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 pump 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.”