Back home in Ohio, Gram had known Violet’s kitchen as well as her own. Violet closed her eyes and pictured her sunny kitchen there—not the one she and Finn and Bear had rented from Caitlin, which was worn but beautiful, large and airy and vintage and charming, but the one in the duplex she and Gram had shared. The one that still came to mind in her most anguished moments when she longed to be in the place that felt most like home. The cheery yellow walls that were the mirror image of the ones she’d spent her childhood in, and the comforting sounds of Gram tinkering on her side of the dividing walls. The life Gram had built for herself in Asheville included Violet, but it wasn’t adjacent to Violet’s, not the way it so literally used to be. The only thing that had ever made this new mountain address truly feel like a place where Violet belonged was Bear. When she’d found herself getting homesick this past year, wishing she could run him next door for an impromptu playdate with Caitlin and the twins, she’d remind herself that this was where he’d learned to pedal his tricycle around the driveway, where he’d transitioned to his big-boy bed, where he’d soon walk to his first day of preschool down the block—and where one day she’d look down at his lanky limbs and sideways smile with wonder and realize that her baby had somehow transformed into a full-fledged kid. But he wasn’t here now. And without him, it wasn’t home.
Gram plunked two steaming mugs onto the table, along with a bottle of agave nectar and a small carton of organic milk. Violet made a face, stood, and retrieved the hazelnut-flavored creamer from the fridge.
“That is loaded with artificial ingredients,” Gram said disapprovingly.
“I know,” Violet said, pouring herself twice as much as she usually did. “They’re delicious.” She stopped short of pointing out that there’d been a day when Gram had consumed more of this stuff than she did. She was happy her grandmother felt so at ease here in the culture of Asheville, and at the Evergreen community where she had her own apartment with a patio overlooking the beautiful landscaped grounds of the senior center, the hazy rounded mounds of the Blue Ridge serving as a picture postcard backdrop to her days. She knew it wasn’t fair to Gram that her numbness was giving way to an anger that seemed to extend to everything within reach—mild irritants suddenly becoming insufferable ills. It wasn’t Gram’s fault Finn had disappeared with Bear.
It was just that Violet wasn’t sure whose fault it was, exactly. Finn was the obvious answer. But why?
“Katie called,” Gram said, letting it drop.
“Oh?”
“She wanted to see about driving down here.”
Violet had seen Katie only once since she’d moved to Asheville, a quick lunch date on a visit to Cincinnati. It wasn’t so long ago they’d spent five days a week in neighboring offices, lunching and breaking together and sharing even their most mundane moments. How odd that that kind of closeness could dissolve as easily as you could quit a job or move away. Although if Violet was being honest, they’d probably begun to grow apart before that—when Violet had started dating Finn and so soon after gotten pregnant with Bear, and Katie had remained single, and unhappily so. Still, it was always reassuring to know that old friends were willing to be there when you needed them. Caitlin wouldn’t be able to get away to come back anytime soon. A visit from Katie might be nice. Violet felt herself warming to the idea.
“I told her it was a lovely thought, but not a good time,” Gram continued.
Violet blinked at her. “Why would you do that?” The words sounded harsher than she intended, and she checked herself. “I mean, I can understand why you might think that, but why not let me decide?”
Gram sighed, as if she’d known the question was coming but still hoped it wouldn’t. “Katie has always taken a lot of credit for getting you and Finn together,” she said carefully.
“Well, yeah. If it hadn’t been for Katie—”
“But I’m not sure it’s best to be harping on how things began, dear. You don’t want that to influence the decisions you make now.”
Violet’s forehead knitted itself together. “And what decisions would those be? I’m kind of at the mercy of … you know—” Violet gestured halfheartedly into the air and let her hands drop to the table.
Gram let the silence fill the room, then cleared her throat. “Agent Martin was here again earlier.”
Violet stiffened. That the FBI was a part of her life now was surreal. That they had yet to make any progress in actively helping her was unsettling. That Agent Martin made Violet anxious even though Violet had done nothing wrong was nerve-racking. “Why didn’t you wake me?”
“It was me he wanted to talk to. He went to the office at the Evergreen, and they told him I was here.”
Violet waited for Gram to continue on her own, but she did not.
“Well, what did he want?”
Gram took a long sip of her coffee, set the mug gently on the table, and began turning it slowly counterclockwise in this absentminded way she had. Violet could see it now: She’d been summoned from beneath Bear’s Thomas the Train comforter for the purposes of this talk, and not just for Gram’s newly imposed face-the-day routine.
“He had more questions. About you and Finn. How things have been between you.”
Violet thumped her palms on the table in frustration, and caramel-colored coffee sloshed over the rim of her mug and puddled on the wood. “All they’ve done is ask the same questions over and over!” she exploded. “They’re supposed to be finding Bear and bringing him home. Instead, they’re investigating my marriage!”
Gram calmly removed a stack of napkins from the ceramic holder she’d bought for Violet at the big spring craft show and began sopping up the spill. “Well,” she said gently, “to be fair, I’d say the two are intrinsically linked at this point, dear, like it or not.”
“I’ve already told them,” Violet said, and she felt that she sounded like a child, but she didn’t know how to sound any other way. “We don’t fight. We haven’t been at odds over anything—at least, not anything bigger than whose turn it is to unload the dishwasher. We moved here to be close to you and haven’t met too many other people yet. So we spend even more time together than most couples, probably—and also with Bear. We both of us love our son. What else is there to tell?”
Gram looked so sad just then that Violet couldn’t help but think of how Gram herself was no stranger to being blindsided. She hardly ever spoke of Violet’s grandfather, or of Violet’s parents, and she carried herself with such contented self-assurance that it was easy to forget she had lost her husband and then her only child in close succession, and one day had found herself faced with the unrequested task of raising her granddaughter. Alone.
“Look, darling.” Gram’s voice was kind but matter-of-fact. “I spent many, many years married to a man who I loved but was not in love with—and who was not in love with me. It was the same way with most of my friends. Things were different in our day. People got married for different reasons. Our expectations weren’t the same. It had a lot more to do with stability than with romance.”
Violet stared. “Where are you going with this?”
“What I mean is that I can recognize someone who is going through the motions.”
“And you’re saying that’s what you think Finn was doing?”
Gram didn’t answer.
“Since we got to Asheville, you mean? Out of his element?”
Still, Gram said nothing.
“All the time he’s been with me? You think he’s been just … phoning it in?”
The old woman shifted in her chair. How long had she been looking so frail? “I don’t know about all the time. But sometimes, maybe so.”
“And it never occurred to you to say something to me about it?”
“Darling. What would you have me say, exactly?”
Violet opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Gram reached across the table and placed her weathered hand gently on top of Violet’s. “I never saw it as a red flag, dear. As I said, I recognize that look. I’ve seen it on your grandpa’s face, and I admit I’ve even seen it in the mirror sometimes. It comes and goes, you know. And it doesn’t mean a marriage cannot still be successful.”