The shock of George’s accusations dissolved the lingering fog of Finn’s deep, drugged sleep, and an anger of his own filled him with surprising intensity. He hadn’t managed to devise much of a plan these long days on the run, but this was so far from how he’d wanted things to go. This was, in fact, the last thing he needed.
“Look,” Finn said. “No offense, but if I wanted to fuck Caitlin, I would have fucked Caitlin, okay? It’s not like you would have been in the way. You’re never there.”
“At least I don’t sit around wallowing in self-pity! You kill someone, and instead of being there for her family, or honoring her memory in some meaningful way, all you do is feel sorry for yourself!” George was yelling now, his face pink, a vein throbbing at his temple. “I might not be the perfect husband, but you are not even close to good enough for Caitlin! Or Violet.”
From the counter, George picked up a tablet computer, pressed the button that brightened the screen, and shoved it into Finn’s hands. “Look at that,” he said. “Does that seem to you like it was written by someone who’s worthy of your kind of ‘love’?”
Finn recognized the Missed Connections page of Craigslist instantly from his own ill-fated posts there. But this one was dated today—or yesterday. He didn’t know what day it was anymore.
Papa Bear: I can see that we shouldn’t have ended up here. But here we are. We can do things your way, or no way at all. I’ll go along with whatever you want. And no one has to know. The choice is yours. The choice was always yours. Just please, bring our little cub home.
Papa Bear. Little cub. Clever. The investigators would never recognize Violet in this post, but Finn couldn’t miss her. And what he saw triggered an intense yet familiar wave of self-reproach. He raised his eyes to George. “How did you find this?”
“I’ve been checking every day, waiting to see if one or the other of you would post. It seemed obvious to me—the one place in your history that was plain to both of you but where the authorities wouldn’t look. Do you know, I actually thought it was more likely that I’d find an olive branch from you here? I already could picture how I’d be the one to crack the case, spotting your message and showing it to Caitlin, who’d call Violet, who’d get her little boy back. But I was giving you way too much credit. As usual, it’s the women around you who have the courage to step up, even when you don’t deserve it. And little did I know, Caitlin already knew exactly where to find you!”
“Violet, she’s—” Finn couldn’t think of what to say. He hadn’t thought enough about Violet. He hadn’t let himself.
George let out a cruel laugh. “That about sums up your thoughts on her, doesn’t it? Can you imagine someone taking your child, and you having the grace to post that you would do whatever they want to make them happy? That you would let them off the hook they had hooked themselves on? Of course you can’t! You’re too stuck on the irrelevant fact that Violet isn’t Maribel.”
Irrelevant. George was smart, smart enough to conjure the word that was supposed to fit—or so Finn had been trying to tell himself, for years. There had been moments when he’d almost listened, when he’d allowed himself to forget, just for a flash, and give himself over to life in the uncomplicated now. Violet, tipping her face up toward the stars on their honeymoon, the bonfire glowing on her skin, her fingers entwined with his. Violet, dancing with infant Bear in their living room, her hair wavy and loose, her laugh inviting and warm. Violet, sleeping the half sleep that mothers do, that worn Camp Pickiwicki T-shirt draped around her frame, her features steeped in the unassuming beauty that comes with contentment.
George kicked at the coffee table leg, jolting Finn. “News flash,” he said. “You weren’t good enough for Maribel’s love either.”
Finn shrank back into the leather of the couch cushion. With the force of George’s words came the routine gut punch of other memories. The genuine shock that would come on the sleepiest mornings upon waking to find Violet, long and lean where Maribel had been curvy and soft. The awful ways he’d tried to prod Violet out of being so easy and accommodating, longing for a flare of Maribel’s stubborn, strong will. The time Violet had looked up at him from his art desk and he’d had to run from the room, gasping, so sure had he been that it was Maribel sketching one of her beautiful vignettes there rather than Violet scribbling a meaningless shopping list.
Seeing that he’d hit his mark, George pressed on. “Thank God Maribel didn’t live to see you this way. She never would have agreed to marry you if she’d known you could be remotely like this. Self-indulgent. Selfish. Manipulative. Incapable of being happy with what you have, with what’s right in front of you. I might not have known Maribel that well, but I know enough to say with utmost certainty that’s not someone she would have related to—and it’s not someone the old Finn would have wanted to know either.”
Even in a rage, George still managed to speak articulately, smoothly, and shrewdly on point, as if he were overseeing a high-stakes business meeting, or taking his turn at the podium in a debate. He’d always been a hand talker, something they’d teased him about having inherited through some politician genetic code, but now each gesture seemed menacing as the gun clasped in his hand rose and fell with each phrase, catching the glow of the kitchen light. He began to pace the cracker-strewn floor. “When I first told you I wasn’t bothered by your friendship with Caitlin, I meant it,” he said. “For you to turn around and betray me that way—”
“How many ways do I have to tell you?” Finn was yelling now too, trying to block the words from his ears, to push the images from his brain, to regain control, to turn the focus. “I am not their father. You have it all wrong. I know who he is—” At that, George stopped midstride and snapped his head around to glare at Finn. “But you should hear that from Caitlin, not from me. Where is she?”
George didn’t answer.
Finn got to his feet, and the men stood eye to eye. “She loves you, you know,” Finn said. “Odds are you’d be happily raising your biological children together if you’d just gotten that stupid sperm count test. Why didn’t you get the test, George?”
George looked away.
“Oh my God. You knew you were going to fail, didn’t you?”
Silence.
“Well, aren’t we high and mighty, accusing me of not being worthy of my wife’s love.”
George turned his gaze back on Finn, and what Finn saw there made his blood run cold. He took a step back. “Look, we’ve all done things we’re not proud of—”
“Don’t put me in the same camp as you.” George was practically growling now.
“You’re right. I’m the worst offender, by miles. But of all the things I’m guilty of, you’re after me for the one thing I didn’t do.”
George shook his head. “Even if I believed you—which I don’t—you say you know who the father is. And all these years, you’ve watched me play the part, thinking I was some chump. Not saying a word.”