“Yeah, well, we all saw how much favors helped Dad,” Grade muttered.
He’d meant her to hear it. Yet he still regretted that she had when he saw the hurt flash over her face. Before he could work out how to apologize, without using the words “I’m sorry,” the door behind swung open and hit him in the hip.
“Mom?” Cody said as he stuck his head into the kitchen. His hair was still patchy blue from a misjudged attempt to dye it with Kool-Aid. “Did you make me anything for lunch?”
Grade nudged the door back into Cody. “Hey. I gave you fifty bucks for your lunch.”
Cody pushed back against the door and craned his neck so he could see Grade. He gave a gap-toothed grin.
“Yeah,” he said. “And if I get a packed lunch instead, I’m fifty bucks up.”
Clay snorted, and Cody looked over at the door. He gaped in surprise for a second and then recovered quickly.
“Oh, hey,” he said, shoving the door open with his crutch to shuffle into the kitchen. “Hi. I’m Cody. Are you Uncle Grade’s boyfriend?”
“No” came from Grade and Dory at the same moment.
The amused “Maybe” came from Clay as he grinned at Cody. “I’m Clay. Pleased to meet you.”
“Yeah,” Cody said. “Wow! Your ink is sick. It’s really—”
“That’s enough,” Dory interrupted him. She grabbed his shoulders and pushed him out into the hall. “Go get dressed. I’m taking you to school.”
“But Uncle Grade can…” Cody whined in protest as the door swung shut behind both of them.
“No,” Dory said, her voice muffled by the door. “I’m going to embarrass you in front of all your friends. Now go. Get dressed. And not the Magneto T-shirt. I want people to think you own more than one outfit!”
While they argued, Grade shifted his attention back to Clay again. He grimaced a vague “sorry about my family” smile at him and held Dory’s phone up.
“I left my phone in the car,” he said. “Dory has access to my location services, so…”
Clay pulled a dubious face. “Phone’s going to be the first thing they throw out of the car, though.”
“It was in the glove box,” Grade said. “So with any luck, it will have taken them a while to find it. Then at least we’ll know what direction they went in.”
He swiped down the list of Dory’s contacts—friends, family, and exes—until he reached his name. The last time she’d checked on him, apparently, had been two days ago. Probably to see if he’d been nearly home with the takeout.
He thumbed the screen down and waited for it to update.
“Why was your phone in the glove box?” Clay asked.
Grade shifted to the side as the kitchen door swung open again as Dory came back in. “It’s safest. Ideally, your phone shouldn’t be visible when you’re driving. Even looking to see what a notification is can distract you from the road long enough for an accident.”
“He might be a criminal,” Dory said to Clay, her voice dry. “But he’s very law-abiding.”
Grade glanced up from the phone. “I get stopped by the cops with a bag of—”
Dory snapped her fingers at him and pointed up at the ceiling, her face screwed up in an expression of exaggerated irritation.
“Laundry—” Grade edited himself with. “Happy?” he mouthed at Dory. “—in the back of the van, I’ll get charged with a lot worse than a traffic violation. So I drive safely—and when my van gets jacked, I can find it.”
Clay pushed himself off the door and straightened up.
“Where?” he said.
Grade slid his fingers over the screen to zoom in on the icon that represented his car.
“Out of town,” he said. The dirt roads up that way were lucky to have a number, never mind a name. “Up near the hunting camps.”
