Almost Missed You

by Jessica Strawser

  He’d been so optimistic. But he suddenly felt certain that she wasn’t coming. Damn. Damn, damn, damn. There was always the more direct Camp Pickiwicki ad—he could try that one. But if the woman from the beach ever looked at the Missed Connections, she would have surely recognized their meeting in the ad he had placed. For the thousandth time, he cursed himself for not getting her name while he had the chance. And then he vowed that this would be the last time he’d what if the whole thing, period. It had seemed so meant to be—if anything was meant to be, wasn’t that it?—but clearly he’d been wrong. He’d tried. There was no forcing these things.

  A server carried a tray of sweating, foam-topped pints through the outdoor seating area of the Rock Bottom Brewery behind the fountain, and Finn eyed them with a sudden and intense thirst. He wasn’t above sliding onto a barstool alone as long as a baseball game played on the flat-screens suspended behind the bar. There was just the small matter that if the woman from the beach was not here, that meant someone else was probably here in her place. He had two options: He could slink away and wallow in his disappointment, or he could figure out who else in the square seemed to be waiting and give her the apology he owed her.

  Finn had noticed the beautiful figure seated on the far side of the fountain right away, but now he did a double take. She was wearing a sleeveless dress in a large black-and-white floral pattern, a thin red patent leather belt fastened snugly at the waistline, and shiny red heels extending her shapely petite legs. The dress and the way she sat perched on the edge of a stone bench, leaning delicately to the side, all her weight on a slender arm, with her head tilted ever so slightly up, reminded him of a Baz Luhrmann reimagining of a classic film starlet. Her long, dark curls were so glossy they were actually gleaming in the sun.

  But she wasn’t entirely picturesque. Each time he sneaked a glance at her, she was looking more and more annoyed. Some women might have busied themselves with their cell phone while waiting, but not this one. She wasn’t a pretender, he could see that. Still, so intent was she on glaring at the people turning the corners and stepping into the square that she didn’t notice his approach.

  He stood just to the left of her bench and cleared his throat. “I don’t suppose you’re here in response to a Missed Connections ad about meeting on vacation,” he said to the fountain, being careful to avoid looking in her direction.

  “Oh, hell. Seriously?” She got to her feet, scowling. “You know, maybe you could have been more specific.”

  “I’ve been standing here thinking the same thing.”

  “Well,” she said, “better luck next time.”

  She started off across the square at a surprisingly brisk clip given the height of her heels. “Wait—” he called, surprising himself. She turned and raised her eyebrows. He faltered. “I mean … is that it?”

  “What, are we supposed to small-talk now about the people we were hoping to meet?”

  He cocked his head. “Kind of. Maybe.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “I’m sorry.” The apology caught her just as she was about to turn away again. “I feel awful, ruining your night—”

  “Forget it. You didn’t ruin anything. It’s not even seven thirty.”

  “Well, wasting your time, I mean.” Her anger was making him feel worse. Like he needed to fix it. “Why don’t you let me buy you a drink?”

  “Are you seriously taking this opportunity to hit on me?” She squinted at him with exaggerated suspicion. “Did you even meet a woman on vacation at all? Is this, like, your thing? Placing vague ads and waiting to see who shows up?”

  “If that were my strategy, it would be a pretty painful one. I can see that it doesn’t work.”

  “It does not.”

  He gestured across the square with his arm. “All I’m saying is that we’re here—” She was right. It did sound pitiful. He didn’t really mean it, anyway. This woman was way out of his league. And she was missing a certain faded mustard yellow T-shirt. He let the arm drop to his side with a clumsy slap. “You know what, never mind.”

  “Excuse me?” Finn turned to see a well-dressed older woman smiling at them. “I hate to see such an attractive couple argue. Would the two of you happen to like some LumenoCity tickets? It might brighten up your night. You know, literally!” She giggled at her own joke.

  Finn was about to politely decline when a voice at his side spoke up. “LumenoCity? They ran out of tickets months ago! I entered the lottery over and over, but I never win anything.” Finn stole a glance at his companion. She was smiling angelically at this random stranger and seemed to be emphatically avoiding Finn’s eyes.

  “Oh, me either,” the stranger said, fingering the sheer wisp of a scarf tied at her neck. “I mean, does anybody win those things? But my husband got a four-pack through his company, and the couple who was meeting us here to come along just bailed. It seems they got in an argument on the way.” She smiled. “Must be something in the air tonight.”

  “I can’t even begin to thank you,” said the woman at Finn’s side, looping her arm through his. “We were just trying to decide what to do with ourselves tonight. We would love to go. In fact, you’ve settled our argument!”

  Finn looked down at her, bemused. The stranger extended her arm with two tickets fanned out. “My pleasure. When my other friends find out about this, they’re going to be sick that they missed out. Sick! But there’s no way any of them could get down here in time. Traffic is slow clear to I-275.”

  Finn felt an elbow jab him in the ribs. “Well, thank you for your kindness,” he said quickly. “We promise to enjoy it on their behalf!”

  As the woman waved and headed off, Finn noted that the arm looped through his did not take the first opportunity to move away. “What,” he said under his breath, “is LumenoCity?”

  7

  AUGUST 2016

  Bear clung to Caitlin with his full body, legs and all, the way her own boys did when they were hurt or scared. She tilted her head to get a better look at his face. He did not look like a boy who had been sleeping well. His eyes and cheeks had the same puffy look as Violet’s when she’d last seen her. And even though he was smiling bravely, she sensed that if she said the wrong thing, he could dissolve into tears. She thought of how Gus would go silent when he was confused or unsure about something. About how Leo would get that wide-eyed, innocent look.

  “Is Mommy here?” he asked, looking at her expectantly.

  “Not right this minute, sweetie, but if she knew you were here, I promise you she would be.”

  “Is she going to be here?” he asked.

  Caitlin could feel Finn’s warning look without even glancing at him. “I sure hope so,” Caitlin said carefully. “Your mommy misses you so much.”

  He pouted at her. “I want to tell Mommy about the bus. And the train! I thought she would be at the station, but then Daddy made us get a new car instead.”

  Bear was pretty sturdy—not to mention “almost comically” articulate, as George once put it—for a barely three-year-old, but in that instant, he looked every bit the baby he had been when Violet and Finn brought him home from the hospital to their old house next door. Those days when Violet and Caitlin met almost every morning, helping each other through their maternity leaves, seemed so idyllic at the time. She’d heard other women talk about how confining those newborn days had been, how they’d spent long stretches with no reason—and no opportunity—to shower or get out of their pajamas, or paced their neighborhood streets alone with the stroller while everyone else was at work. That hadn’t been her experience at all. She and Violet had nurtured their infants together. Sometimes Gram came over to give them a break, and George would instruct Caitlin to treat herself and Violet both to a pedicure or a massage. Once, they’d said they were going to spend an afternoon at the spa and instead had gotten rip-roaringly drunk on tasting flights at a wine bar. It hadn’t taken much in those days. They’d sobered up over flat breads, then taken turns at the breast pu
mp in Caitlin’s nursery, giggling like teenagers, before heading next door to reclaim the kids.

  What could Finn possibly be thinking? Caitlin needed to find out exactly what was going on here. And then she needed to get on the phone with Violet. Immediately.

  Caitlin gave Bear her biggest smile. “Hey, how about you check out Leo and Gus’s room? They just got a couple new excavators for their construction site.”

  He brightened. “Diggers?”

  “A cement mixer, too. You remember where their room is?” Bear nodded emphatically and raced back up the stairs, past Finn and down the hall.

  Finn headed down the steps toward her, and as soon as Caitlin could hear Bear’s “vroom vroom!” and the hard clattering of plastic on plastic, she turned on him. “What the hell?” she exploded. “Do you know you’re being accused of parental kidnapping? Kidnapping! Do you know the FBI is looking for you? The FBI!”

  “I know,” he said flatly, walking past her. She followed him into the kitchen. “I didn’t mean to make such a wreck of things. I messed up.”

  “You messed up?” Caitlin could barely contain her rage. “What were you thinking?” she demanded.

  “I wasn’t,” he said simply, running a hand through his hair. “It was the damn nap.”

  She looked at him blankly, awaiting some sort of translation.

  “I just couldn’t leave him.”

  “No one asked you to! But you could leave Violet? You were meaning to leave Violet?”

  Finn opened the refrigerator, removed a can of soda, and popped the top with a hiss of fizz.

  Caitlin shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. You can make this right. You just need to take Bear back.”

  “That’s not going to happen. At least, not yet.”

  “What do you mean it’s not going to happen? Do you have any idea how absolutely frantic Violet is right now? She’s devastated. She can’t even get out of bed. Or, more accurately, she can’t get out of Bear’s bed. What rationale could you possibly have for doing this?”

  Finn faltered. “I didn’t mean to hurt her this way. I didn’t think it through. I just couldn’t—” He caught himself. “I just couldn’t.”

  “For God’s sake, Finn, the woman is catatonic.” Caitlin glared at him, but got no response. “Well, you have your midlife crisis or whatever it is on your own time. I’m calling her right this instant.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Of course I am. What else would you expect me to do? Why are you even here, if not in some kind of sideways attempt to make this right?”

  “I need you to set me and Bear up at the lake. At the cabin.”

  “George’s dad’s cabin?” Caitlin stared at him incredulously, and when he nodded, a laugh escaped her lips. “Right. I’m going to harbor a fugitive at the lake house of my retired senator father-in-law. I’m going to keep my best friend’s husband and kid hidden from her while she lies there sobbing, afraid she’ll never see her son again. I’m going to keep that sad-eyed boy away from his mother while I tuck my own kids into bed every night.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and he did genuinely look sorry, “but yes, you are.”

  She gaped at him. “Because…?”

  “Because if you don’t, I’m going to tell George.”

  “Tell George what?”

  “You know, tell George.”

  It took a moment for what he was implying to register. And when it did, Caitlin felt her blood run cold.

  “Tell George what?” she tried again, but she knew her eyes had given her away.

  “Come on, Caitlin. I was there, remember?”

  “You wouldn’t,” she said, inflating her voice with false certainty.

  “If I have to, I would.”

  Caitlin’s eyes raced around the kitchen, taking in the signs of her life there—the twins’ crayon scribblings held to the dishwasher door with magnets, and their little sippy cups drying in the dish drainer, right next to George’s heavy steel coffee carrier mug. How many times had she gone over this room looking for hazards—installing knob covers on the stove, a childproof lever on the oven door, plastic locks on the cupboards and drawers, five-point harnesses on the booster chairs. And now the biggest hazard to her family was standing right here in the middle of it all. “We’ve been friends since we were dumb kids in college, forever ago. And now you’re going to show up here and threaten to ruin my life? What did I do to deserve that?”

  He looked at her sadly. “Nothing,” he said. “I really am sorry, Cait. It’s the only thing I can think of. It’s my only choice. I need someplace safe I can stay with Bear without leaving any credit card records behind. You saw how he is—it’s not good for him to be on the road. At first I sold it as an adventure, but he’s not buying it anymore. Last summer when we all went to the lake, he loved it there. Nobody would come looking for us. It would just buy me the time I need.”

  “To do what?”

  “To think.”

  Around this time last year both families had spent a week at the cabin, just before Finn and Violet moved to Asheville to stay close to Gram, who’d insisted on retiring there. “What kind of old lady retires in the mountains, where it gets cold and snowy?” Caitlin had complained to Violet. She’d been devastated that her friends were leaving, though of course she understood that they had to go—aside from Bear, Gram was the only family Violet and Finn had between the two of them. “The awesomely stubborn kind,” Violet had responded fondly. The whole week at the cabin, Caitlin felt like she was grasping at something that was in danger of slipping away, even as the three boys donned their little life vests and fished off the dock with their dads, even as she and Violet motored the pontoon out to the middle of the lake to sunbathe and read, even as they sprawled out with beers on the deck chairs under the stars after the kids were in bed. To her, the cabin would always be a sacred place. Not some kind of twisted hideaway.

  “And if I say no, you’re just going to wait until George gets home, tell him what you think you know that you think I wouldn’t want him to know, then wait for the police to show up—which they will, because George will call them immediately and put a stop to all this nonsense? You’re going to take me down with you, just because?”

  “I’m not going to take you down with me.” For a second, his voice was almost reassuring. “Because you’re going to give me the keys to the cabin. You’re going to refresh my memory on the directions so I don’t get mixed up on the back roads. And you’re going to give me the code to disable the alarm on the security system.” His eyes bored into hers. “I’ll do whatever it takes, Cait. If you think you’ve seen me desperate before, that was nothing. This is really it.”

  “Finn,” Caitlin said as gently as she could, “you love Violet. Violet loves you. And not just in an ordinary way. There was a time not that long ago when if I had to listen to one more person gush about how you two were so destined for each other, I would have puked.” He didn’t crack a smile. “What’s this all about?”

  Finn looked away, and Caitlin settled herself onto a stool at the island, hoping he might sit down next to her, talk this through rationally. “This is me, Finn. You can talk to me. I know marriages aren’t always what they seem—but Violet is completely blindsided. What on earth happened? Even without the kidnapping charge—kidnapping!—I can’t believe you’d have walked out on her at all. You two were meant to be.”

  He leveled his gaze at her. “Were we?” He sounded exhausted. Weary. The kind of weary that builds over time. Caitlin studied his face.

  “Does it matter? You might think you’ve fallen out of love with her, or whatever, but she doesn’t deserve this. And neither does Bear. He needs his mother. We’re going to pick up the phone and call her. It’s that easy.” She held out her cell toward him. “Are you going to do it, or am I?”

  Anger sparked in his eyes, and she knew she’d taken the wrong tack. “Stop talking to me like you’re a goddamn hostage negotiator,” he snapped. “I’m not a cr
azy person. And stop calling me a kidnapper.” He looked genuinely hurt, even shocked, and she wondered if he was only now processing the gravity of what he’d done. Surely not? “It’s just me and my own kid we’re talking about here. My own kid.”

  “Also Violet’s kid.” Caitlin couldn’t take it anymore. “I’m calling your bluff,” she said, swiping her finger to unlock her cell screen.

  “You still think George is gearing up for that Senate run?” Finn’s voice was eerily calm. “His old man always did have big plans for him. He wraps up that big Hong Kong deal at the end of the year, and then what?”

  Caitlin’s thumb hovered over the Call button.

  “It would be a shame if he ended up bowing out because something embarrassing came out—personally speaking. I bet that would go over real well with the in-laws. The fact that his wife ruined their lifelong dream for him.”

  “I don’t care what his family thinks.”

  It was such a blatant lie that Finn didn’t even grant it a response. He simply continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “And he’s already invested so much in the twins’ future. He can’t have you slink off with them. I don’t think the custody battle would be much of a battle, do you? With his family’s resources?”

  It was a low blow, aimed strategically at the center of Caitlin’s insecurity, and they both knew it. “George loves me,” she said. “If you insist on telling him, we’ll get through it. He’ll forgive me.” If only her voice weren’t betraying her by trembling so.

  Finn strolled to the back door and looked through the glass into the garden. “You know those questionnaires where they ask you to describe someone or something in a single word? I always hated those, because who can be summed up in one lousy word?”

  He turned back toward Caitlin. “George can, that’s who. And that word is pride. Heaven help the person who wounds it.”