Was Bear asleep in the bedroom, with the twins? Is that who George had talked about looking in on? He wanted to ask so badly, but he hesitated to speak his son’s name. Was there any chance at all that George did not know the extent of what he’d stumbled into?
I know you wanted to take him with you, George had said, but I think it’s better this way. Our only shot at getting out of this. Had he been talking about Caitlin taking Finn, or Bear?
George appeared before him with a glass, and Finn gulped the juice as if he hadn’t had a drink all day—which, he supposed, he hadn’t. Not since that coffee this morning. And he hadn’t even finished the rest of it—
Finn was midswallow when something else George had said came back to him. Something about a kid drinking coffee. I don’t care how much creamer was in it … That stuff must really work. And Finn, who’d drunk the cream-loaded coffee himself, had been asleep all day. Slowly, he raised his juice glass to eye level and peered into the liquid, looking for any sign of something that shouldn’t be there. Abruptly, he set the glass on the table.
“Do you mind telling me what’s happened?” Finn asked. “Don’t make me beg it out of you, George. Seriously.”
“First, why don’t you finish your juice,” George said. He was still standing, hovering over Finn in a way that made him nervous.
“I don’t want the juice.”
“Yes, you do. You must be incredibly thirsty. Drink up.”
“Maybe later.”
George lifted his sport coat open to one side, just wide enough so that Finn could see what was at his hip, a tan leather holster. George was carrying a gun.
“Drink it.”
“Oh, come on. You’re not going to shoot me.”
“What makes you so sure?” George smiled. “You mean because of my image? Because I’m an upstanding citizen? Last time I checked, upstanding citizens are within their rights to confront intruders in their homes. Especially when those intruders happen to be wanted on federal charges. And when they show up at a remote cabin driving a car that’s registered to some redneck in a trailer park in Tennessee.”
So George had been here long enough to do his homework.
“I have the pink slip,” Finn said, feeling oddly defensive. “I just haven’t, you know, gotten to the BMV yet.” He gave George a wry smile.
“Do you want me to drive you?” George asked, with exaggerated sincerity.
“Would that be before or after you shoot me?”
“Just—don’t make me do it, okay? Drink the damn juice.” George actually did manage to look like he meant business that time. Then, true to form, came the clarification.
“I’m no murderer, obviously,” George said. “But I can make it so you can’t run out of here. And I’m not going to be too swift at calling an ambulance either.”
“Where’s Caitlin?” Finn tried to keep his voice calm.
“That’s always the question, isn’t it? Where’s Caitlin?” George’s fa?ade dropped, his voice gently mocking. “Don’t you ever get tired of my wife bailing you out of things? Because I have to say, I think I’ve finally reached my limit.” He smiled disingenuously at Finn. “We had a helluva run, though, didn’t we? You’re lucky, you know, that she means enough to me that I let her talk me into caring how much you mean to her.”
Finn wasn’t sure how to reason with this new George, but clearly he’d taken the wrong tack. “How about a truce,” he suggested. “I get myself a glass of water from the tap, and you set the alarm, and no one goes anywhere until Caitlin comes back.” George didn’t correct him, so Finn figured he had guessed right. She wasn’t here, and that had probably been her on the phone. But did she have Bear with her?
George leaned his weight onto the arm of the leather recliner opposite Finn and sighed heavily. “Sounds like a reasonable request. Thing is, that would mean I have to figure out what to say to you while we wait. And I’d rather not deal with the hassle.” George gazed out toward the lake, where the moon was sparkling off the water like an image from one of the glossy brochures at the Visitors Center down the road. “It was so quiet here while you were asleep. Peaceful. I don’t get much time alone with my thoughts, you know. Always rushing around from one airport to the next, and then when I get home, the boys are there waiting. You know how it is, being a father yourself.” He looked pointedly at Finn, and Finn thought he saw there something darker than anger over Bear—something deeper.
“Look,” Finn said. “You win. Just tell me where Bear is, and I’ll drink the damn juice.” Maybe he could go into the bathroom and throw it up.
“You know who really wants to know where Bear is?” George asked. “His mom. Your wife. Remember her? Thinking of the state she must be in right now, forgive me if I’m not feeling charitable.”
George removed the gun from its holster and held it gently in his palm. “You’re drinking the juice. You are not in a position to negotiate here, Finn. Too bad you didn’t make it out on the golf course with me more over the last few years. If you had, you’d know by now that these days, when I take aim, I rarely miss.”
31
AUGUST 2016
When she heard the knocking at the back door before the sun was even up—was it early morning already?—Violet’s first thought was that Gram had come back. She was curled under an afghan on the couch, and even before she threw off the cover she was fantasizing about yelling through the closed door—“What does it take to get a little head space from you?”—and then flinging herself back into bed. Never mind that she was already feeling guilty for behaving like a child—albeit a child who’d only wanted to be left alone to get drunk—the day before.
The buzz was wearing off, and Violet’s head was starting to throb as she peered at the clock. It was not morning. It was 1:30 A.M. She’d fallen asleep disorientingly early—it couldn’t have been past 9:30 or 10:00—logging off Craigslist and throwing herself onto the couch with all of the drama but none of the grace of Scarlett O’Hara. She guessed that was what happened when you started drinking in the afternoon. She’d never had much practice with it before.
The back door … the middle of the night … She bolted upright on the couch. A confused, drunk person walking home from a bar to the wrong house, or someone else? Agent Martin, having located the car? Finn? Bear!
She flew off the couch and into the kitchen, breathless. With a twist, the dead bolt was freed and Violet yanked open the door.
She stared.
She had never seen Caitlin look so awful.
This couldn’t be the Caitlin she knew, the Caitlin who had once shown up at a different back door of Violet’s wearing a sparkly V-neck shirt that read I WOKE UP LOOKING LIKE THIS.
“Very funny,” Violet had said, nodding at Caitlin’s chest and rolling her eyes. It wasn’t that she begrudged her friend her perpetually flat-ironed hair and manicured nails and powdered skin and designer everything. It was just that sometimes she wished they could stand a little farther apart so she wouldn’t feel so underdone by comparison.
“You think it’s actually funny?” Caitlin had said, sounding a little too hopeful. “George bought it for me.”