“Will you and Dad be okay?”
She patted my hand. “We’ll be fine. You go on and get the children to bed.”
I waved goodbye as she rolled up her window. Then I grabbed the children’s Rollaboards out of the back as Steven hoisted Delia gently out of her booster seat.
“She’s getting so big,” he said quietly as we walked side by side to the front stoop. “She’s growing up so fast. She has so many questions. Like all that stuff about where babies come from… I didn’t know what to tell her.”
“She’s a bright kid. She’s not going to believe stork tales forever. I think it’s okay to tell her the truth.”
He blanched. “All of it?”
“Notallof it. Not yet, anyway. But I don’t think we have to lie to her. It’s fine to omit a lot of the details for now, but I think we should answer her questions as directly as we can.”
He paused on the porch step, turning to face me. “She wanted to know if you and Nick were going to have kids. I didn’t know what to tell her.” It came out like a question. Delia clearly wasn’t the only one who wanted to know the answer.
“I think it’s okay to tell her that when two people really care for each other, anything is possible.” A deep worry line cut into his brow. “I also think it’s fine to tell her that having babies is a big responsibility. It’s perfectly fine to choose not to, and it’s perfectly fine to wait.”
“Finn,” he said gently as he seemed to gather his thoughts, “about what you said in the hotel earlier, about me not pulling my weight… You were right, about all of it. When I made the decision to move out, it wasn’t fair of me to let everything fall back on you. I should have stepped up. I should have been around more for you and the kids. I’m sorry,” he said, genuinely contrite.
I nodded. There wasn’t really anything more to say. I didn’t owe him a thank-you. I didn’t owe him a “that’s okay.” But I could give him the benefit of the doubt and hope he’d learned something from his weekend away with us. And yet, there was still a lingering question that had been gnawing at me all weekend.
“Before I ask you to take the kids to your place next weekend, is there anything I should know? Anything you’ve never told me that you want to get off your chest?” I hadn’t been able to get that ledger I’d found in his nightstand out of my head. Or what Pokey had said, about how the secrets inside a ledger don’t disappear just because the ledger does. Maybe Steven’s book was nothing more than a simple accounting of business-related receipts, but it hadn’t felt that way. It had felt more personal, the way it had so clearly been kept in his back pocket, stored close to where he slept, as if it rarely strayed far from him. And afterEasyClean’s inferences—that Steven had secrets he’d been hiding—Icouldn’t shake the feeling that those secrets were somehow connected to whatever was in that ledger.
“Nothing you or the kids have reason to worry about,” he promised. “What about you?” he asked curiously. “If we’re going to be sharing all the responsibility fifty-fifty, shouldn’t I be asking you the same?”
“All my skeletons have been laid to rest,” I confessed, hoping it was true.
“Okay,” he said, pressing a soft kiss to Delia’s head before passing her to me. “I’ll pick the kids up on Friday.” We shared a quick embrace, his smile melancholic as he returned to my mother’s car.
Javi came out of the house, his shirt a bit more rumpled and his hair more disheveled than I had remembered them being before he’d gone inside. His grin was wide as he climbed into the back seat of my mom’s SUV and pulled the door shut.
I waved them all goodbye as she backed out of my driveway, wondering how much of her weekend she would share with my father when she finally got home. If she would confess to having gone to a strip club or how much money she’d lost playing slots. Or that she’d skipped Sunday mass for a day at the spa. Would any of it matter, the inconsequential lies and omissions? Or would Dad just be happy she was home, safe and sound?
I finished putting Delia to bed and locked the house for the night. Vero came downstairs, already wearing her pajamas. She padded into the kitchen, the telltale crackle giving her away as she tore open a package of Oreos. She carried the whole bag under her arm to the living room, along with a heaping glass of wine in each hand, settling in beside me where I’d collapsed on the couch.
She passed me a glass. Then she stared up at the ceiling and stuffed a cookie in her mouth, the green plastic spider still perched on her finger. I wondered if she was thinking about Javi. If she had thought about taking off her ring since she’d gotten home, or if she was content to keep it on.
I took a long sip of my wine. The thought of Vero getting married— of her packing her things and moving out of my home—left a hollowfeeling in my chest. I knew in my heart it was only a matter of time before she left. She had a bright future ahead of her, assuming we could both stay out of trouble, and eventually she’d want to start a family of her own. I wanted those things for her, too. Just maybe not yet.
She rested her head on my shoulder as she nibbled on her cookie. “It’s good to be home, Finn.”
I smiled as I stole a cookie for myself. “It’s definitely good to be home.”
EPILOGUE
My room was overly bright when I woke the next morning. I curled deeper into the blankets, listening to the children fighting over a toy in the playroom and Vero bickering with Javi on her phone. My room smelled faintly of the hamper of towels I hadn’t had time to wash before we’d left for the police academy and the diaper pail in my bathroom that Zach had christened right after we’d returned home.
I relished all of it.
It had been nearly ten days since I had slept in my own bed, and there had been more than a few times when I’d been certain I never would again, making an otherwise normal Tuesday morning feel decadent and luxurious in spite of it all.
I rolled over and checked the time on my phone, shocked to discover it was almost noon. Three notifications were stacked on my home screen. A missed call from Nick; a text message from Cam, telling me he’d made it home; and an incoming call from Sylvia that I contemplated letting roll to voice mail. With a sigh, I picked it up.
“Hey, Sylvia.”
“Where the hell have you been? I’ve been trying to reach you for two days. Did you find the hot cop after you left the restaurant?”
I smiled at the memory of our evening at Chubbies. “Several, actually.”
