“Not everyone,” he said quietly.
“Oh, right. Not Violet. Because you never even told her about Maribel.” Her eyes bore into his until he looked away and took another big swig of his beer. “And I didn’t either,” she continued, “because I couldn’t imagine her hearing it from anyone other than you. That time I asked you about it, you said you’d tell her when you were ready. I thought you were”—she rotated the beer bottle in the air, searching for alternate wording that would not come—“working through things.”
Finn exploded off the couch so suddenly that she dropped her drink into her lap. “In Cincinnati, I thought I could ‘work through things,’ okay? I thought that if I stayed away from Fountain Square, stayed away from Music Hall, stayed away from all the hole-in-the-wall bars and art galleries and brunch cafés that I equate with Maribel, I could almost do it. And I did almost do it. In Cincinnati. But I can’t do it in Asheville.”
There it was. When Gram had announced that she’d be retiring in Asheville, when Violet had approached Finn about moving there, Caitlin had thought that surely Finn would finally spill his heart out to her about what had happened. When he hadn’t, she’d expressed concern to George one night as they were lying in bed. He’d only shrugged. “He’s always wanted to live there,” he said. “Why not move there now? He’ll tell her if he wants to tell her.” That’s a male mentality for you, Caitlin had thought. She’d convinced herself that Finn, whom she’d always known to be an artist and a dreamer and independent almost to a fault, was of the same mind as her smooth-talking country club husband.
She should have known better. She had known better, had worried that Finn was keeping too much bottled up inside, taking agonizing steps he shouldn’t be taking without alerting Violet to the difficulty. And she had ignored her gut. Now look what Finn had gone and done.
He sank back onto the couch next to her, deflated. “Asheville was too nonspecific a dream,” he said. “The whole city, the whole goddamn mountain range, all of it was my picture of the life I was supposed to have with Maribel. How can I possibly be there, in any part of it, with someone else standing in where Maribel was supposed to be?”
Caitlin winced on Violet’s behalf. All this time, had he really thought of his wife as a standin?
“I can’t compartmentalize that,” he continued. “And believe me, I’ve tried. It was a disaster. Clearly.”
“Maybe if you’d told Violet what was going on, she could have helped you through it,” Caitlin said. “She loves you. She wouldn’t want you to be suffering.”
“Trust me,” Finn grumbled, “if I was honest with Violet about what I’ve been feeling, it would not have ended well.”
“And this is ending well?” Caitlin asked, incredulous. “You left her! You took her son! You’re wanted by the FBI! You’ve dragged me down here into this with you! How can this be the better solution than … than virtually anything else?”
Finn managed to ignore the crux of her response. “I did not drag you down here.”
“What the hell else did you expect me to do? Really, Finn.”
“Just … leave me be. Give me time. Let me figure this out on my own.”
Caitlin stared at him. “That’s what I’ve been doing—for years. That’s what everyone’s been doing. I’d say it’s not working out for you so well.” She gestured around the cabin, and her hand settled on Finn’s knee. “Look,” she said, “this doesn’t have to be that hard. Why don’t we call Violet and have her come up here? I’ll leave, and the two of you can talk. You tell her everything, and you work it out. Together or apart. Either way, you stop this nonsense with Bear. You tell the authorities it was a misunderstanding. Violet will back you, once she knows the truth. She’s a good person, Finn. She’s too good not to, even when you’ve hurt her. Badly.”
He shook her hand off. “That would be very cozy, wouldn’t it? What a happy ending for everyone—except me.” He stood. “I told you, Cait. You say a word to anyone, I tell George. End of story. You can tell yourself I gave you no choice but to come down here, you can tell yourself you’re here to be a friend to Vi, but you’re really here to cover your own ass. You’re here to talk me out of it. You dragged your own kids into it. At the moment, the person making the bigger mess of things is you.”
He set his empty bottle on the counter with a thud, then turned back to her. “I’m going to go get Bear situated in the office and stretch out next to him. So don’t even think about trying anything.”
As if on cue, Caitlin’s cell phone burst into a melody. She looked at the screen. George. She’d texted him earlier to let him know that they had arrived safely, but never went to sleep without checking in.
Finn raised his eyebrows, knowing who it was without asking. “Isn’t he going to be wondering why you didn’t call earlier to let the boys say good night?” he asked. He was right, of course. But Caitlin knew she couldn’t trust the boys to babble on the way they did when they were excited without mentioning Bear or Uncle Finn.
Caitlin’s thumb hovered over the answer button. “He knows that settling in the first day here can be exhausting,” she said, trying to sound more sure than she felt.
“But how long can you keep that up?” Finn asked. “He’s going to want to talk to them eventually. What is your plan exactly, Caitlin? How long are you going to stay?”
Without waiting for the answer he knew Caitlin didn’t have, he disappeared down the hallway.
Caitlin caught the call just before it went to voice mail.
“Hey, baby,” she said. She did her best to sound like she’d been dying to talk to him all day.
*
Wide awake on the couch, Caitlin could just make out the twins’ closed door down the hall. She wanted to join them there, where she could take comfort in the mere sound of them breathing, but resisted the urge—this was the best vantage point from which to protect them all.
She thought about the many other nights she’d spent staring sleeplessly into the darkness of the cabin. Here even more than at home she had a tendency to be plagued by fear of all the danger close at hand. She knew the comfort around her was man-made, fragile, just slim walls between them and the wilderness—the primeval forest, the deceptively calm lake.