No. He deserved worse. He deserved to die on the side of the road, trapped in a car that was supposed to take them so much farther than just to the coastline, to the place where the waves met the earth and the sky opened up and the world seemed large and capable of anything. To a new city. A new home. A new business. A new start. All of it together. Finn hadn’t even been scared of whether it would work out for him to start taking freelance clients, or if they would make friends in Asheville who’d come to mean as much to him as Caitlin did, or what he’d do if his bank account stayed as low as it was as he filled his gas tank to cringeworthy heights before they headed south from Cincinnati that day. It hadn’t mattered if they failed, because they couldn’t truly fail. They would have each other, and that would be enough to make up for anything and everything else that could possibly go wrong. Finn had been absolutely sure. He had never been so sure in his life.
He had never been so wrong.
If he had bought that damn frozen pizza along with the bourbon, he could put it in the oven now and just close his eyes. Maybe he’d fall asleep with it in there. Maybe the old smoke detectors would malfunction. Maybe he would drift away as the smoke filled the house. Maybe he would never wake up. It would look like an accident—hell, it would be an accident. It would just happen. No one would know what a coward he was. But he hadn’t bought a pizza. He had absolutely nothing in the house to eat. And he couldn’t figure out a way for absolutely nothing to kill him, no matter how badly he wanted it to.
“Damn it, if I could go back—if I could just go back…” He was talking to her again—it was hard to stop now that he’d let himself start. A full year and he hadn’t allowed himself so much as a cry uttered aloud at her grave site. He went only very, very early in the morning, or very, very late at night. He was too afraid of seeing anyone else there. Who wanted to visit their daughter’s grave, or their son’s, or their friend’s, or neighbor’s, and find standing there—or sitting there, or lying on the ground sobbing—the person responsible for her death? No one. Finn didn’t even like being there with himself. If he could have found a way to abandon himself and move on as someone else, he would have done it in a heartbeat.
“I used to fantasize about going back to the night of the party, or the morning after. I used to wish more than anything that I could reach back in time to stop us from getting into that car. But I’ve come to terms with the fact that I don’t deserve that second chance.”
He splashed more of the bourbon into his glass, clunked the bottle back onto the table, and drank deeply.
As his grief had gradually grown into something darker, he had stopped allowing himself to ask for this. And whom had he been asking? God? He felt too much like a child who had broken a favorite toy. Please, if you get me a new one, I promise to take better care of it.
The worst was that she hadn’t been only his. She’d belonged to others too. She’d belonged to everyone. He had never even been punished for breaking her. Why hadn’t they punished him—all of them? He could never punish himself enough.
“I don’t deserve it,” he told Maribel again, “but you do.”
Still, he had no right to ask God. It was a question that had to be put out to the universe. The universe understood chaos. It was prone to making mistakes. Why couldn’t it right a wrong once in a while? Was that so out of reach?
He knew exactly where time needed to turn back to. He’d pinpointed the real root of his troubles, the one moment that if lived differently could have changed everything. It wasn’t the day of the party or the morning after. It was before—a year before, to be exact. His need to go back there was intense, though he’d never allowed himself to speak it aloud. But now it was just him and Maribel, who had always indulged his dreaming. And before he could contemplate how much the words might hurt her if she could hear him now—because he didn’t know if she valued her own life as much as he valued it now that he’d been forced to live his without her, because he didn’t know if she’d be as willing as he was to sacrifice everything good they had ever had between them if only she could live—the bourbon told her for him.
“I never should have posted that ad—at least, not the way it was written. It was like you told me that first night, in Fountain Square. You were right to be angry. You should have walked away then, while you had the chance. It was too vague. It could have been for anyone.”
He was crying now. He’d been bottling it in for so long that it came pouring out, and he didn’t bother to resist. What was the point of stopping it? Even if Maribel could see him now, how could she think any less of him than she already did? He’d been the one responsible for the end of her life. It didn’t get any worse than that.
“If you’d never met me, you’d still be alive,” he told her, sobbing. “If I could go back and rewrite that damn ad so there could be no mistaking who it was for, you never would have gone to meet me that night, and we never would have fallen in love, or made any of the plans that I can’t live without now. And we never would have gotten into that car. If I could just go back to before I posted that damn ad, maybe I could save us both.”
He swiped his glass roughly off the table, sloshing bourbon onto the worn wood. He staggered to the computer, smashing his thigh into the pointed corner of the old desk before dropping with a groan into the leather chair parked there. In his e-mail in-box, he found the folder he never let himself look in anymore but couldn’t bring himself to delete. The Maribel folder. Inside was everything they’d sent each other in their year together—random love notes e-mailed in the middle of their workdays, ordinary debates about where to go for dinner or what movie to see, pictures of one or both of them. Every Monday, Maribel had sent him a candid shot of him she’d taken over the weekend—more often than not a picture that he hadn’t noticed her snapping—contemplating a wine list, looking across the river to Newport, pointing to an available cab. She never captioned the photos—she never had to. He got that she was sending him glimpses of himself through her eyes. In every shot, there he was, caught unawares by her love.
The top of the folder mostly consisted of links to Asheville info, wedding DJs and cake bakeries—they’d been down to business those last weeks together, but they’d been having so much fun he hadn’t even missed their other notes. He scrolled to the bottom of the folder, to the beginning of things, refusing to let his cursor linger over anything else on the way. There it was, her very first note.
Okay, stranger, I’ll bite. Let’s see if I am your me and you are my you.
“You were not my you,” he said softly. “And I was not your me.”
There was one more message beneath it: the draft of the first ad he had written, the one he hadn’t posted. The one he’d rewritten into the call that Maribel had answered. He opened it now and read it again.
You on the beach in the Camp Pickiwicki shirt: If you’re reading this, the third coincidence is the charm. Care to pick up where fate left off? My name is Finn, by the way. It’s pretty obvious by now that I should have told you that.
If he had posted that one instead, Maribel would be alive today. He wouldn’t know that he had made that difference, but that would be okay. He wouldn’t know what he was missing. He might still not know what love was. He would never have met her, but she would be safe. And who knows? Maybe he would have found a way to be happy too. He never would now. Not like this.
If there was any justice in the universe, any way to right a wrong, Finn didn’t believe that it would come through a portal in time. It had to come through the heart. He’d once heard someone call worrying a “useless emotion.” That was true. But if wishing was equally useless, there was no hope for anyone. All anyone really could do was go through the motions and hope for the best. If there was such thing as miracles, maybe he would wake up tomorrow and it would be two years ago. This whole folder would be gone from his in-box. But maybe in its place would be an e-mail from someone else.
Finn finished his drink in several big swallows. It burned
going down. He logged on to Craigslist and selected “Missed Connections” from the “Personals” menu. He copied and pasted the first ad he’d written, and clicked the post live.
He waited, as if perhaps the living room around him would be sucked up into some kind of tornadic time warp. Nothing happened. The old house creaked. His stomach churned. Angrily, Finn yanked the computer’s plug out of the wall, and its fan stopped with a groan. He staggered into the kitchen to search the cupboards, the fridge, the freezer, everywhere he could think of again for something he knew wasn’t there.
19
AUGUST 2012
As the late Saturday morning sun streamed through her open kitchen window, Violet hoisted the last brown paper bag of peaches onto the counter and breathed in a big, satisfying whiff of their sweetness. She and Gram had officially gotten carried away at the farmers’ market. The rest of their take was spread out all around her—more peaches, early season apples, zucchini, and late-summer squash, all begging to be sliced or grated and baked. And then there was their lunch: a fresh round loaf of rosemary garlic peasant bread, a hunk of Amish cheese, a pint of this week’s featured hummus. And all this on top of a gluttonous morning. As she’d watched Gram work her market magic, choosing the best at every stand, Violet had trailed along obediently and happily behind her, filling her arms and helping herself to free samples of apple cider donuts, lemon orzo salad, the last of the summer’s blackberries.
Only with a partner in crime could Violet go this overboard; she always got overwhelmed at the market when she went alone. Everyone else seemed to have such purpose, but she’d find herself trying to remember why she’d come at all, when earlier it had seemed like such a perfect way to start a Saturday. She’d head home with meager pickings tucked into her reusable shoulder bag and then later pine for all the things she hadn’t bought as she combed through her poorly stocked pantry looking for lunch.
Violet hit Play on the CD player mounted beneath her corner cabinet, and the voice of Patsy Cline filled the kitchen. Gram was next door on a mission to retrieve real butter (none of that “margarine crap” Violet’s calorie-counting conscience always made her buy) and her good stand mixer. They were about to have an all-day baking extravaganza—homemade applesauce, peach pie, zucchini bread—some for the week ahead, some for friends, and some for the freezer. The thought of being able to tap into the perfect, not-too-hot sunshine of this August day on some dreary weekend in November made Violet smile.
When Violet had woken up this morning, she had settled into her breakfast nook with a cup of coffee and a magazine, no particular plans in mind and no thought of making any—until she heard Gram’s rap at the back storm door. Now, two hours later, Violet’s day stretched out before her like a hammock in the sun, warm and comforting and full.
This sort of thing had been one of the perks of being under Gram’s wing for as long as Violet could remember. Gram wasn’t big on advance planning, but she believed in keeping busy. As a result, Violet never knew what to expect, but she could always bet something interesting would be in store. If it dawned on them that it was a Tuesday, they might spring for “Bargain Night” tickets to see a classic movie on the little big screen at the Esquire Theatre. A heavy snowfall might necessitate a trip to the Conservatory, where they’d stand beneath the palm trees in the rain forest room, watching the waterfall send delicious humidity into the simulated tropical air as they tossed coins from the little arched bridge into the water below. A hot day could mean a shaded hike down to the creek at French Park, where they’d remove their shoes and wade around looking for crawdads. Gram wasn’t squeamish about crawly things, and she wasn’t squeamish about taking life as it came either. Violet had always observed her keenly. It was impossible to know Gram and not in at least some small way want to be like her.
The door creaked open a sliver, and a white canvas Ked poked its way through the bottom. “A little help, dear?” Gram called, and Violet rushed over to pull the door open wide. Taking in the sight of the petite woman loaded to the gills with provisions, she couldn’t help but laugh. “You couldn’t make a second trip for the wine?” she joked.
“No!” Gram shook her head with mock seriousness. “We must uncork this immediately. It needs to breathe for a few minutes, and you know the rules. We can’t start baking without wine.”
Having graduated to this level of friendship with her grandmother was one of the great pleasures of adulthood for Violet. Half the time Violet preferred her to people her own age.
“Is that because Gram’s young at heart, or because you’re an old soul?” Katie had asked once. Violet didn’t know, and it didn’t much matter. It just was.
Together the women started wiping down the counters and setting out cutting boards and knives and bowls and Violet’s pretty hand-painted canisters of flour and sugar. They moved around each other as they had hundreds of times before, Gram humming the alto harmonies on the CD and Violet singing along in her thin soprano.
“Why don’t we get the apples boiling, while I set to work on the piecrust?” Gram asked in the beat of silence before the next song began, and Violet simply nodded and set to work peeling the apples over the sink.
“I stop to see a weeping willow, crying on his pillow…” A third voice sang in through the kitchen window, and Gram opened the door to the little back porch. “Katie! Come in, darling.”
Katie swept into the room and flashed Violet an I-love-your-Gram smile. “She’s the only person on earth I don’t mind calling me darling,” she’d told Violet once. “Not that anyone else has ever tried.” The endearments never sounded affected coming from Gram. It was just her way.
“Care to join our bake-athon?” Violet asked.
Katie surveyed the scene. “Good God. You bought out an apple orchard. Or are those peaches?”
“Both.”
“You two are going to roast alive in here.”
“That’s why we keep the wine chilled, dear girl,” Gram said, taking three glasses from the cabinet and filling them all.
“It’s not even noon,” Katie protested insincerely, and then took a big sip. “There’s actually a tasting at the zoo tonight, if you ladies want to come. Wild About Wine, they’re calling it. There’s live music.”
“Sounds fun,” Violet said.
“I’ve got plans to go salsa dancing, but you girls have fun,” Gram said.
Violet opened her mouth to make a joke that it was supposed to be the other way around, them going out dancing and Gram wearing linen and heels to the zoo’s botanical gardens, but thought better of it. Katie could be a little sensitive about these things.
“So. I’ve got news.” Katie looked excessively proud of herself, like a precocious child who was going to make them guess and guess at the answer.
“You met someone?” Violet had learned that almost all of Katie’s news revolved around meeting or failing to meet someone.
“Not me,” she said slyly, walking Violet’s glass over to her. “But you really won’t believe it. I was on Craigslist reading the Missed Connections—”
“And what are the Missed Connections?” Gram asked, sliding gingerly onto a counter stool.
“Oh.” Katie’s eyes were bright. “They’re these postings, kind of like a modern twist on those old personal ads, where people write things like, ‘I talked with you one morning while we were both waiting for the bus. I didn’t have the nerve to ask for your phone number, and now I regret it. You were wearing a yellow skirt and knee-high riding boots and I would love to see you again.’”
Gram lifted her eyes to the ceiling. “You young people these days. You don’t talk to one another. It’s all those ridiculous devices you’re always playing with instead.”
“The real question isn’t the societal decline evidenced by the Missed Connections,” Violet said, laughing. “The real question is, what were you doing reading them? Did you meet someone? Or—miss someone?”
“I wish! No, I just think they’re romantic. I mean,
a lot of them are actually pretty stupid—but they give me hope that people out there believe in … I don’t know, something.”
Violet slipped a slice of apple into her mouth. “This makes me think of an article I read the other day. Did you know that in the 1930s, most couples lived within ten blocks of each other when they first met?”
“Is that a fact?” Gram asked. “You know, it doesn’t really surprise me.”
“Well, in your day—” Katie began.
“Watch it, young lady,” Gram teased, swatting at her with a tea towel. “I may be an antique, but the ’30s were not ‘my day.’”
“I don’t even know anyone who lives within ten blocks of me,” Violet said. “Except you, Gram.”
“I don’t know,” Katie said. “Isn’t that kind of sad? That everyone would just pick the best available option within reach? Although if things were still that way, maybe we’d both be married by now…”
“Maybe you would,” Gram agreed, and both women shot her a warning look. She raised her hands in surrender. “Sorry. Anyway, back to these missed chances.”
“Missed Connections,” Violet corrected her.
“They sound like missed chances to me. I wouldn’t want to hear from a man who didn’t have the guts to talk to me right off, anyway.”
“What if it didn’t have anything to do with guts?” Katie asked. “What if there was some reason beyond his control that kept things from moving ahead?”
“Such as?” Violet said.
“Such as a woman going into anaphylactic shock on the beach.”
“Very funny. No one went searching for a Missed Connection there.”
Almost Missed You Page 16