At the moment, George was on all fours roaring like a tiger, one boy hanging from each side of him. He swayed dramatically, as if about to try to shake them off, and they squealed with delight and tightened their grips on his T-shirt.
Caitlin didn’t often watch the three of them together this way without thinking about how lucky she’d gotten. Both Gus and Leo had chocolate brown eyes, a complexion that tanned easily—even through the SPF 50+ baby sunscreen she always slathered them with—and light brown hair that turned sun-bleached blond in the summer—all characteristics that fit with George’s own childhood photos.
It was a fortunate coincidence, as he was not their father, and was also not aware of this inconvenient fact.
Caitlin was used to the fear that she’d be found out one day. That part was not new. It was just that the threat had never been this immediate, this specific.
She had not been cruising easily through these early years of motherhood as if she’d forgotten the transgression that led to their birth. Instead, she protected those boys even more fiercely than she protected her secret itself. Because she knew that she and George were not compatible in the baby-making department. Years of trying had resulted in not so much as a faint line of maybe on a pee stick. She had undergone a litany of not-pleasant tests and received a clean bill of reproductive health, and George, in a move that would mark the one time she had really resented him for the pedigreed haughtiness that only on rare occasions surfaced in his behavior, had refused to have his semen tested or even to discuss the matter further.
In playing his high card, George had not chosen wisely. And so when Caitlin realized it was her move, she hadn’t acted with any better judgment than George had. She wasn’t proud of what she’d done. And yet her choice had led to Gus and Leo, and it was hard to see how that could be entirely wrong. She did know, though, that she could never, ever again do what she’d done and continue to live with herself. And that was why nothing must ever happen to the twins. They were her two and only children. There could never be others.
Leo slipped to the ground headfirst at an odd angle and Caitlin winced. He sat up, undeterred, and again jumped onto George’s back, and only when she saw the smile return to the boy’s face did she allow herself another careful sip of chardonnay. She knew that all mothers worried but also that other mothers did not worry quite the way she did. She envied them that.
No one would have believed Caitlin spent much time envying anyone. She had the family she’d always wanted, the family most people wanted. She had more than she’d dared to dream of. She loved George more than she’d thought it was possible to still romantically love someone after years of silly spats and bad haircuts and countless shared pots of morning coffee and almost as many evening nightcaps and endless loads of laundry and trash dragged down to the curb and cozy pajama nights on their couch and stuffy black-tie events and exotic trips together and too-long stretches forced apart. What she had done had never been out of a faltering in her love for George—only a solution for the thing that he would not do.
And so George must never find out the thing Finn had threatened to tell him.
Nor could she let Finn go after George’s family, or his career—wherever it might lead. How dare Finn betray her this way? What gave him the right to threaten their future just because he’d so unfathomably screwed up his own? It was ridiculous, even shameful, to feel hurt by him when he’d hurt Violet so much worse. But it was impossible not to still feel the sting of his words, so deeply had they cut.
On Caitlin’s phone on the kitchen counter, there was one new voice mail that she couldn’t bring herself to listen to. It was from Violet, and unless some miracle had occurred in the hours since Finn left early this afternoon, it wasn’t good news.
Violet probably just needed to talk. To her best friend. To her best friend who should have been calling her back right now without even bothering to listen to the message—because she was needed, obviously. But Caitlin dreaded making the call. She was not cut out for this. The guilt and fear would eat her alive—she knew that from her years of being unable to look at the boys without imagining some tragedy striking. Only this time it wasn’t just in her head. It was a very real threat that not only could cost Caitlin her most treasured friendship—and her marriage, and maybe even her children, and her whole life, really—but also could get her into very real trouble with the very real authorities. If she were caught failing to report Finn’s whereabouts, not to mention giving him access to George’s family’s cabin in Kentucky …
The potential consequences were terrifying.
There had been no picnic in the park for Caitlin and the boys this afternoon. After Finn left, she paced her kitchen in a panic, running through every imaginable scenario that would reveal her crime. What if George suggested they take the kids to the lake this weekend, as he so often did after they’d been apart? It was only a couple hours’ drive, but their family time together was different there. Simpler. Uninterrupted. It was the perfect place to recharge when your home life was as driven by one parent’s hyperactive career as theirs was.
This time, of course, it was Caitlin who had been away, a switch that none of them was used to. If George had suggested a drive to Kentucky this morning, she would have jumped at the idea—as George would have known she would. So if he happened to suggest it now, how would she manage to decline in a convincing way?
She needed to be prepared with reasons she could not or did not want to go, just in case. The problem was, she couldn’t think of any. Except, of course, the one she couldn’t say.
There was also the possibility that George’s parents could happen upon Finn there—it was, after all, their cabin, though they rarely used it anymore. Now that they were retired, they felt less and less need to get away—unlike Caitlin’s own parents, who were currently on yet another transatlantic cruise, an expense only just within reach thanks to her mother’s teaching pension, her father’s retired firefighter benefits, and their modest mortgage finally being paid off. The sprawling Bryce-Daniels estate was much more comfortable than the simple house on the lake. When you lived in a resort and no longer went to work, who needed a vacation?
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.