“Well, right. But what if there’s a fire or something? They’ll be stuck in there!”
“Oh, come on, now.” Violet’s eyes had twinkled. “A fire or something? Is that the best disaster fantasy you can come up with?”
Violet knew her too well. In truth, what Caitlin was envisioning was far more elaborate. It involved a tree falling in the night, crashing through the roof and into the master bedroom, pinning her and George painfully beneath its limbs, and little Leo and Gus waking in the morning and calling and calling for her. But she’d be too weak to answer loud enough for them to hear. How long might they all remain that way? Would the neighbors see the tree and check to make sure everyone was okay, or would they see no cars in the driveway (wouldn’t you know they’d finally cleared out enough space in the garage to actually park in it) and assume no one was home and things were being taken care of? Would they all wither away, she and George eventually bleeding out from their injuries and Leo and Gus slowly starving to death, never knowing that she was just down the hall, loving them, shedding tears for them, willing to give up her life if it would mean someone would come and save them? And all because of a little plastic doorknob cover to keep them from … well, actually from other hazards, such as drowning in the tub or gorging themselves on gummy vitamins or running into the street?
Caitlin had stared blankly at Violet, refusing to give her the satisfaction of sensing that she’d been right, and finally Violet had sighed. “But Caitlin,” she’d said more gently, “back when they were in their cribs, they wouldn’t have been able to escape either.”
That was the same argument George had made. She’d bristled. “But in an emergency maybe they could have climbed out! I mean, if they really needed to.”
“So just to make sure I have this right, your worry is that your children will not be able to defeat the safety device? When you hear it that way, doesn’t it seem a bit silly?”
It hadn’t at the time. But today it did seem silly compared to what Violet was going through. Caitlin immediately felt guilty. How could she be caught up in the slim odds of a tornado or a lightning bolt striking when Violet’s worst fears had come true? No—not her worst fears. That wasn’t right. The thing she had never had a reason to fear, something far worse. Her husband gone. Her child gone—today marked a week. The police, and now the FBI, eventually treating it as a parental abduction, presumably an interstate one (they could only hope Finn and Bear were still in the country), all the while continuing to grill Violet herself as if she were a criminal. Had she and Finn been having marital problems? Was she a good mother? Was Finn a good father? If he did in fact do what she said he had done, why on earth did he do it? How could any wife be as truly blindsided as Violet had been?
That was the question.
Caitlin had left her boys behind for the first time in their lives to drive from Ohio to North Carolina to be with Violet, who was inconsolable. Even now that Caitlin was back home—especially now that she was back home—she couldn’t stop imagining what it must have been like for Violet that day, coming up to the hotel room in the midst of what she felt was an ordinary, enjoyable family vacation and finding nothing but her own belongings. Violet had relayed it to her again and again, until Caitlin could almost picture it as if she’d been there too. The confusion. The panic rising when she called Finn’s cell phone, over and over, and over and over got the same message that it had been disconnected. The helplessness when she ran down to the parking garage and saw that their rental car was missing, when she called the rental agency and learned that the car had just been returned. Violet had done everything that Caitlin herself would have done. She had searched for signs of foul play, looking for anything out of order, checking the trash cans. She had called the front desk and come up empty. No one had spoken with Finn or noticed a man and a child acting strangely. At a loss, she had frantically hailed a taxi to the airport, running aimlessly down the flight check-in lines all the way to the security checkpoint, begging a security guard to have Finn paged, waiting with humiliation at the security desk when the pages went unanswered, when she was denied a request to have outgoing flights’ passenger lists checked for their names. She had repeated the scene at the bus station, then returned to the room with some glimmer of hope that she’d walk in to find everything as it had been that morning, before the nap. Hoping that this was a bad dream, a sick joke.
It was real.
She had stood on the balcony wondering what to do next and whom to call. Finn’s parents were dead. He had no other family to speak of. She had stared out at the ocean sky as the full force of her terror seized her. And then she had called the police, who reluctantly agreed to send someone out but seemed to think that perhaps she and Finn had gotten their signals crossed, that surely he and Bear would turn up. Then she had called Gram. And then she had called Caitlin.
Eventually, of course, the report had been filed, and, when it became clear Finn hadn’t left an easy trail to follow, the proper authorities were notified. Gram flew down to hold vigil with Violet in Sunny Isles, but being so many miles away was torture for both of them, with no reason to think Finn and Bear were still nearby. After the first forty-eight hours, the Florida authorities agreed that it made sense for Violet to come home, and the FBI field office in Asheville took the lead on the investigation. They had already searched the home and the computers, but there was more digging to be done—so many questions to ask and so many people to ask them of—and Violet was of more use back in North Carolina.
Caitlin had immediately driven down to be with her there, and of course the FBI had wanted to talk with Caitlin too. Surely there would have been signs that the marriage was off track. Caitlin told them that she believed Violet when she said she was blindsided, and that she was just as mystified herself. This wasn’t something she could imagine Finn doing. Caitlin had known Finn longer than she’d known Violet, a lot longer. Hell, she’d encouraged Finn to pursue Violet, a fact she now wondered if she should regret. But she’d never regretted it before. Finn and Violet were a great couple. She’d been their next-door neighbor and their landlord for years. She had come to know them both so well, to love Violet as if she were an old, dear friend too. If their night-and-day proximity and mutual fondness for Finn hadn’t ensured their friendship, being pregnant at the same time had. Caitlin had given birth to the twins only weeks before Violet had Bear. The ordeal Violet had gone through then, the way Finn had held vigil at her side in that hospital room—it was impossible to imagine Finn doing this just a few short years later. What could possibly bring him to want to leave Violet, let alone take their child from her? Violet was the kind of mother every child deserved. And Finn was that kind of father. None of it made sense.
Caitlin had gone into the interview hoping that her testimony would help Violet, would swing the agents to be more sympathetic toward her. But afterward she had the feeling that the FBI felt them both to be naïve, stupid women, either suckers or people with something to hide.
It was not a good feeling for her, so she couldn’t even imagine how it must have made Violet feel.
She could only hope that where agents in Cincinnati were doing due diligence, seeking out Finn and Violet’s former friends and neighbors, George’s testimony would carry good weight. In politics, where the bar for an expected level of corruption was set embarrassingly low, his family’s reputation was gold—almost beyond scrutiny. Maybe after talking with George, the beloved and respected senator’s son, the agents would be satisfied enough to leave Violet well enough alone and focus wholly on finding Finn’s trail and bringing Bear home.
The long days in Asheville were beyond awful. Caitlin felt useless, sitting at the table with Violet’s grandmother, eating but not really tasting the food brought by friends—mostly Gram’s neighbors from her “independent living” center—while Vi herself lay upstairs in Bear’s bed and sobbed. Caitlin and Gram took turns shooing away the few curious reporters who came by, but that didn’t last long—appare
ntly people were running off with their own kids so often that it wasn’t sensational enough to draw much interest. There was some light local coverage in both North Carolina and Florida of the curious claim of the midvacation abduction, but without real reason to think Bear was in danger, let alone a description of a vehicle Finn might be driving, the FBI couldn’t even file an AMBER Alert. Caitlin wasn’t used to being unable to do something to help a friend in need. She found it maddening.
Eventually, she thought she might busy herself by giving the place a good thorough cleaning, but Violet stopped her in a panic of flailing arms, shrieking that she was “going to scrub Bear out.” The only helpful thing she’d let her do was to log on to the bank account to pay the household bills. Finn hadn’t withdrawn any unusual sums before disappearing—only five hundred dollars the day they’d left for vacation, which Violet said was the amount they’d agreed they should have on hand while traveling. He hadn’t withdrawn anything since. Caitlin paid the electric and the cable, but looking at the ordinary evidence of her friends’ ordinary domestic lives made her feel sick. She logged off as quickly as she could, making a mental note to talk with George about lending Violet some money. Gram had already offered what savings she had as a reward for information that would lead to Bear’s return. The hotel and air charges from Violet’s ill-fated trip were steep, and without Finn, no paychecks would be coming in.
Caitlin left feeling ashamed of the relief that washed over her when she was belted safely in her car and pointed toward home. Caitlin and the twins had worn a path to Asheville since Violet and Finn had moved there, visiting as often as they could, usually when George was out of town, but that afternoon, she cut a full thirty minutes off her usual drive time. Caitlin ran through the door and engulfed the boys in a hug so hard they cried out in protest. “Too hard, Mommy! You hug too big!”
“There’s no such thing as hugging too big,” she told them, tears in her eyes, and then she gave each one a giant bowl of ice cream like the one Violet had told her, sobbing, that she never got the chance to give Bear that afternoon.
And now here she was back at the office. Trying to shake off the unshakable concern for her friends and move on with what was supposed to be her normal routine. Because it was the only thing left to do.
Caitlin reached her oversized cubicle and plopped down her bag, a large Louis Vuitton that George had given her last Christmas, and that she’d unintentionally and yet inevitably abused by accumulating a mess of Goldfish cracker crumbs and dried-up hand-wipes that formed a layer along the silk bottom beneath the stuff she was actually meant to be toting around in a designer purse. She turned on her cute purple mini-Keurig—another gift from George, though he would have cringed if she’d dared to bring the thing into their stainless-steel-and-gray-granite kitchen—and booted up her computer.
Even George—perhaps especially George—did not really understand why she felt the need to keep this job when he easily made enough money to give her and the kids anything they could want. Not to mention the trust his parents had set up for him, the sole heir of the Bryce-Daniels legacy. It was rewarding to be the brainchild behind so many fund-raisers, and she did love event planning, but not as much as she let on. There was no way to explain to George that she found the prospect of being one hundred percent dependent on him so terrifying that the fear got her through the aching good-byes at the day care four mornings a week. The nonprofit was modest but well loved—it helped provide after-school programs in art and music for schools that had lost their arts funding—and George had to admit that her involvement wouldn’t hurt their image if and when he decided to follow in his father’s footsteps and run for office. So she’d dropped down to a reduced schedule as a compromise after the boys were born. Her assistant, Tim, was sharp enough to fill in the rest. The only loss at work she’d truly suffered was her glass-walled office; employees who were not technically full time could not take up the limited spaces available with actual doors that closed. And so she’d been sent out to pasture in the cubicle farm.
“You’re back!” Tim had gossip in his eyes as he made himself at home in the guest chair positioned across from her desk. “How’s Violet? Oh my God. You have to tell me.”
Tim knew Violet from the few times she’d popped into the office with Bear to see Caitlin at lunch, and from the big annual Christmas party George and Caitlin threw for everyone they knew. He loved her, as much as anyone can love someone else he doesn’t actually know that well. Everyone loved Violet in that way, really. Still, Tim had once confided to Caitlin that he made a point of staying on top of office gossip “to fit in with the other secretaries”—no one was supposed to call them that, but if they said it themselves, so be it—since he was the only nonfemale with the job title in the office. As if they wouldn’t all have been lining up to have a fun, gorgeous, young gay friend anyway.
Caitlin shot him a look. Of course the fact that she’d taken time off unexpectedly to go help a friend whose husband seemed to have left her and kidnapped their child—in the midst of their vacation—would send ripples of chatter and speculation around. But she wasn’t going to add to the displaced pain and guilt she already felt by humoring Tim with fuel for the fire.
“She’s awful,” she told him. “Devastated. Obviously.”
“Oh my God. Obviously.”
He leaned forward for more, but Caitlin just rotated her desk chair to type in her login and password, then turned back to him and pulled a face. “I don’t want to know how many e-mails I have waiting for me. I didn’t check my in-box even once.”
She could see him masking his disappointment at the change of subject. “You? Not at all? Impressive.”
“Well, I don’t know why it made me so nervous, but the fact that the FBI had to have been monitoring their Wi-Fi—” Damn it. She hadn’t meant to bring the topic back.
“The FBI? Oh my God.”
There was a collective sighing of power strips and overhead air vents as the electricity blinked out. Caitlin said a silent thank-you to the storm.
Tim cursed under his breath. Somewhere along the line, he’d been designated as the guy to deal with these sorts of issues—assessing snow emergency levels for early dismissals during the winter, calling in the fire department for wayward alarms, reporting dollars and coins eaten by the vending machine—probably because he was, in fact, the only nonfemale in the office with his administrative job title. “I’ll call Duke Energy. Or the building manager. Or whoever the hell I’m supposed to call.” He took his cell out of his pocket and vanished from Caitlin’s space as quickly as he’d arrived.
By the time he came back, the storm had passed and the office was full, everyone milling around grumbling and fiddling with their cell phones. Caitlin could pick out the ones who didn’t have anything important to do that day and were excited by the power outage, and the ones who were starting to border on panic. She probably should have been in the latter camp, but since she hadn’t opened her e-mail yet, she figured ignorance was bliss.
“Listen up, people,” Tim announced, cupping his hands around his mouth. “They don’t think they’re going to have it back on for hours. Maybe the whole day. Half the township is out. I called the building manager, and he recommended we close the office.”
The crowd disbursed with remarkable speed. Caitlin gathered up some paperwork from her desktop, mainly just for show. A day with the kids after nearly a week away—what an unexpected gift! She glanced at her watch. They’d just be starting circle time—their favorite part of the morning. And George hadn’t kept up too well with the groceries while she was gone. She suspected the twins had had more than their fill of pizza. Maybe she should hit the grocery store first. She could stock up on the basics, swing by home to unload, maybe throw in some laundry for good measure, and then go get the kids. They ate lunch early, around eleven, and she figured she could get there right beforehand. If the sun made an appearance by then, maybe they could hit a drive-thru and set up camp at a picnic table
next to their favorite playground at Ault Park. It wouldn’t be crowded on a weekday—they’d be thrilled to have the run of the place without having to take turns on the steering wheels or stand in line for the swirly slide.
Caitlin felt almost guilty about planning the day with her boys when Violet was stuck wondering if she’d ever see Bear again. She hoped Violet knew that if she still lived next door, Caitlin would be there for her every moment that she needed someone. But Violet’s home was six hours away now, and she knew as well as Caitlin did that once you became a mom, kids came first. No matter how tragic everything else might sometimes seem.
* * *
Caitlin was unloading a ridiculous amount of shredded cheese and yogurt into her fridge—the boys ate it as fast as she could buy it—when she heard something upstairs. A sort of scuffling. She froze, acutely aware of her body’s fight-or-flight response in action. The muscles in her neck tensed and her heart hurried its pace as she strained to hear. Had she imagined it?
No, there it was again—and a soft thud this time. She’d heard that the majority of home break-ins happened in broad daylight. Had she walked in on one? She certainly hadn’t been quiet coming in, grunting as she’d dropped the twenty-four-packs of bottled water on the floor and noisily piling the plastic bags onto the counters and the island.
She grabbed her cell phone, just in case, and crept in the direction of the stairs. She didn’t want to be the dumb woman in the horror movie who doesn’t leave while she has the chance. But she also didn’t want to overreact. It could have been nothing. Or maybe not nothing, but just a little something. A squirrel, in through the chimney? A work crew outside causing a racket that sounded closer than it was?
Then, as she reached the bottom of the stairs, she was certain she heard it: a giggle. A child’s giggle, followed by some very agitated scolding that sounded to be coming from an adult male. A child came into view above, and Caitlin stopped short, stunned.
Almost Missed You Page 3