They arranged things hastily. Neither of them wanted to make a big deal. Violet once tried to suggest more, but Finn looked so troubled that she thought it had been insensitive of her. Of course he’d be bothered that he had no family to invite. Surely there must be aunts or uncles or cousins somewhere, but when she asked, he just said, “Not really.” She let it go. She didn’t want to cause Finn any pain. He was fond of Gram, and his closest friends were already becoming Violet’s own, and of course that was enough for Violet. It seemed to be more than enough for Finn.
And so that’s how it was: George and Caitlin were there, and Gram. The last weeks of November could swing between Indian summers and snowstorms in Cincinnati, and the day they’d chosen fell somewhere in between. They spent a chilly morning at the courthouse, but later, as they celebrated with a spread at George and Caitlin’s house, the sun made a brilliant appearance, and the day turned warm enough to sit in the courtyard out back, even to remove their jackets.
For their honeymoon, they drove east, deep into Amish Country, to the Murphin Ridge Inn, a spot recommended by Caitlin. It was billed as a place to unplug, but with a luxury take on rustic—the inn served dishes by award-winning chefs who sourced their ingredients from adjacent farms, and the private accommodations were designed so that you wouldn’t miss the TV. In their chalet fringed by woods, the centerpiece was a deep Jacuzzi and a 360-degree fireplace. The room came well stocked with books, cards, and board games. They took breakfast and dinner at the inn, and snacked in between from a basket delivered daily to their door. With the excuse of being pregnant, Violet ate heartily. At night, the innkeepers built bonfires on a large stone patio and she and Finn settled into Adirondack chairs under the stars, she with hot cocoa and he with something stronger. It was a communal atmosphere, with other couples also drawn to the circle, but most of them kept to themselves, paired up in their own little worlds, lost in the roaring blaze.
That first night, as they admired how wide the sky stretched above and beyond them, how bright the stars were here, how they could actually see the haze of the Milky Way cut its swath across the sky, Finn lowered his eyes to hers, and she saw something there that she only then realized she hadn’t seen from him before: hope. “Maybe nothing has to be as complicated as we make it,” he said. “Maybe life really is this simple.” Violet didn’t know what to say, so she just squeezed his arm in reply and looked back to the sky, and a moment later she felt his gaze leave her face and follow.
She hadn’t known that he found things complicated, but it wasn’t such an odd thing to say given their circumstances—planning so suddenly for a baby, and her move out of her duplex and into his more spacious apartment next to George and Caitlin’s house. She was sad to leave Gram, and sorry not to have her next door to help when the baby came, but Finn’s rental had more bedrooms, a better yard, and a bargain price. It made the most sense. Gram would be only a short drive away and could stay over anytime—there was a guest room she could use as often as they wanted. And Caitlin was pregnant also, with twins. It would be fun, Violet thought. A new start.
Complicated? Maybe. But as Finn said, it was really pretty simple. It was just what you do when you fall in love with someone—you go with the flow, as the cliché says. It seemed to Violet that she and Finn were pretty good at riding those tides as they came.
But if she’d known that it would lead her here, to this miserable little table where she’d come to sit alone, drinking well into the night, her husband and her son vanished, her world turned upside down by an FBI agent and a stranger on the phone, she would have navigated those waters differently.
22
BEYOND AUGUST 2012
Caitlin loved Violet from the start. She’d always loved Finn, but had rarely seen him in love. Until she’d met George, her boyfriends always felt threatened by the fact that her best friend was another guy, always suspected there was something more to their relationship. There never had been, at least not outwardly, but it also was true that Finn had spent the majority of those years single. He wasn’t one of those guys people were always looking to fix up. Not because he wasn’t a great catch—he was—but because he just seemed uncommonly content to be alone. It wasn’t until he lost his parents that Caitlin saw a change in him, a hint that he might be longing for someone or something after all. Still, she’d once teased Finn that it would take a sign from the universe to pin him down, and though they both had laughed it off, it turned out she hadn’t been far from the truth.
The year Finn fell for Maribel, he almost disappeared entirely from Caitlin’s view, understandably preoccupied with new love in spite of her attempts to keep him close. She missed him, missed seeing what that version of Finn was like. She still wondered about it sometimes, still wished she had more memories of him and Maribel with her and George—double dates, weekends away, all those things they’d said they should do together but hadn’t followed through with before it suddenly had been too late. It seemed ridiculous to Caitlin that she’d met Maribel only a handful of times when her loss had had such a profound effect on one of her oldest and closest friends. She mourned Maribel, of course, but she mourned her on Finn’s behalf. And she mourned Finn, too. Because Finn was changed. Her efforts had done nothing to shorten the shelf life of his grief. Caitlin felt sure, though, that if anyone could bring him back, it was Violet.
“I was drunk when I placed the ad,” he confessed the day Violet’s response landed in his in-box. Caitlin could still picture him, hands over his face, his bottle of beer from her fridge already sweating in the August heat, as he sat awkwardly forward in one of the whitewashed Adirondacks on her massive front porch. “I almost forgot I even did it. How did she see it? What are the odds that she actually would have seen it?”
“Slim,” Caitlin agreed. “Still, that is usually the idea behind those ads. You know, the hope that the person it’s written for might actually see it. If it didn’t ever happen, I suppose they wouldn’t exist.”
He looked at her skeptically. “Fad diets exist. Penis enhancers exist. Plenty of things that never work exist.”
She rolled her eyes. “Fortunately, what we’re dealing with here are real people going about their lives in the natural world, and not something that was manufactured to make a dirty buck.”
“What if I don’t reply? This might just … go away.”
“Why on earth would you want that?”
“Cait.” He looked up at her desperately. “Forget the fact that I’m not even close to ready for a relationship, that I can’t imagine ever being ready again. This is the woman I was searching for when I met Maribel. How can I ever look at her and not see Maribel?”