Almost Missed You Read online

  She laughed. “Well, then, I am sorry to tell you that you did not get the full Camp Pickiwicki experience. No sneaking out after dark to make out down by the docks?”

  “Surely not a good girl like you who wears her grandmother’s clothes to the beach.”

  “Surely so.”

  “Well, then it’s finally clear to me what must have happened. You juvenile delinquents early in the summer ruined it for the rest of us by the time August rolled around. I knew the odds of no coeds enrolling that session were slim!”

  She shrugged. “That claim is unsubstantiated.”

  “I can’t believe my parents actually lied to me about what happened.”

  “About what allegedly happened.”

  “I feel as though you owe me an apology.”

  “I owe you no such thing.”

  “The least you could do is make it up to me after dark tonight.”

  Violet flushed, and the man’s face fell.

  “That was it, wasn’t it?”

  “That was what?”

  “The line. I’m always crossing it without meaning to. Please. Forget I said that. I was just trying to be clever.”

  “No offense taken. I’d probably still be sore about it too, if I could trace my lingering virginity back to having missed out on my first tongue kiss at summer camp.”

  He cocked one eyebrow at her. “I’ve been accused of a lot of things in my adult life, but being a virgin is not one of them.”

  “And here you were acting shocked that I was not the Goody Two-shoes little camper you assumed me to be.”

  “Well, in my defense, you are wearing your grandmother’s Camp Pickiwicki T-shirt. At the beach. On an adult vacation with … who are you with?”

  “Myself.”

  “You came on vacation alone?” He looked more impressed than surprised. “Really?”

  “My boyfriend unceremoniously dumped me a few weeks ago. I’ve been working an insane amount of overtime at the office. I realized that I’d never spent my tax refund. So, I just booked it.”

  “And how’s it been?”

  “Honestly?”

  He nodded, and she could tell he was waiting for her to say it had been unexpectedly lonely, there were couples everywhere, there were kids everywhere, she didn’t know what she’d been thinking. She’d half expected to feel that way too, before she’d gotten here.

  “It’s been pretty damn great,” she said, shrugging. “I’m actually a little embarrassed at how much it suits me. I don’t want to turn into one of those people who get too used to living alone, you know? But then again, maybe I just really needed a vacation.”

  It was not this particular breakup that upset her as much as the fact that it was one in a long line of them in the years since she’d graduated college. Every time her phone rang and it was a friend she hadn’t heard from in a while, she knew even before answering that it was another call to announce an engagement. Violet would manage the customary squeals over the proposal stories and summon genuine enough happiness as she wished them well, but she couldn’t do it without mentally tallying her list of engaged friends versus those whose boyfriends were getting serious. And then there was Violet, alone in the “completely single” column, where every prospect turned out to be a false hope just a few months in. She had never been one to feel she needed a boyfriend, or a fiancé, or a husband to be happy, but it was enough to give anyone a complex.

  “I admire that,” he said, and she braced herself for the setup of another joke. But none came. “Independence. Half of my friends still go on vacation with their parents. Their parents! They meet a girl and you think they’ll go on some couple’s trip instead, but nope, they all go to the time-share in Marco Island together.”

  She laughed. “And who are you here with?”

  “A bachelor party, actually. This guy George is marrying my good friend Caitlin. I’m more of a male bridesmaid than a groomsman, but he invited me along.”

  “Let me guess. You’ve got eight guys crammed into a room with two double beds at the closest hotel you could find to the booze cruise dock.”

  “That would be a good guess if we were on my budget. This particular guy is loaded. I mean, his family is. It’s more of a penthouse. With a booze cruise in the form of its own yacht.”

  Violet had seen the over-the-top Trump hotel down the strip and wondered if he was staying there. Then again, there was no shortage of luxury accommodations this close to Miami. She’d been eyeing them all week in spite of herself. “Lucky you,” she said.

  “Lucky Caitlin. It’s actually a little awkward for me. I don’t really know anybody there very well.”

  Violet wondered what the Caitlins of the world were doing right that she was missing.

  “Well, cheer up. I’m sure next time, you’ll vacation someplace far less gilded. You know, with your parents.”

  She could see that she’d picked the wrong joke. He looked away from her, out to sea.

  “My parents died a few years back. A heart attack and an aneurysm, respectively. I’m afraid I don’t have very good genes.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry.” She touched his arm gently. “I shouldn’t have said that. I was raised by my grandmother—I should know better than to assume.”

  “Don’t be sorry. I set myself up for it with that joke about everyone else’s parents. It may be that part of my annoyance with everyone else and their family vacations is that I’m a little bit jealous.” He gave her a shy grin, and she relaxed a little.

  “I’m not usually too discriminating with my vacation envy,” Violet said. “I mean, I’m on vacation right now, and I’m still envying your penthouse and your yacht.”

  He laughed. “It wouldn’t matter if I was in a run-down motel—in the moment, I always think every vacation I’m on is the best ever. I go home plotting to move to wherever I just visited.”

  “Ah, a dreamer.”

  “Do dreamers go so far as to look at job openings and check rental prices?”

  “At a minimum.”

  “Guilty.”

  “And then what happens?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What makes you decide not to move? Ties back home?”

  He blinked, as if surprised by the question. “No. Nothing. I have no idea. I just get caught back up in regular life, I guess.”

  Violet thought of what might be seen as her own lack of ambition. She’d always been so eager to please Gram, to not be a bother to anyone, to do the responsible and expected thing. She’d never really arrived at a logical point to pause and think about what she might want beyond any of that. In truth, she was happy enough with her duplex town house adjoining Gram’s, her stable and decent-paying job, her respectably sized group of respectably close friends.

  “I may be the living definition of being caught up in regular life,” she admitted, and a moment of not uncomfortable silence descended between them.

  Finally, he broke it with a little laugh. “I have no idea why I told you any of that,” he said. “I must like you, Pickiwicki. What are you doing later?”

  She felt the color rush into her cheeks and was glad of the absurdly giant sunglasses that concealed no less than a third of her face, even though Gram had rolled her eyes when she’d bought them. “I am unable to fathom,” Gram had told her, “how such a ridiculous trend from my own youth is back again.”

  “I … I should tell you I’m flying home in the morning. I don’t want you to waste your time with me.”

  She thought she saw a beat of disappointment flash across his face, but he concealed it well. “This is the best conversation I’ve had since I got here. I don’t see how that can be a waste of time. Where’s home?”

  “Cincinnati, actually. Pickiwicki was a bit of a haul for summer camp—Gram only sent me there because a friend of hers knew the owners. You still in Pennsylvania?”

  He squinted at her. “Are you pulling my chain?”

  “Um. I don’t think so.”

&nb
sp; “I live in Cincinnati now, too.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “I do. I went to college there, and then I stayed.”

  “Prove it.”

  “Well, I don’t carry my license in my swim trunks.”

  “Where do—”

  A child’s high-pitched scream from just behind them made Violet startle in her seat. Something in the tone indicated that this person was not playing, and she jumped to her feet. A few beach towel lengths behind her, a boy was standing with tears running down his face. “Help, please,” he sobbed, looking frantically around. His eyes settled on Violet’s. “Help!”

  Her handsome stranger was on his feet now too, and together they rushed toward the child. “What’s wrong?” Violet called, trying to sound calm. “Are you hurt?”

  “My mommy. My mommy,” he sobbed, and that’s when Violet saw the woman behind him in the pop-up beach tent. She was lying on her side, writhing and wheezing, her face and lips almost cartoonishly swollen.

  Violet looked at her companion in horror. “Shit,” the man said. “A seizure? No—some kind of allergic reaction?” Then he snapped into action. “I’ll get the lifeguard!” he yelled, and took off running.

  Violet fell to her knees beside the woman. “Ma’am? Can you speak?” The woman just looked at her with pleading eyes. Violet turned and took the little boy gently by the arms.

  “Did your mommy just eat something?” she asked him. He was wailing now, his teary eyes wide with primal fear. “Think hard,” she said kindly. “Maybe something that she doesn’t usually eat? Or drink? It will help the doctors fix her if you can tell me.”

  The boy pointed at a hollowed-out pineapple resting in the corner of the tent. It was one of the frozen drinks being sold from pushcarts, and it looked to have only a few sips out of it. Her brain registered a vendor walking a short distance away, and she dove for the pineapple. “Hey!” she screamed at the vendor. He kept walking. “Hey!” He turned.

  “This drink. What’s in it? Is there some kind of nut or something in here?”

  He thought for a second, then nodded. “Almond liqueur.”

  Violet put her hand to her forehead and looked back down at the child. “Is that a nut?” the boy sobbed. “Mommy can’t have nuts.”

  But here was her handsome stranger, running back through the sand with a lifeguard. “Everything will be okay,” Violet told the boy, hoping it was true. “Nuts!” she called to the lifeguard. “This vendor says there’s almond liqueur in this drink, and I think she’s allergic to nuts. Do you have an EpiPen? Benadryl? Something?” Her coworker Katie had once had a reaction to salad dressing at a business lunch, and Violet remembered the company memo that had gone out afterward, about what allergic employees should always have on hand in case of emergency. She lunged for the woman’s beach bag to see if she’d brought provisions.

  “Nine-one-one is on the way, just sit tight,” the lifeguard told the woman. He knelt and started rifling through his first aid kit.

  “Is your daddy here?” Violet’s handsome stranger got down to the boy’s level and smiled encouragingly.

  There was nothing of any use in this beach bag. Only sunscreen and sand toys.

  The boy sniffled and nodded. “At the pool.”

  “And what’s your daddy’s name?”

  “Dave.”

  “And your last name?”

  “Smithers.”

  “Dave Smithers?” The boy nodded. “Good boy. Which pool—which hotel?”

  The boy pointed, and then this remarkably in-control man was off running again. The first wails of approaching sirens sounded in the distance.

  “Shit,” the lifeguard muttered. “Shit, shit, shit. I must have used the last one on that wasp sting yesterday. I’m in for it now.”

  The woman’s eyes had closed, her brow furrowed as if she were concentrating very hard. She was turning blue. Something in Violet snapped just then, and she felt the weak façade she’d been putting up for the little boy crumbling. “Please,” she pleaded to the lifeguard. “This is this boy’s mother. You have to do something.” The boy had returned to his mother’s side and was clutching her thigh with his tiny splayed hands.

  “Help is coming,” the lifeguard said, sounding unconvinced even as the sirens did grow louder. Jesus, Violet thought, taking him in for the first time, his sideways baseball cap and his lean, hairless chest. He’s practically a kid himself.

  “Ma’am, can you hear me?” he said loudly, lowering his face to the woman’s. She didn’t respond, and he put his ear to her chest. “It’s labored, but she’s breathing,” he told Violet. He sat up and stared down at the woman, frozen. Whatever training he had, it had clearly gone right out of his mind.

  Then, finally, three paramedics were running toward them, yelling for people to get back and give them room. Violet wrapped her arms around the crying child and stepped backward, gently guiding him out of the way. She scanned the beach for her handsome stranger, for some sign of the boy’s father, but all she saw was a growing circle of concerned strangers. Looky-loos, Gram would have called them.

  It all happened so fast. The lifeguard snapped back to life and filled in the paramedics, they administered the EpiPen, loaded the woman onto the stretcher, strapped oxygen to her face, bagged a sample from her drink. All the while the boy whimpered and clung to Violet’s legs.

  “We have to go. Now,” the lead paramedic barked at the lifeguard. “You said someone was getting the husband?”

  “The boy pointed out the hotel, but I don’t see them yet.”

  “Tell him to come to Aventura Hospital as soon as he gets here.” He looked at Violet. “Can you stay with the boy?”

  Violet blanched. “I don’t know him … I only—”

  “Can you stay with him?”

  The boy hurled himself at the stretcher, nearing hysterics again. “Mommy! I want to go with Mommy!”

  Violet’s heart broke for him. “Can he ride along?” she begged the paramedic. “If I ride with him?”

  “We’re not really supposed to—”

  The boy let out a heart-stopping wail.

  “Please. I’ll keep him out of your way. I’m really not comfortable separating them.”

  The paramedic conceded with a brusque nod and turned back to the lifeguard. “Dave Smithers. If that guy doesn’t show back up with him, go to the hotel yourself. Have him paged. Ring his room. Whatever it takes.”

  * * *

  The woman made it, just, thank God. The frantic husband did show up eventually. He’d left the pool area after agreeing to be the fifth in a pickup game in the basketball courts around the side of the resort, so he hadn’t been easy to find. He didn’t know the name of the man who’d come yelling for him, and though he wished he could thank him again, he didn’t know what had become of him.

  And as she took one last reluctant look over her shoulder the next morning, slinging one leg into the taxi that would take her to the airport, neither did Violet.

  3

  AUGUST 2016

  Caitlin eyed the stormy sky nervously as she made her way to her cubicle. She was the first in the office, as usual, and left the overhead fluorescent lights off. She relished the isolated warmth of her monitor’s glow in this first dim hour of the morning, a manifestation of her satisfaction that she was again brightly beating her coworkers to the start of a productive day. Her husband’s family was a major donor to this nonprofit, and she was well aware of the murmurs that she didn’t need her job or its paycheck. But she liked the work, she believed in the cause, and she wanted to have money of her own, so she’d made a point of putting her work ethic on display until the snark around the watercooler died down. She was wishing she’d been a little less ambitious this particular morning, however. It was so much darker than normal, nightlike except for an unsettling orange glow seeping around the tips of the low fingerlike cloud cover. Lightning streaked across the sky with menacing purpose, and she strained her ears for the beginning wails
of the tornado siren, which always struck her as alarmingly faint.

  She looked down at the keys in her hand, fighting an irrational urge to turn around and get right back in the car, pick up the twins where she’d just left them at day care, and envelop them in her arms, as if they’d somehow be safer with her, even though her office was just down the road and in the same path of the storm.

  All it would take was one act of God. One error in judgment. One irrevocable mistake. And the two beings she loved most in the world could be taken from her for good. She felt this with terrifying certainty. She felt it too often. She felt it in her marrow.

  Her close friends Violet and Finn had lived next door until they moved out of state last year, and Violet especially had found this quirk of Caitlin’s as amusing as Caitlin did frightening.

  “I don’t remember you being so much of a worrier when we first met,” Violet remarked.

  Well, she hadn’t been. And these days, she really worried about only one thing. She just happened to worry about it incessantly, in a thousand different scenarios. Caitlin tried to keep her concerns bottled up, but sometimes the worries piled so high that she couldn’t help voicing one or two.

  Of course, now that Violet’s own life had inexplicably fallen out from under her, it was almost embarrassing to think back on the unfounded fears Caitlin had once confided to her friend. Never much for worrying, Violet had always been the one to try to talk Caitlin back down to ground level. In Caitlin’s memories of Violet’s last visit—not two months ago, at the beginning of the summer—Violet seemed … not flippant, exactly, but almost luxuriously self-assured. Unencumbered.

  “Now I’ve heard everything. Your new childproof doorknob cover seems dangerous?”

  “It’s just that … well, this cover is designed so they can’t get out of their room.”

  Violet had laughed. “Right. Which was the point, remember? Because now that they’re in big-boy beds, they occasionally wake up and wander the house without you knowing?”