“Cait.” He looked up at her desperately. “Forget the fact that I’m not even close to ready for a relationship, that I can’t imagine ever being ready again. This is the woman I was searching for when I met Maribel. How can I ever look at her and not see Maribel?”
She didn’t understand then what he really meant—that he believed that if he’d found Violet in the first place, Maribel would still be alive. She wouldn’t understand that until it was too late. And so what she said next was not what she would later wish she’d told him when she replayed the conversation with the benefit of hindsight. But on that day, it was from the heart.
“You can and you should, because she isn’t Maribel. She has nothing to do with Maribel. She’s a fresh start. She’s a second chance. She’s someone you bothered to search for in the first place, years ago. And so what if you’ve found her now by accident? Doesn’t that still count for something? Doesn’t that count for everything?”
They didn’t discuss it again. But a few weeks later, he brought Violet by for the first time. And that was the first sign Caitlin saw that maybe Finn would be okay. He wasn’t the old fun-loving Finn, but nor was he the new grief-stricken one. He was someone else. Not someone in between, but someone off to the side, maybe. Someone who at a glance looked like the Finn she knew but upon close examination wasn’t exactly. Still, George didn’t seem to notice, and Finn acted as natural as this version of Finn could, and Violet didn’t know the difference, so Caitlin decided that this was probably fine too. Good, even. This was probably what moving on had to look like. Not backward, and not forward, at least not yet—just an almost imperceptible step to the side.
For her part, she wasn’t going to let him disappear into the relationship this time, the way he had with Maribel, the way some people did with everyone they dated. This time, she’d stay close. Finn wasn’t the only one who’d had a fragile year. In the long stretches of George’s absence, she’d found herself pining for a baby more strongly than ever before, curling up into herself with every unsuccessful attempt, envisioning with something close to panic the periodic loneliness of this life stretching out for all the years before her. Failure was unfamiliar to Caitlin. At the moment, George’s otherwise good grace only infuriated her. It was sallow Finn whom she instead found to be some kind of a comfort. And so this time she would not sacrifice him so readily to another woman. It would be much easier to keep hold of him now that he was right next door. She would learn to love Violet, she would embrace her into their circle as if she’d been there all along, she would support Finn in whatever ways he needed her. She would not lose him, nor would she allow him to lose himself.
The best realization of all was that Violet reminded her of the person Finn used to be, the person Caitlin had been drawn to in part because he was so very different from her, in ways that she couldn’t help but admire and, if she was being honest, maybe even envy a little. Violet wasn’t much of a planner. Violet wasn’t much of a worrier. Violet had lost her parents even younger than Finn had, but the role had been filled so well by her grandmother that any damaging effects were hidden from view. She seemed to like her job, was good at it, but not so much that she lived it. She was close enough to Gram to appear grounded and stable, but not so much that she came across as dependent. She seemed content on her own but drawn almost irresistibly to Finn. Anyone could see she adored him. And the way he looked at her, as if she had just fallen out of the sky and landed in front of him, to his astonishment and often amusement—it gave Caitlin hope that Finn could be truly happy again.
And Finn had a right, she thought, to this fresh start. Even though she had reservations when the weeks and then months went by and it was occasionally obvious from something Violet said or didn’t say that Finn still hadn’t told her about Maribel, Caitlin didn’t press him. She asked him about it exactly once, and when he brushed her off, she didn’t argue. Nor did she take it upon herself to tell Violet what Finn wasn’t yet ready to. Long before Violet had come into the picture, Caitlin and George had arrived at a sort of truce with Finn, an unspoken agreement that he was the only one who would speak Maribel’s name first in any conversation. It put him in control of when he wanted to be reminded of what had happened, or to discuss it. And he almost never did—which was fine with Caitlin. She didn’t like to be reminded of it either, of the way Finn had slipped into shock as if it were a new skin, of the way he’d looked at her when she told him George’s family would help to quietly extricate him from the wreckage of the crash. His look had not been one of gratitude, but rather … what? Resentment? Disgust?
It nagged at her at first, the idea of Violet not knowing something that was such a big part of who Finn had become, but as Violet and Finn quickly became one of those inseparable couples who hardly did anything apart, and as all four of them found themselves miraculously pregnant and due around the same time, Caitlin gave herself over to the promise of finally becoming a mother and worried about Finn less and less. So he really had started over. He’d left that tragedy behind. If he’d had to do that on his own terms, then so be it. Why be the one to mess that up for him by rocking the boat?
23
AUGUST 2016
Finn wasn’t Catholic, but he still felt a little as if he’d been instructed to recite Hail Marys until he had repented his sins.
The Hail Mary did seem an apt metaphor—in sports terms, anyway. He’d sensed Caitlin’s desperation as she had instructed him, in that half-kidding tone that really wasn’t joking at all, to leave the syrupy breakfast dishes and sugared-up boys to her, and instead go down to the dock and focus on “one happy memory with Violet.”
“What are you, my therapist?” he’d grumbled. But Caitlin only raised an eyebrow as if to indicate that some therapy might have come in handy. It was easy enough to go along with her request, or at least pretend to, if only to get her off his back. Obviously, she had no way of knowing what the hell he was really thinking about down here. He could see her through the cabin’s large picture windows, moving around the kitchen. Once in a while he caught a flash of a giggling child running by the sliding glass doors. He’d eaten his share of the banana pancakes standing up, evading the awkward silence still between him and Caitlin from the evening before. Upon waking, they’d wordlessly agreed to a cease-fire, but he knew better than anyone that pretending everything was fine was a temporary solution, and an ineffective one at best.
The truth was, he still couldn’t shake the feeling that he was halfway glad she was here. It was ridiculous. Her being here was a disaster. It couldn’t end well for any of them. And yet … Finn needed a friend. He couldn’t help it. And though it was complicated in this case for that friend to be Caitlin, it was also fitting. They’d been through the worst together before. But of course that had been before Violet, and long before Bear and the twins.
Even though she claimed she was here to help him out of it, he knew that really meant she was here to try to talk him out of it. And even though he also knew there was no way that was going to work, he still couldn’t help feeling some small relief not to be alone in this corner he’d backed himself into. And that relief was dangerous. Caitlin was not to be underestimated. He couldn’t let his guard down.
Back in school for graphic design, his professors were fond of cautioning students never to jump at the first fix for a design problem. “Think of five solutions, and then discard them,” they advised. “Then dig deeper for a better one.” That was when the real creativity kicked in. But in this case he’d already picked a bad fix to start. It was as if his very wiring had short-circuited, and when the power came back on he’d blinked into the light and was surprised to find Bear at his side. From there he’d chosen all the wrong moments to hesitate. He should have taken the money Caitlin offered when he confronted her in Cincinnati—but she’d stipulated that he leave Bear. By then he’d already accepted that he couldn’t go back to that moment of the power surge, and he wasn’t about to give him over easily—the boy was all he had
left of love. He had to find some other way out.
“Do you want me to come up with a happy Violet memory for you?” Caitlin had asked with mock innocence. “I can think of several…”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he’d snapped. And before he knew it, he was pouring himself a cup of coffee and stalking down here. As beautiful as the lake was in the morning light, he wouldn’t turn his back on the cabin. He didn’t think she’d be so bold as to try to run out the front with her boys and Bear, but this was uncharted territory for both of them, and he didn’t know how she might react any better than he knew what he was going to do next.
The air at the water’s edge smelled mildly fishy, and of wet leaves, the overeager ones that had detached and allowed themselves to fall prematurely. He breathed deeply, trying to block out the sounds of the boys whining up on the cabin’s deck. It was something to do with wanting more juice. No matter how many just-this-one or just-one-more treats they got, no matter how many times he or Violet or Caitlin or George bent the rules in the name of a moment of peace, they never seemed satisfied. It starts in childhood, he marveled. Nothing is ever enough. Why can’t we just learn early on to be satisfied with whatever we have?
Funny how a smell could conjure a memory like nothing else. All at once he could see himself pedaling his bike alongside the river one long-ago autumn, Violet hunched over her handlebars out in front of him. He’d been trying not to picture her since the day he’d left her at the hotel. But now he could see her so clearly, he might have reached out and touched her.
That first season together, they’d ridden every chance they got, evenings, weekends, claiming the paved railroad tracks of Southwestern Ohio’s Rails-to-Trails network as their own, following the river through cool, damp ravines and old run-down mill towns as the leaves fell all around them. Maribel had never really been into that sort of thing; she’d been so conscientious about focusing her free time wholly on her art. But Finn’s creativity had always needed a physical outlet. Violet came along with a love of trail riding, and Finn, who’d mostly been using his road bike on neighborhood streets, found it easy to love it too.
There was something meditative about the trail stretching out in front of them, the woods flashing by on both sides, the speckled sunlight coming through in patches from above. Finn would find himself zoning out to the patterns of shadows on the pavement, but Violet had an uncanny gift for spotting hidden remnants of the old railroad that was no longer functioning there. She’d point out a rusted train crossing sign overgrown by vines. A cracked block of concrete where a station platform used to stand. Tall lights that no longer blinked.
Open your eyes, she seemed to be saying. The world is still here, all around you.
As she was the slower rider, he’d always let her lead to set the pace—and there was no denying that the view never got old. He’d catch himself admiring the tone of her legs as they pumped up and down, the lean muscles pulled taut across her back as her shoulders hunched forward, the narrow swath of her waist perched effortlessly above the seat, even the windblown ponytail that streamed out from beneath her helmet. By the time they got back to his apartment or hers an hour or two or sometimes even three later, it would have been hard for any man to resist reaching for her after they showered. He was only human. And she was so warm, and active, and healthy, and alive.
Afterward, they’d lie with their limbs intertwined and talk, compensating for their hours of companionable silence on the trail. They traded stories of their childhoods, of the highlights before and after Camp Pickiwicki. She told him about Katie’s awkward stream of dating disasters—she was on an ill-advised kick of dating their coworkers by then—and he relayed the antics of the most difficult customers in bridal photography. There was certainly no shortage of them, and it felt good to laugh about the job that had been adding to his misery for the better part of a year. She always had something sweet and homemade in her kitchen—peach cobbler, pear crisp, peanut butter cookies—and she would bring bowlsful to bed, warmed and topped with vanilla ice cream. She didn’t care if they dripped on the sheets.
Damn Caitlin and the power of suggestion. Those were happy memories, and more than one. Reconnecting with Violet, to his surprise, had been like the warm sun on his face after so much time hiding indoors. Not that he’d ever thought it could last. But then had come the news that she was pregnant with Bear.
She’d almost succeeded in masking her hopeful expression as she made the announcement, waiting for him to be the one who’d determine whether or not this news was good. He could recognize in her something that he’d felt inside himself upon meeting Maribel’s family, when they’d seemed so willing to adopt him as one of their own, knowing he had none. I’ll do anything you like, that something seemed to say, as long as you let me stay. In Violet, he understood it as a side effect of being raised by Gram even as he knew that Gram had never done anything to make her feel unwanted or like a burden. And he didn’t want to take advantage. It was just that it was so hard to turn away from the kind of love that is so eager to find you.
And he’d been so lonely when he met her.
How could he ever tell her that the last person who’d loved him, he’d killed?
The morning after her hemorrhage, she’d been ghostly white. That was when Finn had first realized the magnitude of his mistake. But he couldn’t see a way to back out then. And he’d made a hell of a mess of it now.
When was it ever a good time to leave a relationship, especially when the other person didn’t see it coming? She wouldn’t have been blindsided if she could have read his thoughts these past years. He almost wished for it—a world where he wouldn’t have to try to explain everything that was so inexplicably wrong about how things had turned out. Where she would have just known.
* * *
Finn heard a rustling behind him and turned to see Caitlin approaching. In her hands were two thermal carriers of coffee, one light pink and one navy blue. Anyone happening by on an early-morning hike through the woods or paddle around the lake might have taken Finn and his friend as two halves of an ordinary his-and-her equation.
She held the blue mug higher as she approached. “Peace offering,” she said, gesturing toward it with her head. “These lids work great for keeping the gnats away down here.”
Finn looked down at the ceramic mug he was holding. It was almost empty, and sure enough, a gnat was floating on the surface of what was left, still circling its wings in a futile attempt at escape.
“Thanks,” he said, bending to set his mug down on the dock at his feet. But when she reached him, she didn’t hand over the thermos. She pivoted back toward the cabin, and he followed her gaze to the kids. They were kicking a large orange air-filled ball around the grass beneath the deck, following it in a little pack of three, laughing.
“Juke!” Bear yelled, dodging between the twins. “Juke! Juke!”
Finn had taught him that. Because while Finn had never been the fastest or the strongest or the best shot on his own youth sports teams, he’d always been good at staying out of dodge.
“Remember how little they all were when we were here last summer?” Caitlin asked. “I remember sitting in this exact spot with Violet, talking about how big they’d already grown. If we’d only known then—”
As her own words registered to her ears, she stopped short. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that we couldn’t have imagined that a year down the road you’d be such an ass. I mean, you are, but…” He watched her search his face for a sign that her attempt at levity had worked, but he wouldn’t give her one. She sighed. “I just meant that neither of us realized they’d keep getting so damn big so damn fast.”
“I knew what you meant. And it’s okay. I do realize I’m not the victim in this, you know. I’m not that far gone.”
“Bear was doing that clingy thing where he wanted to be carried everywhere,” Caitlin continued, caught up in the memory. “Never mind that he was capable of outrunning the twins if he wanted to. He w
as skittish about new places. And do you remember how patient Violet was with him? He’d lift up those little arms and she’d bend down and tote him wherever he pointed, up to the deck, then back down here, then up again, even though he was getting too heavy for anyone’s back to handle that all day. Whatever Bear needed, she never let it show if she was too tired or not in the mood. She’s so amazing that way—and I don’t only remember watching her and thinking that. I remember watching you watching her, and knowing you were thinking the same thing.”
Finn forced a shrug he didn’t really feel.
She looked down at the mugs in her hands as if surprised to find them there. “I’m not going to be able to talk you out of this, am I?”
Her words caught him off guard. Caitlin wasn’t one to give up on anything—or anyone—once she’d set her mind to it. She was persistent to a fault. That’s a fund-raiser for you, George was fond of saying when she wouldn’t let up.
She gazed out over the water without really looking at it, her eyes moving back and forth as if she were engaged in some inner dialogue, trying to talk herself into something. Or out of something.
“I disconnected my cell phone,” he heard himself say.
Caitlin turned to Finn, her jaw suddenly slack. “What?”
“I could have left it in the hotel room. I could have tossed it in a trash can. But I didn’t want there to be any mistake about what my intentions were. I didn’t want her calling it over and over again, with false hope, or wasting time looking for it. And I didn’t want to cost her a penny more, on the next bill.”
“Very considerate.”
He closed his eyes. “You know what I’m getting at. I had to disconnect from Violet, Cait. All the way. I don’t expect you to understand, but I had to. And yet I can’t bring myself to disconnect from Bear.”
“There are other ways to go about this. Divorce. Shared custody. Pursue this any further, and you risk having your rightful half reduced to supervised visitation. Or less. Because you’ll be a felon. You’ll be disconnected from everything.”
Almost Missed You Page 19