“Maybe we do.” Gram shrugged. “But let me ask you this. Before you batten down the hatches and go to sleep at night, what are you writing in your captain’s log? That you saw a port and tied up to it? Or some other story, about the stars navigating you into the path of another ship?”
Violet’s eyes burned. “But I did cross paths with another ship. In fact, as I recall, that ship navigated toward me, with the big Camp Pickiwicki flag I was flying above my sails. And then when it lost sight of me, it put out a call looking for me.”
Gram was quiet for a moment. She sighed. “Maybe you did cross paths, dear. Or maybe you were the port. I hadn’t thought of it that way, but—” Her voice trailed off. She cleared her throat. “It’s been a while since I’ve been out to sea alone, but if I were, I know I’d be prone to telling myself stories to pass the time. All I’m saying is, whatever you’ve been writing down for yourself in that captain’s log, make sure it’s honest.”
13
AUGUST 2016
Finn stared into the empty fireplace in front of him as if there were a roaring blaze inside. They’d roasted marshmallows here last summer—he and Bear and Violet and Caitlin and George and the twins, all together—back when things had been bearable. Before Asheville. No matter that it hadn’t been cool enough in the evenings to be fire weather. George had opened all the windows for the authenticity of nature’s sound track and left the air conditioner on full blast. And why not? It wasn’t as if he had to worry about the electric bill.
Finn wished he could build a little fire now, August heat be damned—he desperately needed to find a way to cheer Bear up. There was a huge stack of wood outside, no one would notice a few logs missing, and he’d found a bag of stale marshmallows in the kitchen. But he couldn’t risk one of the far-away neighbors seeing smoke from the chimney and stopping by to say a cheery hello to George or his father. It was out of the question.
He took a sip of his coffee and grimaced. He could hardly stand the stuff without milk. He’d stopped for groceries at a supercenter midway here from Cincinnati, not wanting to be seen at the tiny market in town, and it had been too far from the cabin and too hot in the car to pick up anything that needed refrigeration. He’d worn a baseball cap and outfitted Bear with one too, unsure—especially now that Caitlin had mentioned the FBI—whether their photos had appeared on the national news. But Finn had still been able to see in the shadow of Bear’s cap how his tiny face fell every time Finn denied him something that wouldn’t survive the journey—frozen chicken nuggets, ice cream, string cheese, those ingenious little tubes of yogurt.
Violet had once remarked that Bear could happily survive on PB&J and applesauce alone. She’d be delighted to know that Finn had proved her wrong—something she rarely was, as far as Bear was concerned—except, of course, that she wouldn’t know.
She deserved to know, of course. She deserved to have her son. The problem was, Finn couldn’t stand to let him go. And he could no longer see a way for them both to have him together. Nor could he see a way for Violet to remain in his life at all, not even at a distance. Not after everything that had happened. There had been a lot of things in the first place that had been done that could never be undone. Now there was one more—and it was a big one. That Violet so often seemed to be the casualty of Finn’s misjudgments and mistakes seemed to be somehow unavoidable in this life, even though Finn harbored no ill will toward his wife. Not that anyone would believe that now.
Finn preferred to blame the dominoes that Violet was so fond of as a metaphor for their coupling. There had been 1,001 chances for them not to end up together; 1,001 reasons for them not to end up together. And there was really only one chance, and really only one reason, for it to go the other way.
Even with the odds overwhelmingly in his favor, he had lost.
Sometimes he couldn’t believe his luck.
The night they had Bear—good God, she’d almost died. The pregnancy was an accident to begin with, and he couldn’t stop thinking that if she didn’t pull through, it would all be his fault, again, for putting her in that position. He’d sat by her bedside and thought that surely the better thing for her, if she recovered, would be for him to leave, even then. What kind of man could walk out on his new wife and their newborn son? No one would have understood Finn’s reasons, years deep. But as he’d waited for morning to light the dark hospital room, he’d known with certainty that there was no telling the pain he could cause. Violet and little Bear didn’t deserve to have to find out.
But then she was awake, beaming at him with color back in her cheeks, asking immediately for the baby, and his resolve faded. “I’m perfectly okay,” she said, reaching for his cheek, and he caught the hand and squeezed it hard and lowered his head to their entwined fingers, unable to meet her eyes, to even look at her face at all just then, and he was overcome with the reality of it all in the light of day. To have ended up here with this woman. To have somehow produced this beautiful baby boy, and to have almost lost her in the process. His heart had never felt so helpless.
In the days and weeks and months that followed, he had watched her dote on Bear with as much detachment as he could muster even as he quietly grew more and more enamored with his son. He loved their Bear Cub, as they took to calling him, more than he’d thought himself capable—but Bear always saved his biggest smiles and sweetest coos for Violet, and at that Finn would find himself holding back. By the time the wondrous little creature began sitting up and interacting with them, though, Finn could no longer resist. Being a father, the man charged with teaching Bear how to become a man himself—how could he even describe it?
Outside the sliding glass doors, the lake sparkled in the late morning sun. Bear had never slept this late, ever—but then again, he’d been up most of the night, crying and asking for Violet. At first, taking Bear with him had been an impulse. As panic had set in at the realization of what he’d done, Finn had tried to convince himself this was something of a second chance—not one he’d ever have taken if he’d thought it through, but one he’d taken nonetheless. To start over loving someone on his own terms, without the heavy burden of the things he’d left unsaid, things that he hated himself for and that he felt sure Violet would hate him for too. To start over without the constant fear of causing further hurt, and of finally getting what he deserved—his every small happiness snatched away. Now of course he saw that that was not going to be possible. He’d been an idiot to think otherwise.