"Well, that's impressive," I said, for lack of anything better. "You must be proud." Or lying.
For the remainder of the drive, I asked what each of her siblings did, and she had an answer each time.
At that point I was simply doing it for amusement. At the baseball game the next day, I wedged myself between two of my friends so I wouldn't have to sit next to her. The lies were exhausting me. But, that night I went back for more.
I asked her about her mission trips, trying to decode some of her psychology. Christians weren't supposed to lie - not this big anyway. This was delusion. Maybe she wasn't right in the head. She acted normal socially. God. This was blowing my mind. It made me wish I'd done what I'd wanted and studied psychology instead of business. I asked one of the girls in our group about her later that week.
"She's cool," she said. "Kind of quiet."
"Yeah. It's probably because of being the youngest of all those siblings," I said.
Tori screwed up her face. "She only has two - a brother and a sister. They're both studying abroad."
Oh hell no.
I'd never spoken to Laura again. I couldn't figure out if she knew she was lying, or if she did it because her brain was cracked. Or, maybe she thought it was fun. Who the hell knows? I didn't hang around to find out. When they said she was missing, I immediately thought she disappeared on purpose. Then I felt guilty for thinking that.
She'd probably been abducted and there I was making up stories to suit my interpretation of her.
They found her at the Miami Airport. When the papers started reporting about her abduction by a man named Devon, I tried not to question it. Tried. Olivia was fascinated with the case. She read everything she could. I don't know if it was because she was studying law or because she had a personal tie to Laura. I kept my opinions to myself and hoped she was okay.
Then there was a night after Estella was born. I was making dinner, and news was playing softly on the television. I heard her name. Softly, but my ears were tuned to that name. I came out of the kitchen to find Leah trying to change the channel.
"Don't," I said. Olivia was on my flatscreen, walking with a man I presumed to be Dobson Orchard. She waved away from the press and got in a car with him.
No, Olivia.
I wanted to tell her to stay away from this case. To stay away from him. I wanted to touch her silky, black hair and wrap her in my protection. My mouth was dry by the time the news went to commercial.
That's when I realized they'd flashed Laura's picture, describing her as one of his first victims. Dobson/Devon …
Forget it, I thought. She'd been drugged. Maybe she got the name wrong. Maybe the news did. Maybe she jumped on the Dobson train because she wanted the ride. When she was in college she was looking to be a part of something, a family of eight. Maybe, just maybe, she found it in the faces of Dobson's abducted, assaulted victims. Fuck if I didn't pick the strangest women to spend time with.
"Where are we?" Cammie sits up, rubbing her eyes.
"Naples." I pull down a heavily wooded street, and she looks around in alarm.
"What the hell, Drake?"
Olivia, who has been quiet the whole drive, looks impassively out the window. I'm worried about her. She hasn't asked once where we're going. Either she trusts me, or she doesn't care. I'm good with both.
The road curves, and I pull down a much smaller street. The houses here are spaced further apart. There are ten of them, all sitting around a lake and surrounded by their own five acres. The closest neighbors own horses. I can see them grazing behind white picket fences. As we drive past, Olivia's head cranes to get a better look.
I smile to myself. She's not a hundred percent zoned out.
I stop the car outside an ornate white gate and reach into my glove box to find the automatic opener. My hand grazes her knee and she jumps.
"It's good to know I still have that effect on you," I say, pointing the device at the gate. It swings open just as her hand shoots out and smacks me on the chest.
I grab her hand before she can pull away and hold it right over my heart. She doesn't fight me.
Cammie sniffs in the backseat, and I let her go.
The driveway is paved with creamy, brown brick. We follow it for two hundred yards until we reach the house. I throw the car into park; Olivia watches my hand.
I watch her, watch my hand. When she looks up, I smile.
"Where are we?"
"Naples," I repeat, throwing open my door. I lean the seat forward to let Cammie out and walk around to open the door for Olivia.
She gets out and stretches her arms above her head, looking at the house.
I wait for her reaction.
"It's beautiful," she says. I grin and my hammering heart calms down.
"Who does it belong to?"
"Me."
She raises her eyebrows and follows me up the stairs. The house is three stories, brick-faced with a turret and a widow's walk that has the most astonishing view of the lake. As we approach the front door, she gasps.
The knocker sits on a solid wood door and is in the shape of a crown.
I stop at the door and look at her.
"And you."
Her nostrils flare, her eyelashes beat, and her mouth puckers into a little frown.
I turn the key in the lock. We walk into our house.
It is unbearably hot. I head straight for the thermostat. Cammie swears colorfully, and I'm glad they can't see my face.
The house is fully furnished. I have someone come in once a month to dust and clean the pool - which has never been used. I move from room to room, opening the shades. The girls follow behind me.
When we reach the kitchen, Olivia wraps her arms around her body and looks around.
"Like it?" I ask, watching her face.
"You designed this yourself, didn't you?"
I like that she knows me so well. My ex-wife liked everything to be modern: stainless steel, sterile white and tile. Everything in my house is warm. The kitchen is rustic. There is a lot of stone and copper and hardwood. I made the decorator use a lot of red, because the color reminds me of Olivia. Leah has red hair, but Olivia has a red personality. And as far as I'm concerned, red belongs to the love of my life.
Cammie wanders around the living room, eventually plopping herself down on the couch and turning on the television. Olivia and I stand side by side, watching her. This was not how I intended for her to see this.
"Want me to show you the rest of your house?"
She nods and I lead her out of the kitchen and toward the curving staircase.
"Leah-"
"No," I say. "I don't want to talk about Leah."
"Fine," she says.
"Where's Noah?"
She looks away. "Please stop asking me that."
"Why?"
"Because it hurts to answer."
I consider her for a moment and nod. "You're going to have to tell me eventually."
"Eventually." She sighs. "That word is so us, isn't it? Eventually, you'll tell me you're faking your amnesia. Eventually, I'll tell you that I'm pretending not to know you. Eventually, we'll come back together, fall apart, come back together."
I watch her study my wall art, riveted by her words. She says things that genuinely move me. She lets her soul slip through her lips, and it's always raw and incredibly sad.
"Caleb, what is this house?"
I stand behind her as she lurks in the doorway to the master bedroom and tug on the ends of her hair.
"I was building it for you. I was going to bring you here the night I proposed. It was only an empty lot, but I wanted to show you what we could build together."
She blows air through her nose and shakes her head. It's the way she fights tears.
"You were going to ask me to marry you?"
I briefly consider telling her about the night she walked in on me at the office, but I don't want to overload her emotionally.
"Why did you keep building? Furnish it?"
"A project, Duchess," I say softly. "I needed something to fix."
She laughs. "You couldn't fix me - or that dirty redhead. So you went for a house?"
"It's a lot more rewarding."
She snorts. I would have preferred a giggle.
She flips on the light switch and walks carefully into the bedroom, like the floor could fall out from beneath her at any minute.
"Have you ever slept here?"
I watch as she runs a finger along the plush, white comforter and sits on the edge of the bed. She bounces a few times and I smile.
"No."
She lies down on her back and then suddenly rolls twice across the bed until she's on her feet on the other side. It's something a little kid would do. As always, when the word kid pops in my head, my stomach clenches painfully.
Estella My heart falls and then rises slightly when she smiles at me.
"It's kind of girly in here," she says.
A corner of my mouth shoots up. "Well, I did intend on sharing it with a woman."
She puckers her lips and nods. "Peacock blue - it's very fitting."
There is a vase of peacock feathers on the dresser. The corners of her mouth tilt up as she remembers something from long ago.
I show her the rest of the bedrooms and then take her up the narrow flight of stairs to the attic, which I converted into a library. She exclaims excitedly when she sees the books, and I have to practically drag her up the narrow flight of stairs to the widow's walk. She has two books in her hands, but when she emerges into the sunshine, she sets them down on one of the lawn chairs, her eyes wide.