Still, there was no telling when they might be feeling sentimental.
She tried to imagine the phone ringing, her father-in-law yelling through the line that Finn and Bear were in his house and demanding to know how they got there.
Maybe she could pretend she didn’t know. It wouldn’t take much acting to show surprise about this whole mess—Caitlin herself could still hardly believe it. Maybe if she just played dumb, Finn would have a change of heart and decide not to make good on his threats after all.
George crawled toward Caitlin and collapsed at her feet into a heap of exaggerated defeat. “They got me,” he gasped, looking up at Caitlin, and though she was in no mood, she appreciated that he was trying to include her in the fun.
“Bravo, buckaroos,” she said halfheartedly. “You slew the dragon!”
George laughed and raised his head. “Boys, that’s called a mixed metaphor,” he said.
“Mefador,” Leo agreed solemnly.
“He was a TIGER!” Gus informed her, in his bossiest voice.
“Do you know what tiger-dragon-horsies eat?” George asked the boys, leaning closer to them. “They’re very particular creatures. And they only have ice cream sundaes!”
“Sundaes!” the boys yelled in unison, and ran ahead of George into the kitchen.
Caitlin bit her tongue. When George was out of town for a week or two at a time, she’d spend her evenings outnumbered, struggling alone to coerce the boys into eating anything remotely healthy as they’d inexplicably shun things they’d just days before been content to eat—suddenly spaghetti was “too wiggly wobbly,” meat loaf subject to the dissection of the minuscule translucent onion squares inside, and yogurt acceptable only if it was blue. Then George would swoop back in on a Friday night with an assortment of candy from the airport concessions. It drove her mad. He knew that treats were allowed only once in a while, but he didn’t seem to realize that his splurges meant that the goodies always came from him. Just once, she wanted to be the fun one. But it hardly seemed fair to ask him to stop when he spent so much time away.
“Ice cream, sweetie?” He laid his fingertips briefly on her shoulder as he followed the boys into the kitchen.
Caitlin gestured to her wineglass, only half empty. “No, thanks.”
Over the excited chatter behind her she heard the unfamiliar ring of the house phone. She and George used their cell phones almost exclusively. No one ever called but telemarketers, and each time the landline rang—inevitably during dinner or naptime—she was tempted to have the thing disconnected. But then she’d imagine some emergency. One of the twins taking a tumble down the stairs, or—oh God, she could barely bring herself to think about it—out through the screen of a second-story window, having defeated one of the safety latches she’d installed on every glass panel in the house. There the little crumpled body would lie, crying for her or, worse, completely motionless, and instead of holding him, soothing him, helping him, keeping him calm while she dialed 911, she’d be running around trying to figure out where she’d put her damn cell phone.
“Honey? Violet’s on the phone.”
Caitlin couldn’t remember having given Violet the number. Then, all at once, she did—when the two of them were on their maternity leaves together and one of them would get no answer on the other’s cell, they had a code to call each other’s landlines, let it ring exactly once, and then hang up. This would signify that the caller really needed an extra set of hands to run next door if at all possible. Potential causes included explosive diapers that had leaked all over the person changing them, conference calls that needed to be taken without a crying baby in the background, and once, an overflowing washing machine in Violet’s basement.
Caitlin had never wanted to imagine a day without Violet right next door. And now she didn’t even know how she would face her on the phone, with hundreds of miles between them.
Maybe Finn had had a change of heart after leaving here. Maybe talking with Caitlin had made him realize the depth of the trouble he was in, or of the pain he had caused Violet, or of the horrible position he was backing Caitlin into, or of the hypocrisy and audacity he’d had to drag George’s family into this.
She took the phone from George’s outstretched hand, trying to imitate the eagerness with which she would have run toward such a call anytime before roughly ten thirty this morning.
“Vi? Any news?”
“No, no. I’m sorry for heckling you at home. I couldn’t get through on your cell, and I just … I just had to talk to someone.”
“Did Gram leave you alone?” Gram had basically moved from her senior community into Violet’s little rented house as soon as Violet had returned from Sunny Isles. She’d barely left her side the entire time Caitlin had been there.
“I made her go to the pottery workshop at the center—she’s been looking forward to it forever. Only now, I can’t stand being in this house alone. It’s just so quiet. It’s so quiet, it’s loud—like a deafening roar of quiet. It almost makes me feel like I’m going crazy.”
Caitlin thought of George’s primal growls as the children had giggled and clung to his back, and her heart ached. What would it be like for all that noise, all that life here, to just … disappear?
Violet sighed. “Anyway, it’s not just that I wanted to talk to someone. I wanted to talk to someone who would let me be angry. Everyone here is so at one with the mountains, you know? I mean, I love it, right up until I don’t.”
Caitlin knew what she meant. Asheville was so full of free spirits it was almost impossible for them not to rub off on you. This past year, Gram had transformed into some Zen-like, earth-mother version of herself, trading in her leather purses for hand-sewn patchwork satchels, letting her bob grow out, and giving up her blond hair dye. Finn had stopped shaving as regularly and traded in his sleek road bike for a heavy mountain version that all but came covered in mud. Now that Caitlin thought about it, the only one who seemed unchanged by the family’s move was Violet.
“That’s fair,” she said. “You have a right not to feel at one with anything at the moment.”
“I think I’m officially moving from the confused stage to the pissed-off stage,” Violet said. “I mean, how can Finn do this to me? How can he do this?”
Caitlin’s eyes fell on the kitchen island where she’d faced off with Finn earlier. The boys were squirting Reddi-wip into their bowls, and little bits of whipped cream were flying everywhere. She’d be finding dried white splotches on cupboard doors for weeks, but George, in the custom of his forefathers, was oblivious. He lifted his eyes to meet hers and raised his eyebrows in married couple language for Any news? Caitlin shook her head. He adjusted his expression into one that said Unbelievable. George seemed as genuinely surprised as Caitlin and Violet were by Finn’s disappearance, a fact that Caitlin found comforting. She loathed the idea of the two women in the room being baffled to tears and then her husband, Finn’s golf buddy, swaggering in and saying, “Oh, he finally made a run for it, did he?” as if the wives, being typical wives, had been duped all along. Caitlin and Violet weren’t like those women who pretend not to know what nefarious activities their husbands are up to, or who are oblivious of behavior that doesn’t fit with their ideas of a perfect marriage. And George and Finn weren’t like those husbands who wait for any chance to escape the nags they married.
Were they?
“I know I don’t talk about this much,” Violet went on, “but back when my parents died—” Caitlin stepped through the doorway into the dining room, where it was quieter. To say that Violet didn’t talk about her parents much was an understatement. She never spoke of them. Caitlin suspected that she felt as if doing so would somehow be disloyal to Gram.
“It sounds bad to say this, but I was so young that after a while what bothered me the most was not that I missed my parents specifically, but just that I missed having parents, you know? There would always be these Mother’s Day teas in our classroom, and father-daughter dances arou
nd Valentine’s Day, and I would have this crippling anxiety beforehand that I’d be the only one without a mom, without a dad. The teachers always offered to let me stay home if I felt uncomfortable. But Gram made me go. ‘You have to face it, Violet,’ she’d say. ‘You have to face it.’ And you know what? She was right, I did. I had to face it in order to feel better about it. Because actually, those things were never as bad as I’d imagined they would be. Everyone else went out of their way to make me feel included, and it was a little embarrassing sometimes, but overall, it was actually a really good feeling. And if I’d stayed home, I would have been miserable all day. I had to face it in order to feel better about it. And I think that became, like, the way I’m programmed to deal with things now. So here I am in this situation where I just want to face Finn. I need to face him. But he’s not here to face. And I’m so pissed off at him that he didn’t face me, with whatever this is even about. I don’t know what to do with myself.”
Something about Violet made more sense then. Caitlin had always marveled that her friend was a woman who was not only capable of vacationing alone, but content to; who not only followed the woman who raised her to her dream retirement destination, but did it without complaint, even though Caitlin had always suspected that Asheville wasn’t Violet’s first choice of locales. Violet didn’t just face things. She faced them with resolve, with absolution.
And then there was Finn. Caitlin remembered a particular time he had barely left home for months, getting off the couch only to answer the door when she came over with food or a movie. He’d had a good enough reason, but still.
“Finn might not be the best at facing things,” she said cautiously.
“You think?” Violet retorted, and beneath the sarcasm, Caitlin could hear her anger about to boil over.
“Sorry. That was a rather pointless thing to say.”
“You know, the thing is, when he came looking for me, after all that time, I thought, here is a guy who is not going to just accept the hand that fate dealt him. Here is a guy who is going to go out and try to find what circumstances took from him, and make his own fate. I loved that! And then all these years later, for him to turn around and do this to me, as if he’s trying to undo it all…” Violet started to cry. “It’s too late to undo it all! We have Bear—he has Bear! I mean, he has to bring him home. He can’t just disappear forever. Not with my baby boy.”
Caitlin rested her forehead against the cool wall as Violet broke down. What kind of person was she not to tell Violet where Finn was right this instant? Finn wasn’t the only one who was bad at facing things. At this moment, she hated herself beyond recognition.
Her mind raced, searching for a way she could orchestrate having Violet show up at the cabin and discover Finn and Bear on her own without Finn thinking that Caitlin had given him up. If she made Violet promise to tell Finn that she’d had a key all along and had gone there on her own, would he buy it?
That wasn’t a risk she could afford to take.
Besides, she couldn’t tip Violet off even if she wanted to, not over the phone. Surely the FBI had Violet’s line tapped. If a call came in from Finn, they’d need to be ready to trace it. If Caitlin said anything suspicious now, even an offhand remark that would lead Violet to Finn, she’d be implicated immediately. And that, too, would ruin everything.
She heard the muffled sound of Violet blowing her nose. “If he only had come to me about … whatever this is.” She sniffed. “We could have faced it together. Or at least, I could have faced him. If I knew where he was right now, mark my words, Cait, I would make him face me. Whatever it took, I would not let him leave until we talked this through. Until I figured out a way to … at the very least make him give Bear back. Oh God, Cait, it’s so quiet here, it’s deafening, I want to tear my skin off—I just want Bear back.”
* * *
Awake in bed that night long after George had fallen sleep, Caitlin couldn’t stop thinking about Violet saying that after a while, she hadn’t missed her parents in a very specific way, just the idea of them, the role they had played. If something were to happen to pull Caitlin out of their lives now, would Gus and Leo forget her? They might hang on to a fleeting memory here and there, but she knew there was no way that they’d ever know the depth of her love for them—how they filled up her days and her heart and her mind. How they were her life.
And what about Bear? How long would Finn need to keep him away before he had a hard time conjuring Violet’s face, her smell, her laugh? Caitlin had watched Violet doting on Bear since birth; he had transformed her every bit as profoundly as Caitlin herself had been changed by motherhood. Every day that Bear was apart from Violet was a day that the two of them didn’t have the simple but infinitely deep comfort of their bond. Caitlin knew she could not be complacent about something that grave and face herself in the mirror. And for what had Finn stooped to these depths, anyway? Why was he doing this?
Caitlin didn’t know the answer, but she kept circling back to the way she could find out. She didn’t like it, but there was one solution between sacrificing her own family to restore Violet’s and taking the chance that Finn would disappear again.
If Violet couldn’t track Finn down and face him right now, Caitlin could do it for her. She could find out what was at the bottom of this and make him see that there had to be a better way through it.
It was easy enough to take time off work when your husband was a major donor to the organization. When you commanded a token salary and still brought in more donations than everyone else combined, no one would tell you no. There was only one problem: After five whole days away at Violet’s, George would never believe that she’d leave the twins again so soon. Every believable lie she could think of was just that: a lie. And in every lie there were many ways to be caught. She could say she had to go back to Violet’s, for instance, that she felt too guilty being so far away from a friend who needed her. But a simple phone call from Violet would give her away. She’d called the house phone tonight. It wasn’t a stretch to imagine she’d do it again.
No, best to tell the truth. To say that she was going to the cabin. George would believe that she needed a few days to recharge after the emotional fatigue of helping her friend through the ordeal. What he wouldn’t believe was that Caitlin wouldn’t take the kids with her.
Caitlin thought of their last family trip there, Gus and Leo finally having the go-ahead to climb into their bunk beds alone, scaring the bejesus out of her with their jumping on the mattresses and hanging over the edges.
“They’re boys!” George had laughed, seeing her clenched white knuckles. “Boys will be boys!”
And they were boys, through and through—just like George. She couldn’t imagine the three of them separating, no matter the genetic circumstances. If anyone was on the fringe, it was her.
If George were to find out her secret—and if Finn were to damage the reputation of the father George so idolized, casting doubt on George’s own prospects in the process—would he be angry enough to leave her? For years he’d been gently hinting that perhaps their lives were too intertwined with Finn’s, but Caitlin hadn’t listened. He could hold her responsible for all of this, and in a way, he’d be right. And if he were angry enough to leave her, would he be angry enough to take the kids with him? He’s already invested so much in the twins’ future, Finn had said. He can’t have you just slink off with them. George’s family had a seemingly infinite supply of money, resources, and connections, and they rarely hesitated to use them. If her kids were to grow up in a broken home, it was too easy to picture that home being one without her in it.
Finn had been right about the pride, too. George was about as nice a guy as men of his stature came, but if there was one thing he couldn’t stand, it was the slightest hint that he was being taken for a fool. She had seen him walk away, pen in hand, from the rare classic car of his dreams, the exact year, make, model, and even color as the one his grandfather had driven, restored to perfection. He’d
struck up an innocent enough conversation with the owner at a car show one lazy Saturday, and it turned out the thing was for sale. It was all George talked about for weeks, but when it came to one last signature at the table, the seller refused to put a part—a very minor part, in Caitlin’s estimation—of their verbal agreement in writing, and that was it for George. He had never looked over his shoulder as he walked away, had never taken the seller’s many calls in the days that followed, had never again so much as mentioned the incident—and he hadn’t searched for a different car to buy either. George could go cold like that. And once he did, it didn’t matter how hot he’d once been for whatever it was. He was done.
11
AUGUST 2011
Finn had just stepped outside onto the front steps of Maribel’s apartment building when he caught sight of Caitlin heading up the walk. He knew her instantly by the way she carried herself—head held high, as if she had something to prove. She hadn’t always walked that way, but her gait had changed since she’d met George. Now, even her silhouette against the streetlights looked perfectly tailored to fit. She caught sight of him and lifted her hand in a wave so excited and childlike that it transformed her back into the old Caitlin even as her other hand grasped a glittery clutch that probably cost as much as Finn made in a month.
She half jogged the last few steps to catch him in an embrace, brief but strong. Then she held him at arm’s length, beaming. “Congratulations! I can’t believe this is the first time I’ve had a chance to tell you in person.”
Finn grinned. “Thanks.” He took in her long, clingy black dress, accented by only a single tear-shaped emerald hanging from a golden chain around her neck. Sometimes it was still a shock seeing her this way. She’d spent so many hours lounging on the futon in his dorm room in flannel pajama pants—often she hadn’t even bothered to change out of them to go to class or the dining hall.
“I know—I used to be, like, the least fancy person you knew,” she said, reading his mind. She gestured down at her outfit with something akin to embarrassment. Part of Caitlin’s charm had always been that she had no idea that anyone might consider her beautiful. To Finn, that made her even more so.
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