Delia’s mouth pinched shut. The bathroom fell quiet except for my children’s shuddering sniffles. I lowered my head, jabbing Vero in the ribs with an elbow until she bowed her head, too. I waited a full minute before reaching for the lever. This time, Delia didn’t try to stop me, and with a swirl of orange scales, Christopher was gone.
Vero gently ruffled the tear-soaked spikes of Delia’s hair. “Come on, Dee. I’ll make you some cookies.”
“Not too many,” I reminded her. My mother was preparing enough turkey and stuffing to feed an army, and she’d murder me if I spoiled the children’s appetites before dinner.
Zach squealed as Vero scooped him up and carried him downstairs. Delia lingered, giving the toilet one last look before following them to the kitchen.
As I reached for the light switch, I paused. Turning back to the toilet, I flushed it again. Because I’m not the luckiest person in the world, and I know better than to assume the dead don’t come back to haunt you.
CHAPTER 2
An hour later, Vero and I buckled Delia and Zach into their car seats. Vero wiped cookie crumb evidence from their cheeks as I hauled two small Rollaboards into the back of my minivan and slammed the hatch closed.
“What’s the luggage for?” Vero asked.
“I got an email from Steven this morning. He’s moved into his new place and he wants to take the kids for the weekend.” He’d attached photos of the restored farmhouse he’d rented in Fauquier County, careful to point out that the children’s bedrooms and toys were already unpacked, and the kitchen was stocked and ready for them. He’d cc’d his attorney, Guy, who had replied to both of us, congratulating Steven on finding such a “great place for the kids,” which was clearly lawyer-speak foryou have no grounds to fight this.
It had been easy to keep the kids away from Steven’s farm since his ex-fiancée’s arrest. After five bodies had been found buried there and Theresa Hall had been implicated in the ensuing investigation, Steven had called off their engagement. He’d moved out of her town house within hours and had been sleeping on the sofa in the sales trailer on his farm since. He and his attorney had both agreed itwould be best for the children to suspend their overnight visits until he was back on his feet. But they didn’t know what Vero and I knew. That someone had posted an ad on an online forum, offering a hundred thousand dollars to anyone willing to dispose of Steven Donovan. As far as Vero and I could tell, the forum was a virtual cesspool thinly disguised as a mom’s support group—an anonymous gathering space for hundreds of disgruntled middle-aged women to bitch about things that bothered them, namely their husbands, bosses, and boyfriends. Apparently, for those with means, it was also a way of getting rid of them.
Vero looked aghast as she slid the van door closed, shutting the children inside. “You’re not actually going to let them stay with him, are you?”
“Of course not. I called my parents and asked if the children could stay with them. Then I emailed Steven and told him the kids already had plans.”
A wicked smile pulled at Vero’s lips as we climbed into the van. Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper and she wagged an eyebrow. “Three whole days without the kids? I can spend a few nights at my cousin’s place if you want to invite Julian over to play house for the weekend.”
My face warmed when I pictured Julian in my kitchen. Or my bedroom. I snuck a shameful glance in the rearview mirror, but Zach’s head was already drooping against his car seat and Delia’s red-rimmed eyes were drifting closed. “I don’t have time to play house.” As tempting as it was to spend a weekend alone with the sexy young law student I’d been seeing, I had far more important things to do. “I have to figure out who posted that job offer. I won’t feel safe letting the kids spend the weekends with Steven until I’m sure nobody’s trying to kill him.” And if that wasn’t enough, I had a pitch due to my agent by nineA.M. Monday morning.
I turned the key in the ignition, wincing when the engine protested with a sputter before groaning to life.
Vero made a disgusted sound. “We’re going car shopping on Monday.”
“The van’s fine. Your cousin just fixed it.”
“No. Ramón put a Band-Aid on it. Face it, the van is toast.”
I threw my aging Dodge Caravan in gear, praying nothing shook loose and fell off—at least nothing important—as it rattled down the driveway. “I can’t afford to buy a new car right now. Not with Steven and his attorney scrutinizing all my expenses.”
“You could if you took that job on the forum. One hundred Gs would buy a pretty sweet car.”
“We are not killing my ex-husband for money,” I whispered, glancing back at my sleeping children.
“How much do you think we could get for his lawyer?” Vero suggested. I threw her a withering look. “Calm down. I’m kidding. But that transmission isn’t going to last much longer. You’d better get busy writing that book Sylvia thinks you’ve been working on.”
“I know. And I will.” My literary agent, Sylvia Barr, had been hounding me for sample pages of a novel I had supposedly started a month ago and my editor was expecting before the end of the year. “I’ll work on it this weekend. I’ll be at the library anyway.” Vero and I had been taking turns rotating among nearly a dozen branches of our local county library system, careful to delete our search history each time we used their computers to check that no one had accepted the job offer on the forum. A month had gone by without a bite, but that didn’t change the fact that someone wanted to murder my children’s father, and now that Steven had a place of his own, I had no reasonable excuse to keep the kids from him. I’d spend the entire weekend at the library if I had to. I’d scour that women’s forum until I figured out who posted the ad—probably one of countless women Stevenhad either scorned or managed to piss off. Then I’d make an anonymous call, report the woman’s intentions to the police, and hope like hell this was the end of it.
“I’ll come help you,” Vero offered as we merged onto the parkway.
“Silly for both of us to waste the weekend. Don’t you have any hot dates?”
“Please. You’re getting enough action for the both of us.”
My eyes strayed from the parkway to look at her. Vero had always been the one to lecture me about getting dressed in real clothes and going out. But she’d been staying in more and more lately. With the exception of her classes at the local community college, she’d been content to spend her nights off with me and the kids, watching movies in our pajamas. “Maybe you’d get more action if you left the house once in a while.”
She rolled her eyes.
“What about that guy, Todd, from macroeconomics?”
“Microeconomics,” she said, with an emphasis onmicro. “If you’re trying to get rid of me so you can get naked with your boyfriend, I’d rather spend the weekend watching football with my cousin.”
