He casts his gaze around the apartment and it falls on the open doorway to his bedroom, where he can see the corner of his bed as he left it—sheets and coverlet haphazardly pulled up toward the top. All he really wants to do is crawl in and sleep for the next four days.
But he can’t do any of those things.
He promised Caroline.
He puts a pot of coffee on to brew, peels off his shirt and gets in the shower, trying not to wonder if Mia will also be at the parade.
* * *
“Your belly!” Oliver says two hours later, after he’s parked and maneuvered through the hordes of people in downtown Hope Springs to finally find his sister. She looks professional in all black—pants, gloves and an overcoat that does nothing to conceal how round her stomach has grown. She clutches a walkie-talkie in one hand and is speaking into it when he approaches her. After she lets go of the button and listens to the satisfactory response, she lets it hang by her side as she throws her free hand around Oliver’s neck and squeezes.
“Did you see the parade?”
“Caught the tail end of it. Very impressive,” he says and he means it. “All of this, Care, really.”
She beams. Then punches him in the arm. “I missed you. How was Finland?”
“Fine,” Oliver says. He doesn’t tell her he couldn’t sleep at night for the nightmares about Mia. Or that, during the day, he saw her everywhere.
In the dog park, she was in a beige sundress and a pair of large round sunglasses calling to a droopy one-eyed beagle.
She was the dark-haired girl in tennis shoes and a flowing skirt riding a bicycle with a spray of flowers in the basket.
When he stopped at a café in Helsinki for a sweet bun, she was taking orders behind the counter, a pencil stuck behind her ear, a wad of gum tucked in her cheek.
He can’t explain it—he knew it was the right thing, for her to be with her husband. But then, it felt right for them to be together, too. And he misses her, or he misses what could have been. He’s not sure if there’s a difference between those two sentiments. And the missing isn’t an absence, as the word connotes, but a presence. A constant that he feels with his whole body. The same way he felt when his mother died. His eyes flick to the swarms of people around them, looking for her without meaning to.
“Have you been to the square yet?”
Oliver focuses back on his sister. “No, I just got here. Why, what’s going on there?”
“It’s the coup de grace!”
He stares at her, amused. “I don’t think that means what you think it means.”
She narrows her eyes. “It’s, like, the main event, right?”
“No, it’s more like the final blow in a fight to the death that kills someone. Like that scene in Game of Thrones when the Mountain stuffs his fingers into Oberyn Martell’s eyes, blood gushing everywhere, crushing his skull.”
Her face twists in disgust. “I do not watch that show. And no, that’s not what I meant. Although the kids might die with excitement when they see it.”
“Are you ever going to tell me what it is?”
“I’m telling you now! There was this amusement park in Altoona that was closing, and they were selling all of their rides and everything. So I got some of them for the town square! It will be like a real carnival! Well, for tonight, anyway. The carousel is the only thing that will permanently stay here. The bumper cars and the Tilt-A-Whirl have to go back. I just rented them.”
Oliver doesn’t move at first. He can’t, as if he’s frozen in place, as if he’s in a dream. A carousel, he wants to say. A Tilt-A-Whirl. But his mouth is dry and everything has stopped or is in slow motion or isn’t real. And then, just like that, he snaps out of it with an unnatural-sounding yelp, panic blinding him, climbing up his throat.
He thinks of Mia.
And then he starts running.
Whitney
“So what do you do?” Whitney asks Harrison’s wife, Mia, as they wait for Harrison and Gabriel to be done with their carousel ride. Mia seems awfully quiet and Whitney wonders if she’s stuck up or just has some kind of social anxiety.
“I teach art,” Mia says, never taking her eyes off the carousel a dozen yards in front of them, even though there’s a crowd of people waiting in line, obscuring the view of the actual riders.
“Oh, what grade?”
“Huh?” Mia asks, her gaze flitting to Whitney. “Oh, uh—to adults. It’s like a continuing education thing. At Fordham.”
“Cool,” Whitney says. “I’d love to get information on your next session.” She’s been looking for something like that—new hobbies to expand her horizons, like learning Italian or taking an improv class or a cake-decorating seminar. Things she always thought about doing when she was married to Eli, but never did for one reason or another. She didn’t even realize how confined she had felt until she left him and suddenly didn’t have to consider his (often strong) opinions on her life.
Mia doesn’t respond and the two women stand in silence, while Whitney tries to think of something else to ask her. That’s when she looks up and sees him.
Eli.
He’s standing near the hot chocolate stand in his beige jacket that she ordered him from the Land’s End catalog. She remembers how she took it out of the mail slip and laid it on their bed, and when he saw it that evening, instead of saying “thank you,” he said, I thought I told you I wanted the blue one. And she apologized. She hates that she apologized.
Now, she feels a mix of irritation and apprehension. That’s the problem with small towns. And divorce. Every time you leave the house, there’s a risk of running into the person you’re running from.
But then, he looks directly at her, and she sees his eyes, blank, emotionless. And she knows. She has seen that look before. And all she can think is: Gabriel. The judge just awarded her custody and she knows it hurt Eli. He cried in the courthouse, his face turning purple with rage. And she was afraid this would happen. That he would come for her son. She knows the statistics. Most children are kidnapped by someone they know—most often a disgruntled parent stemming from a custody dispute. She frantically scans the crowd in the direction Harrison walked off with her son. Are they still in line for the carousel? Did they make it on the ride already? But she doesn’t see them anywhere.
“Whitney, are you OK?” Mia asks. Whitney doesn’t respond.
Panicked, she looks back at Eli.
And that’s when she sees the gun.
And strangely, she thinks of her sister Holly. How Holly always laughs at her when they watch crime dramas because Whitney is never able to pin the bad guy. It’s always a surprise up until the very end. And suddenly she understands.