Almost Missed You

by Jessica Strawser

  It was the same way with Finn now, at the lake house. Had the two of them been alone, there would have been an immediate standoff. But they weren’t, and there wasn’t. With Bear and Gus and Leo commanding the room, Caitlin and Finn were left with no choice but to dance around them, and she was horrified to realize that she was almost enjoying herself.

  Finn did tricks flipping burgers on the grill, while the boys clapped and cheered. Caitlin made a game of pretending not to know the words to silly kids’ songs, and Finn laughed along as the boys, delighted, squealed “That’s not how it goes!” with every mistake she made. They sang “The Itsy Bitsy Fire Truck Drove Up the Water Spout.” They sang “On Top of Strawberries Covered with Cheese.” They raced around the living room playing, “Duck Duck Moose!”

  By the time the sun began its descent, it felt almost like old times, Finn and Caitlin trading banter as they cleaned up the kitchen, conscious that the boys were ever present, even though the kids at that moment seemed to be hyperfocused on erecting a precarious block tower in the center of the coffee table.

  But of course, things were not like old times. Caitlin knew she couldn’t let her guard down. Doing so could be dangerous. Maybe not physically dangerous for her or the boys—God, she hoped not. She never would have come here if she’d thought even for a second that Finn would be capable of causing real harm, though now that she was here it was clear that she was no longer sure what he was and was not capable of. What worried her most was that losing control of this situation could be dangerous for Violet. If Caitlin got careless, Finn might manage to somehow slip away with Bear. And if they didn’t resurface, if Caitlin had missed the only chance to set things right, how would she ever live with herself then?

  She couldn’t let that happen. She had to keep them where she could see them. And so after all three boys were tucked into the room with the bunk beds, a sleeping bag rolled out on the floor for an exhausted little Bear, Caitlin took a pillow and a blanket from the master bedroom and dragged them out to the living room. Finn was sitting on the couch, elbows on his knees, a freshly opened beer on the table in front of him, almost as if he were looking forward to having Caitlin join him.

  But when he eyed the bundle of bedding in Caitlin’s arms, his eyes clouded. “Thanks,” he said, “but I told you, I’m sleeping with Bear.” Of course all the kids had wanted to bunk together, but Caitlin and Finn had already agreed to carry Bear out of the twins’ room once he was asleep. At the end of the hall between their room and the master bedroom was the room George’s father used as an office, and Finn and Bear could fit side by side on the pull-out couch there. Finn wasn’t about to leave Bear’s side any more than Caitlin was about to let Finn sleep in the room with the twins. She’d already muddled all the lines, but she had to draw one somewhere.

  “These aren’t for you,” she said, tossing them onto the leather recliner in the corner. “They’re for me.”

  Finn raised his eyebrows. “First you’re the milkman, now you’re the night watchman,” he teased halfheartedly. “What next?” But the spell had been broken. Her mind was already turning with the possibilities she needed to head off. How to ensure there was no way Finn could sneak Bear out without waking her?

  Even though the cabin was outfitted with an alarm system, she and George rarely bothered to set it unless they were headed home to Ohio. It had been years since her in-laws had stored anything of real value here, and the kids were prone to tripping the alarm, a nuisance to the adults who did not always dial in the “all clear” code in time. But Caitlin needed that nuisance now. The problem was, she’d given Finn the security code yesterday, when he’d stood in her kitchen, making demands.

  She walked deliberately to the keypad beside the front door, shielded the screen from Finn’s view, and began working her way through the settings. Finally, she found the reset option. She changed the code to her ATM pin, a number she wouldn’t forget and Finn wouldn’t guess. The system beeped three times to indicate that it was live, and Caitlin felt a little better. If any door or window was opened during the night, the alarm would go off. Caitlin would be right here in the living room to hear it, and even if she somehow failed to stop Finn from making off with Bear, the police would be on his heels before he could get far.

  Of course, if that happened, they’d be on her heels too.

  She stole a glance at Finn, but he was looking out through the sliding glass doors toward the lake—admiring the last silvery glint of daylight on the water or strictly avoiding her eyes, she couldn’t say. If Finn could manage to find a way to sneak out of here on his own—if she awakened here tomorrow to find only Bear, and not his fugitive father—that wouldn’t be such a bad thing, would it? Come to think of it, Caitlin would prefer it if he had a change of heart and opted out of this mess. She’d still have some explaining to do, but at least she could return Bear to his mother, with minimal collateral damage to her own family in the process.

  She helped herself to a beer she had no intention of actually drinking and joined Finn on the couch, curling her legs beneath her on the opposite end. She knew the bond still existed between them. It was like a habit—and if they’d fallen back into it earlier, they could do it again. If she could manage to tap back into that mutual sense of familiarity while the kids were in bed, then maybe she could use it to shackle the elephant in the room—to actually reach Finn.

  “It’s not as if I’m going to forget that we’re not on a pleasure trip here, Cait,” he said, and she was unnerved that his mind-reading abilities—always a marvel in their friendship—were sharp as ever.

  “Let’s play that game we used to play,” she said. “Either Or.”

  He rolled his eyes, but she pretended not to notice.

  “This thing with Vi. Would you say it’s more about something, or someone?”

  He tipped back his beer bottle and took a long swig. “Someone.”

  “And is that someone Violet, or not Violet?”

  “It depends on what you mean by that.”

  “So not Violet.” She smiled. “Is this someone me, or not me?”

  Another eye roll.

  “Whew. Glad we got that out of the way. Is this someone from the past, or the present?”

  “What the hell do you think, Caitlin?”

  “I’m asking you.”

  He didn’t answer. Caitlin pressed her bare toes into the soft leather of the couch cushion. “Do you remember what an asshole Jake was to me in college?” she asked suddenly.

  “Jake the Snake? The serial cheater? Who could forget?”

  “Well, before that, I was head over heels for the guy. As I’m sure you also remember.”

  “Why are we talking about Jake the Snake?”

  Caitlin picked at her beer label, the way she used to on first dates when she was nervous. “Because back when George and I couldn’t get pregnant, I found myself thinking about Jake. Wondering what might have been if things had turned out differently—if he hadn’t cheated. Or if I’d forgiven him. Wondering if he’d gotten married and had kids of his own. Wondering if he and I would have had an easier time having a kid.”

  Finn gave a mirthless laugh. “You found a different solution to that problem.”

  She ignored him. “The point is, it’s easy to romanticize the past. If I can do it with Jake the Snake, of all people, if I can daydream him back into a suit of armor after all the shit he put me through, imagine how easily one might retrospectively transform a good past relationship into a perfect one.”

  “I’m not ‘retrospectively transforming’ it into something that was perfect. It was perfect.”

  “Lots of things seem perfect at first. You think Maribel was your ‘one true love,’ is that what this is all about? Get real! You and Maribel just never had a chance to screw things up!”

  At the sound of Maribel’s name, Finn’s whole body changed. Somehow his stiffened, hunched stance managed to look both defensive and defeated. Like a frightened, wounded, wild animal.
>
  “Oh, I’d say I screwed it up beyond most people’s definition of what that could even possibly look like, wouldn’t you?” His voice was hollow, cold, and Caitlin at once realized both the insensitivity of her jab and the unreachable depth of Finn’s wound. Still, Finn was used to people avoiding the topic, or apologizing or backing down when it came up. To follow his lead as he retreated into that bottomless pit would only trap both of them. She had to steer him around it.

  “Wouldn’t you say you’re doing the same with Violet now?” she countered. “The thing is, what happened with Maribel, everyone knows that was an accident. But what you’re doing now—there’s no excuse. You want to decide things with Violet are null and void, fine. I don’t get it, but fine. But this is so, so far from what’s best for Bear.”

  But Finn went on with his rant as if he hadn’t heard her. “Never had a chance to screw things up with Maribel? I made the ultimate relationship-ending mistake. The only one, in fact, that you really, really can’t come back from, no matter how much you want to!” Even as he was folding inside of himself, shrinking into the couch cushion, he looked as if he could pounce on her at any second, overpowering her to the ground with misplaced rage.

  Sympathy welled up in her, but she fought it back. “Quit with the sob story, Finn. This isn’t about that.” She was surprised by the firmness in her voice. “A little perspective here, please. All I’m saying is that what the two of you had, it was special, but it only lasted a year, okay? I know you didn’t think that was fast at the time, but think of it now. Now that you’re a father, you know as well as I do, a year is like this.” She snapped her fingers. “It’s like they say, the days are long, but the years are short. And Violet’s days are really long right now, Finn. The longest.”

  Finn looked away.

  She leaned forward. She was starting to feel desperate. “Okay. So it was the perfect year with Maribel. Is it really fair to Violet for you to put a perfect year with someone else—someone you can’t have anymore, as you so eloquently pointed out—up on a pedestal over her? Over a chance to have many years ahead of you with a real-life person who I’m sure has flaws as a wife but who loves you, and is the mother of your child?”

  Finn didn’t answer.

  “I thought you had worked through this,” Caitlin said quietly.

  He turned his eyes on her. “What made you think that?” he snapped. “You never asked.”

  Caitlin recoiled. “Well, gee, let’s see. You, um, married Violet. Excuse me for assuming that meant you had come to terms with what happened with Maribel. I’m sure only everyone else drew the same conclusion.”

  “Not everyone,” he said quietly.

  “Oh, right. Not Violet. Because you never even told her about Maribel.” Her eyes bore into his until he looked away and took another big swig of his beer. “And I didn’t either,” she continued, “because I couldn’t imagine her hearing it from anyone other than you. That time I asked you about it, you said you’d tell her when you were ready. I thought you were”—she rotated the beer bottle in the air, searching for alternate wording that would not come—“working through things.”

  Finn exploded off the couch so suddenly that she dropped her drink into her lap. “In Cincinnati, I thought I could ‘work through things,’ okay? I thought that if I stayed away from Fountain Square, stayed away from Music Hall, stayed away from all the hole-in-the-wall bars and art galleries and brunch cafés that I equate with Maribel, I could almost do it. And I did almost do it. In Cincinnati. But I can’t do it in Asheville.”

  There it was. When Gram had announced that she’d be retiring in Asheville, when Violet had approached Finn about moving there, Caitlin had thought that surely Finn would finally spill his heart out to her about what had happened. When he hadn’t, she’d expressed concern to George one night as they were lying in bed. He’d only shrugged. “He’s always wanted to live there,” he said. “Why not move there now? He’ll tell her if he wants to tell her.” That’s a male mentality for you, Caitlin had thought. She’d convinced herself that Finn, whom she’d always known to be an artist and a dreamer and independent almost to a fault, was of the same mind as her smooth-talking country club husband.

  She should have known better. She had known better, had worried that Finn was keeping too much bottled up inside, taking agonizing steps he shouldn’t be taking without alerting Violet to the difficulty. And she had ignored her gut. Now look what Finn had gone and done.

  He sank back onto the couch next to her, deflated. “Asheville was too nonspecific a dream,” he said. “The whole city, the whole goddamn mountain range, all of it was my picture of the life I was supposed to have with Maribel. How can I possibly be there, in any part of it, with someone else standing in where Maribel was supposed to be?”

  Caitlin winced on Violet’s behalf. All this time, had he really thought of his wife as a stand-in?

  “I can’t compartmentalize that,” he continued. “And believe me, I’ve tried. It was a disaster. Clearly.”

  “Maybe if you’d told Violet what was going on, she could have helped you through it,” Caitlin said. “She loves you. She wouldn’t want you to be suffering.”

  “Trust me,” Finn grumbled, “if I was honest with Violet about what I’ve been feeling, it would not have ended well.”

  “And this is ending well?” Caitlin asked, incredulous. “You left her! You took her son! You’re wanted by the FBI! You’ve dragged me down here into this with you! How can this be the better solution than … than virtually anything else?”

  Finn managed to ignore the crux of her response. “I did not drag you down here.”

  “What the hell else did you expect me to do? Really, Finn.”

  “Just … leave me be. Give me time. Let me figure this out on my own.”

  Caitlin stared at him. “That’s what I’ve been doing—for years. That’s what everyone’s been doing. I’d say it’s not working out for you so well.” She gestured around the cabin, and her hand settled on Finn’s knee. “Look,” she said, “this doesn’t have to be that hard. Why don’t we call Violet and have her come up here? I’ll leave, and the two of you can talk. You tell her everything, and you work it out. Together or apart. Either way, you stop this nonsense with Bear. You tell the authorities it was a misunderstanding. Violet will back you, once she knows the truth. She’s a good person, Finn. She’s too good not to, even when you’ve hurt her. Badly.”

  He shook her hand off. “That would be very cozy, wouldn’t it? What a happy ending for everyone—except me.” He stood. “I told you, Cait. You say a word to anyone, I tell George. End of story. You can tell yourself I gave you no choice but to come down here, you can tell yourself you’re here to be a friend to Vi, but you’re really here to cover your own ass. You’re here to talk me out of it. You dragged your own kids into it. At the moment, the person making the bigger mess of things is you.”

  He set his empty bottle on the counter with a thud, then turned back to her. “I’m going to go get Bear situated in the office and stretch out next to him. So don’t even think about trying anything.”

  As if on cue, Caitlin’s cell phone burst into a melody. She looked at the screen. George. She’d texted him earlier to let him know that they had arrived safely, but never went to sleep without checking in.

  Finn raised his eyebrows, knowing who it was without asking. “Isn’t he going to be wondering why you didn’t call earlier to let the boys say good night?” he asked. He was right, of course. But Caitlin knew she couldn’t trust the boys to babble on the way they did when they were excited without mentioning Bear or Uncle Finn.

  Caitlin’s thumb hovered over the answer button. “He knows that settling in the first day here can be exhausting,” she said, trying to sound more sure than she felt.

  “But how long can you keep that up?” Finn asked. “He’s going to want to talk to them eventually. What is your plan exactly, Caitlin? How long are you going to stay?”

  Without
waiting for the answer he knew Caitlin didn’t have, he disappeared down the hallway.

  Caitlin caught the call just before it went to voice mail.

  “Hey, baby,” she said. She did her best to sound like she’d been dying to talk to him all day.

  * * *

  Wide awake on the couch, Caitlin could just make out the twins’ closed door down the hall. She wanted to join them there, where she could take comfort in the mere sound of them breathing, but resisted the urge—this was the best vantage point from which to protect them all.

  She thought about the many other nights she’d spent staring sleeplessly into the darkness of the cabin. Here even more than at home she had a tendency to be plagued by fear of all the danger close at hand. She knew the comfort around her was man-made, fragile, just slim walls between them and the wilderness—the primeval forest, the deceptively calm lake.

  She’d lie there and worry that the boys would fall off the dock and disappear beneath the surface of the murkiest part of the water. She could see herself jumping in after them, her panicked wails for help going unheard, her arms flailing wildly in circles through the water, her feet sinking into the mud and sludge below, unable to find them, unable to reach them in time. Just the thought of it was enough to make her heart race.

  She’d toss and turn and obsess about the slight risk—but nonetheless, a possibility in this part of Kentucky—of Leo or Gus having a chance encounter with a mountain lion or a black bear. Or a venomous snake. She worried about a brown recluse or black widow climbing between the bunk bed sheets at night and leaving its mark—what if the boys called for her and she didn’t see the bite? What if she didn’t recognize what was wrong? Or what if they didn’t wake to call for her at all, and in the morning, they were just … just gone? Those fears seemed as real now as they always had. She couldn’t trivialize them. That would be like tempting fate.