She perked up. “Where?”
Steven lumbered down the stairs with a suitcase in his hand. “I’m ready when you are, Finn. If we leave now, we can probably get to Atlantic City before dark.”
My mother gasped. “You can’t go with them. This is a girls’ trip!”
“Not anymore. I’m chaperoning.”
“They’re perfectly capable adults!” she cried. “Why would they need a chaperone to enjoy a relaxing weekend away?”
“Because your daughter isn’t allowed to take my kids out of state without my permission, and as long as Feliks Zhirov is loose, I’m not letting the childrenorFinlay out of my sight.”
“Then we’ll all go,” my mother said, reaching for her coat. A stream of coffee shot out of Vero’s nose. “What?” my mother asked as my mouth fell open. “You said it was a girls’ weekend. I can watch the children while you and Vero go out for a nice dinner. Or maybe the spa. It’ll be perfect.”
“You can’t go,” I sputtered. “What about Dad?”
“Your sister can stay with him.”
“She doesn’t know how to cook!”
“She knows how to use a phone. They can order takeout.”
“But we’re leaving in a few minutes, and you don’t have any clothes.”
“I have a credit card. And my Buick has third-row seating, by the way, which means my vehicle is the only one large enough to hold both children’s safety seats, four adults, and all of your luggage.”
“If it was onlythreeadults, we could fit in my sedan,” I pointed out.
My mother sighed and drew me into the kitchen. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go out of town with Steven. What will Nicholas think when he finds out?” She gestured wildly to the flannel shirt I was wearing.
I bit my cheek. Just last night, Nick had voiced his unfounded fears that I might want to rekindle things with Steven, if only to put our family back together. I’d told him he was wrong, that I would never get back together with the man who had cheated on me and left me for another woman. But here I was, wearing Steven’s shirt and showering in his bathroom, making plans to take him with me on a road trip to Atlantic City that Nick didn’t even know about.
“If I come with you, it will look better,” my mother insisted. I pinched the bridge of my nose and drew in a deep, slow breath. I turned and left the kitchen with my mother in tow, only to find Steven and Vero facing off against each other across the foyer. “We’re all going,” I declared.
Vero and Steven both swore.
“But I have three conditions,” I continued. “One, Vero chooses the route.” Because Vero was wanted on a bogus theft charge in the state of Maryland, and if we took the direct route, she could end up in jail. “Two, Steven does not drive.” Because he would love nothing more than to see Vero behind bars. “And three, nobody fights. The first person to pitch a tantrum or shed blood in that Buick will get out and walk the rest of the way.” Because my nerves were shot and I was not going to put up with it.
My mother, Steven, and Vero all raised their eyebrows at my mom-voice, but none of them objected as I glared at them all.
“I’ll go pack our clothes,” Vero said.
My mother reached for her cell phone. “I’ll call your sister and tell her I’ll be gone for a few days.”
“I’ll put the kids’ car seats in the Buick,” Steven added.
I headed for the kitchen to prepare a cooler of snacks for the road. At the last minute, I threw in a bottle of antacids and a fifth of Steven’s gin from the pantry, certain this was going to be the longest road trip any of us had ever been on.
CHAPTER 3
Three hours later, after a circuitous route through West Virginia (and the narrowest, most rural sliver of Maryland on the map), two potty breaks (one for me and my mother and the other for Delia), and a diaper change on the side of the highway for Zach, we crossed the state line into Pennsylvania and headed east toward New Jersey. My mother had taken the first shift driving while Vero navigated from the passenger seat. The children’s car seats took up the middle row, and Steven and I sat crammed together in the back since I was the only adult in the car I could trust not to murder him.
I sat with my legs propped on the seat back in front of me, my laptop on my knees, my manuscript opened to the climax of my romantic suspense novel, to a scene my editor had insisted I rewrite because it wasn’t sexy enough to warrant my final advance payment.
Every ten miles or so, Vero would lower her visor, open the mirror, and narrow her eyes at me over the children’s heads, checking to make sure I was working. The revision was due to my agent by Monday, and I had no choice but to finish it if I wanted to get paid.
Somehow, Vero had managed to stay awake for the first leg of thetrip, but once we were safely past the Maryland state line, she had settled back into her seat with a vigorous yawn. After a few minutes, her head had tilted against her window and she’d fallen asleep. My own eyes burned. The Styrofoam container of bitter, watered-down gas station coffee contained nothing but cold dregs. Between the slow blink of my cursor on the screen, the quiet that had fallen over the car as the children napped, and the rhythmic flash of the white-painted lines on the road, the edges of my own consciousness were growing fuzzy.
“What are you working on?” Steven asked, scooting closer.
