Last night’s vodka had been as close as she could come.
For too many days she’d been behaving as if Bear would walk through the door at any minute. She had tried to be responsible, a mother ready to start mothering again at the turn of the doorknob. She had forced herself through some motions and allowed herself to be forced through others. And when she was still reeling that the roof had blown off, and the floor suddenly crumbled out from under her too, the first thing she did was to calmly place a phone call to Maribel’s mother, seeking a sensible explanation where of course there was none.
After she’d hung up with Delilah last night, and sat with Gram for a few more hours, and then sat awake drinking for a few more, something in Violet had become unhinged. Something dangerous. Something she wasn’t ready to put back in its place.
Even now, she couldn’t bear to let herself place too much stock in the lead Agent Martin had mentioned. He’d cautioned her that the tipster might just be after a piece of the reward. And even if the lead panned out, they’d still be four or five days behind Finn on the trail. She didn’t think an AMBER Alert would do any good if Finn had made it to Canada.
When Gram suggested that Violet take a shower, she ignored her. When she fussed over the cheesecake, Violet wrinkled her nose. When she asked cheerfully for a hand drying the dishes, Violet poured herself another cup of coffee and returned to her station at the table. When she suggested a movie, Violet lied and said the DVD player was on the fritz. And when she asked one more time if Violet might like to call Caitlin back and make sure Leo was okay, Violet looked right past her, like an unruly child.
But when Gram mumbled reluctantly that she might as well go, Violet quickly got to her feet, returned all the right niceties, opened the door to a wall of humidity and late afternoon sunshine, and waved good-bye. Then, even before the sound of Gram’s old Buick had faded away, she went and poured herself a stiff drink.
*
The Internet was always changing—redesigns, relaunches, old Web sites vanished, new ones in their places—but the Missed Connections page on Craigslist looked exactly as it had years ago.
Violet appreciated that. At least something was the same.
The screen vibrated in front of her. It was finally dark enough outside that Violet’s drunken state didn’t feel out of sync with the rest of the world. “I could go down to Jack of the Wood and blend right in,” she slurred aloud to the room. Not that she was going anywhere. She just liked the idea that others out there were also drinking by now. The imagined solidarity.
Wherever Finn was, he probably wasn’t online. Or was he? Was he reading up on his own crime—“parental kidnapping”? Did he even know there was a name for it, or how common it was? Did he sense the weariness the federal agents would bring to the search, the look in their eyes that let Violet know how often these cases went unsolved?
Violet almost wished she had learned something that had made her stop loving Finn. She was heartbroken at what he had been through with Maribel, and disappointed that he hadn’t told her, and hurt that he’d gone along with the move to Asheville without sharing his reservations, and maddened that he’d let things go so far as to leave her without having clued her in to their problems that she didn’t even know they had. Above all, she was furious that he had taken Bear.
But in other ways, learning Finn’s secrets had actually deepened her compassion toward him and her regret that things hadn’t somehow turned out differently between them. If only he’d given her a chance.
She had no idea if she could ever trust him again, if he would even want her to—it seemed far-fetched to think of it, pathetic. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that on some level she actually did know Finn. And that of all he’d been through, the most pivotal thing was what hadn’t happened to him.
He hadn’t talked to anyone. About any of it.
He hadn’t acknowledged that he couldn’t cope with his guilt and grief alone.
He hadn’t gotten any help whatsoever.
Post-traumatic stress disorder. She’d looked it up on the Internet, and there, in the four main categories of symptoms, found what she imagined to be a pretty decent description of Finn:
1. Intrusive memories
2. Avoidance
3. Negative changes in thinking and mood
4. Changes in emotional reactions
Every article she read said that symptoms often started within months of a traumatic event, but sometimes they did not appear or magnify for years.
There could be triggers. Not just people, but also places.
And so when Violet was done reading what she could on the Mayo Clinic site, and Wikipedia, and WebMD, she closed all those windows and replaced them with one.
Missed Connections on Craigslist.
And even though she didn’t have enough left in her to earnestly hope that Finn was out there reading, she downed the rest of her drink to steel herself, and then she began to type.
30
AUGUST 2016
Finn was waking up groggy. At least, he was trying to wake up. Never had he had such a hard time coming out of sleep. Just when a thought would start to form, he’d feel himself drifting off again, against his will. Then, a few minutes later, he’d start to come to and repeat the cycle all over again. Or was it hours later? He’d lost all sense of time. How had he even come to fall asleep here on the couch, anyway? How could he have been so stupid as to let his guard down like this? He needed to find Bear. It had gotten so quiet, it was deafening. He wasn’t used to quiet, not even for sleeping. There was always the fuzzy sound of the baby monitor he couldn’t convince Violet that Bear was too old for, and Violet’s own soft snoring, which had begun during pregnancy and never stopped, and the light car and foot traffic through their Asheville neighborhood. Nothing like the solitude of this cabin. Only this wasn’t supposed to be solitude. Bear should be here, and Caitlin, and the twins. Where were they?
He must have drifted off again because when he became aware of the voice, it was in the middle of a one-way conversation—on the phone with someone, he could tell. The voice sounded like George. But George couldn’t be here; that couldn’t be right.
Not that Finn was going to go through with any of his threats, of course, but still—he was sure he had rattled Caitlin. His rookie attempt at blackmail, or at least the threat of blackmail, had worked. Well, it had also sort of backfired, but—surely she wouldn’t have asked George here. Unless …