Even though she claimed she was here to help him out of it, he knew that really meant she was here to try to talk him out of it. And even though he also knew there was no way that was going to work, he still couldn’t help feeling some small relief not to be alone in this corner he’d backed himself into. And that relief was dangerous. Caitlin was not to be underestimated. He couldn’t let his guard down.
Back in school for graphic design, his professors were fond of cautioning students never to jump at the first fix for a design problem. “Think of five solutions, and then discard them,” they advised. “Then dig deeper for a better one.” That was when the real creativity kicked in. But in this case he’d already picked a bad fix to start. It was as if his very wiring had short-circuited, and when the power came back on he’d blinked into the light and was surprised to find Bear at his side. From there he’d chosen all the wrong moments to hesitate. He should have taken the money Caitlin offered when he confronted her in Cincinnati—but she’d stipulated that he leave Bear. By then he’d already accepted that he couldn’t go back to that moment of the power surge, and he wasn’t about to give him over easily—the boy was all he had left of love. He had to find some other way out.
“Do you want me to come up with a happy Violet memory for you?” Caitlin had asked with mock innocence. “I can think of several…”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he’d snapped. And before he knew it, he was pouring himself a cup of coffee and stalking down here. As beautiful as the lake was in the morning light, he wouldn’t turn his back on the cabin. He didn’t think she’d be so bold as to try to run out the front with her boys and Bear, but this was uncharted territory for both of them, and he didn’t know how she might react any better than he knew what he was going to do next.
The air at the water’s edge smelled mildly fishy, and of wet leaves, the overeager ones that had detached and allowed themselves to fall prematurely. He breathed deeply, trying to block out the sounds of the boys whining up on the cabin’s deck. It was something to do with wanting more juice. No matter how many just-this-one or just-one-more treats they got, no matter how many times he or Violet or Caitlin or George bent the rules in the name of a moment of peace, they never seemed satisfied. It starts in childhood, he marveled. Nothing is ever enough. Why can’t we just learn early on to be satisfied with whatever we have?
Funny how a smell could conjure a memory like nothing else. All at once he could see himself pedaling his bike alongside the river one long-ago autumn, Violet hunched over her handlebars out in front of him. He’d been trying not to picture her since the day he’d left her at the hotel. But now he could see her so clearly, he might have reached out and touched her.
That first season together, they’d ridden every chance they got, evenings, weekends, claiming the paved railroad tracks of Southwestern Ohio’s Rails-to-Trails network as their own, following the river through cool, damp ravines and old run-down mill towns as the leaves fell all around them. Maribel had never really been into that sort of thing; she’d been so conscientious about focusing her free time wholly on her art. But Finn’s creativity had always needed a physical outlet. Violet came along with a love of trail riding, and Finn, who’d mostly been using his road bike on neighborhood streets, found it easy to love it too.
There was something meditative about the trail stretching out in front of them, the woods flashing by on both sides, the speckled sunlight coming through in patches from above. Finn would find himself zoning out to the patterns of shadows on the pavement, but Violet had an uncanny gift for spotting hidden remnants of the old railroad that was no longer functioning there. She’d point out a rusted train crossing sign overgrown by vines. A cracked block of concrete where a station platform used to stand. Tall lights that no longer blinked.
Open your eyes, she seemed to be saying. The world is still here, all around you.
As she was the slower rider, he’d always let her lead to set the pace—and there was no denying that the view never got old. He’d catch himself admiring the tone of her legs as they pumped up and down, the lean muscles pulled taut across her back as her shoulders hunched forward, the narrow swath of her waist perched effortlessly above the seat, even the windblown ponytail that streamed out from beneath her helmet. By the time they got back to his apartment or hers an hour or two or sometimes even three later, it would have been hard for any man to resist reaching for her after they showered. He was only human. And she was so warm, and active, and healthy, and alive.
Afterward, they’d lie with their limbs intertwined and talk, compensating for their hours of companionable silence on the trail. They traded stories of their childhoods, of the highlights before and after Camp Pickiwicki. She told him about Katie’s awkward stream of dating disasters—she was on an ill-advised kick of dating their coworkers by then—and he relayed the antics of the most difficult customers in bridal photography. There was certainly no shortage of them, and it felt good to laugh about the job that had been adding to his misery for the better part of a year. She always had something sweet and homemade in her kitchen—peach cobbler, pear crisp, peanut butter cookies—and she would bring bowlsful to bed, warmed and topped with vanilla ice cream. She didn’t care if they dripped on the sheets.
Damn Caitlin and the power of suggestion. Those were happy memories, and more than one. Reconnecting with Violet, to his surprise, had been like the warm sun on his face after so much time hiding indoors. Not that he’d ever thought it could last. But then had come the news that she was pregnant with Bear.
She’d almost succeeded in masking her hopeful expression as she made the announcement, waiting for him to be the one who’d determine whether or not this news was good. He could recognize in her something that he’d felt inside himself upon meeting Maribel’s family, when they’d seemed so willing to adopt him as one of their own, knowing he had none. I’ll do anything you like, that something seemed to say, as long as you let me stay. In Violet, he understood it as a side effect of being raised by Gram even as he knew that Gram had never done anything to make her feel unwanted or like a burden. And he didn’t want to take advantage. It was just that it was so hard to turn away from the kind of love that is so eager to find you.
And he’d been so lonely when he met her.
How could he ever tell her that the last person who’d loved him, he’d killed?
The morning after her hemorrhage, she’d been ghostly white. That was when Finn had first realized the magnitude of his mistake. But he couldn’t see a way to back out then. And he’d made a hell of a mess of it now.
When was it ever a good time to leave a relationship, especially when the other person didn’t see it coming? She wouldn’t have been blindsided if she could have read his thoughts these past years. He almost wished for it—a world where he wouldn’t have to try to explain everything that was so inexplicably wrong about how things had turned out. Where she would have just known.