Harrisonburg.
We texted nonstop, talked for hours on the phone and made it work with weekends together while we finished college. Mike was already a pilot then. He’d gotten his license when he was eighteen and was training for a career in aviation, but he got a business degree so he could be self-employed. I liked that he had ambition and plans.
My mother forbade me from flying with him, however, even though I was a legal adult and could make my own decisions. Since she was the most important person in my life, I did what she asked me to long after I didn’t have to anymore. It took about two years for Mike to convince her that I’d be perfectly safe flying with him. When she finally gave in, she said she only wanted to know about it when it was over. Mom can be a bit clairvoyant at times, and I think she always had a feeling something was going to happen to him in an airplane, although she’s never said that to me.
I’m folding clothes an hour before I have to pick up the kids when my doorbell rings. I go to peek out the window and am surprised to see Gage is back hours earlier than expected. I unlock the dead bolt and open the door.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey. Are you okay?”
“I don’t know.”
“Come in.”
“Am I disturbing you?”
“Not at all.”
He comes in and hangs his coat on one of the kids’ hooks.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t lie to me. I can tell just by looking at you. Are you stressing out about this? About you and me? Because you don’t have to do—”
He encircles my waist with his arm and pulls me in for a kiss.
I’m so surprised that it takes me a minute to react, but once I do, I drop the towel I was folding to the floor and wrap my arms around him to return the kiss. I’m completely dazzled by the time he pulls back to gaze down at me with an intensity that softens as he studies me. “I’m not stressed out about us.”
“Oh. You’re not?”
“Well, maybe a little.”