In this case, Violet had conceded. She’d thought Finn was being romantic, wanting to return to Sunny Isles, to the spot where they had first met, wanting to go there with her this time, wanting to add to their memories of the spot with Bear. The fact that he was willing to go to extra expense and more inconvenience to make that happen couldn’t be anything but sweet, could it?
Now she thought differently. She no longer knew when Finn had stopped being in love with her—or if he’d ever really loved her at all. But she did know that the last time he’d embarked on a road trip to a Carolina beach, someone had died. Someone whom he most definitely did love. Of course he wouldn’t want to take that route again.
And if he’d planned all along to leave Violet there—she didn’t know if he had, but if that was the case—why stay closer to home when he could give himself a head start on running away? How much more thorough to strand her so far from everyone and everything she knew, without even a car.
What kind of marriage was that? She’d seen the smugness of the question on Agent Martin’s face yesterday. This guy didn’t even tell his wife he had a fiancée before, let alone that he caused her death. Not so shocking all of a sudden that he ran off with his kid, was it? No telling what a guy like that might do.
Of course, Violet hadn’t admitted to the agent that she actually had known all along that Finn had been engaged—that as those first days of their courtship had stretched into weeks and then months, she had waited for the moment he would take her hands in his, say softly that there was something he had to tell her, and then gently explain that he had had a fiancée once, but that it hadn’t worked out for one reason or another, and say that he was so very glad it hadn’t, because all along he’d been thinking of her and wishing things had ended differently on the beach that day. And she also hadn’t volunteered to Agent Martin that when that moment never came, she decided to just try to move forward as if she didn’t feel a piece of his history was missing from what they’d shared. Because who knows? Maybe her company’s HR department had gotten his reason for canceling the interview wrong in the first place. Maybe they had misunderstood, or mixed him up with a candidate for another job opening.
There was no way to know. Because after months of waiting for Finn to bring it up, how could she possibly be the one to do it? “Hey, remember when you applied for this job with my company, but canceled your interview at the last minute? How do I know that? Well, funny story…” He’d want to know why she hadn’t asked him about it earlier. There wasn’t an explanation that didn’t peg her as a coward, afraid to hear the answer. Which, deep down, she had been. And apparently with good reason.
She could still hear Katie’s parting advice that day she’d brought Violet the Missed Connections ad. “Be honest and play dumb.”
Right.
In a way, she was just as guilty as Finn. Maybe not guilty, but not guiltless either. Admitting that to Agent Martin would have meant she would have had to admit it to herself. And Gram. And Caitlin.
Caitlin.
She hadn’t called to check in, nor had Violet tried her again since catching her on the house phone days ago. And that was just as well.
Caitlin had to have known Finn’s history. All of it. And she, too, had never seen fit to mention this to Violet, as if it were something that might be important for Finn’s wife and the mother of his child to know. Not only that he had loved before, and been responsible for the death of that love, and planned to start a new life with her in the very place that Violet found herself now, but that it wasn’t clear how or whether he’d found a way to make peace with any of that.
Caitlin had said nothing when she and Violet first became friends. She’d said nothing when the two women were bound by their forays into motherhood and grew just as close as Caitlin and Finn had been all those years before. And she’d said nothing when Finn disappeared with Bear and she herself came to sit in this very room with Violet and cry with her.
Alongside Gram, Caitlin had been the first one here when Violet returned from Sunny Isles—was it really just a week ago?—brokenhearted and confused and empty-handed. She’d seemed appropriately devastated and outraged and mystified on Violet’s behalf. But now all of Violet’s memories were being called into question. Who was to say whom she could trust? Or whom she should?
Had Caitlin been more loyal to Finn all along? Had Violet been blind to the true feelings of everyone she felt close to?
Even if she still couldn’t see it in looking back, she now knew that while Finn had appeared sturdy enough on the surface, he’d been crumbling at some key structural components underneath. And if the foundation was that shaky, there was no way anything they built on it could ever be stable. Violet could slather on as much mortar as she wanted; she could redecorate their relationship to mirror a glossy picture that she liked; she could patch and prime and paint until she’d exhausted the available resources and then some. But none of it would ever fix the real problem, none of it would stop the whole crooked thing from sliding to the ground.
It wouldn’t have been so catastrophic if what they’d built had housed just the two of them.
In spite of everything she’d learned, none of it changed her disbelief that Finn would want to hurt her this way by taking Bear. Maybe he’d panicked and hadn’t thought it through. Maybe he regretted it. Maybe even as she was lying here miserably now, he was looking for a way to bring Bear back without digging himself in deeper.
If there were a way for Finn to return Bear without himself being charged with kidnapping, would he take it? There had to be a way, if she had anything to say about it—but how could she let him know?
And how had they spent so many of the years since they’d met wanting to reach out to each other but unsure how to cross the indeterminable distance between them?
26
AUGUST 2016