I laughed. “I’ll take this over Feliks’s any day. Got any coffee?” I asked, rubbing my eyes.
“You planning on staying up?”
“I’ve got a deadline for Sylvia.”
“Check the faculty lounge. There’s probably some left over in the carafes, but I should warn you, it’s not exactly Starbucks.”
“Noted.” I slipped through a set of doors into the darkened cafeteria, following the emergency lighting toward the faculty lounge at the far side. The smell of cooked broccoli lingered in the room, the only clue it had been occupied a little more than an hour ago.
The faculty lounge was unlocked and I flipped on the light switch. My name caught my attention, printed in red on a dry-erase board on the opposite wall. A table had been drawn on it. Each team of students had been listed in the leftmost column, followed by a tally of their points. The next column also contained a number—a ranking, but not the one we’d earned through our scores. These were odds, and Vero and I seemed to be leading the pack.
Sam hadn’t been kidding. The faculty were literally betting on us. While a few of the instructors had placed bets on other teams, most had gambled on Vero and me. Only one instructor had bet against us—Joey Balafonte had bet we’d lose the whole damn thing.
Unsettled, I searched the cabinets for a mug and helped myself to a cup of coffee. The dregs in the silver carafe were bitter but still warm. I sipped as I turned for the door, pausing beside a tray of desserts. With a quick glance at the door, I pulled aside the plastic wrap and snuck two chocolate chip cookies from the tray, stuffing them into my sweatshirt pockets. I rearranged a few oatmeal raisins to cover the gaps before turning off the lights.
My phone vibrated with an incoming call. My mother’s name flashed on the screen.
“Mom?” I answered on my way back to the kitchen. “It’s not a good time. Can I call you back?”
“Hi, Mommy.”
I halted in my tracks, checking my screen to be sure I had read it right. How was Delia calling me from my mother’s phone? “Hi, baby. Did Nana come to visit you at Daddy’s?” Why would Steven invite my mother to his house? The two hadn’t stepped foot in the same room since we’d divorced.
“No,” she said. “Daddy, Zach, and I went on a secret mission to our house. Then we came to visit Nana and Pop Pop.”
“A secret mission? That sounds exciting.” A little too exciting. Vero had confiscated Steven’s house key three months ago. “How did Daddy get into the house?”
“That was the most funnest part,” she said, her tongue slipping on her S’s between her missing front teeth. “We sneaked around the backyard so no one would see us. Then Daddy opened a window with one of his screwdiapers—”
“He used a screwdriver?”
“Yes! But Daddy was too big to fit in the window, so he held it open and I got to be the one who climbed in. Then I ran and unlocked the back door for Daddy and Zach. Zach and I were pretending to be spies so Mrs. Haggerty wouldn’t see us,” she finished in a stage whisper.
“Ooooh, that does sound like fun.” Almost as much fun as murdering my ex-husband with a screwdriver. “Was Daddy spying, too?” I asked sweetly.
“Mostly, he was cussing,” Delia said. “First, he used the D word when he looked under the bushes and his special key was gone.” Because I’d disposed of the one he’d kept hidden there for Theresa after I’d caught him cheating and kicked him out of the house. “Then, he used the S word when he got stuck in the window. And then,” she said with a dramatic rise of her voice, “he used all the bad words when Zach poured chocolate syrup on the carpet in the playroom while Daddy was upstairs working in the closet.”
“In the closet?” I paused. What could Steven have found in my closet that would have prompted him to take the children to my parents’ house? “Delia, is Daddy there with you now?”
“No. We’re having a sleepover at Nana and Pop Pop’s tonight.”
“Can I talk to Nana?”
“She and Pop Pop are watching the news and Zach and I can’t watch anything fun. Nana said I’m not allowed to use my iPad until I’m thirty. She says computers are full of bad people.”
A sharp laugh burst out of me. “She would know.” I pressed a hand to my temple as I carried the phone a safe distance from the kitchen. “Put Nana on the phone, sweetheart.”
There was a rustling on the other end of the line, then my mother picked up. “Finlay, is that you?”
“Why are the children with you? Where’s Steven?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
Her voice fell to a whisper. “I swear to god, Finlay, he was breathing when he left.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “What was he doing at your house to begin with?”
I heard the swing doors swish closed behind her as she carried the phone into her kitchen and lowered her voice. “He called me this afternoon and asked if he could come over. He sounded upset. At first, I was worried that he might know about the whole … you know … incident,” she whispered. “But then he asked if he could bring the children. He said an emergency came up and he needed someone to take the kids for the night. I told him they could stay with us.”
Damnit, Steven. “Do you have any idea where he went?”
“He wouldn’t say. Only that it was very important.”
I pulled the phone from my ear to check the time. “I’m sorry Steven dumped the kids on you like this. I can come get them. I’ll call an Uber and be at your place before their bedtime.” If I asked Nick, he’d probably even drive me. Vero could stay here. She’d be safer in the dorms until Javi was able to get the money from stripping the car.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” my mother said. “We’re delighted to have the children. Stay at your police thing. You can pick them up when you get home.” The phone became muffled as my father’s voice called out from the next room. “I should go. Your father’s back is bothering him and he can’t find the heating pad.”
“Tell Dad I hope he feels better. And give the kids a kiss for me. Thanks, Ma.”
As soon as she disconnected, I dialed Steven’s number. It rang to voice mail. “Steven? It’s Finlay. I just talked to my mother—and Delia,” I added pointedly, “and they said you had some kind of emergency. I hope this emergency had nothing to do with your visit to my house this afternoon. Call me when you get this.”
I shoved my phone in my pocket and carried my coffee to the kitchen. The mouthwatering scent that greeted me almost made me forget Steven altogether. A pan of beef, onions, and garlic hissed on the stove. Nick stood with his back to me, the sleeves of his Henley rolled to his elbows and the sash of a red apron tied around his waist. One hand leaned on his cane, the other stirred.
He glanced over as the door swung shut behind me. “You were gone for a while. Thought maybe you got lost looking for the coffee.”
“Sorry, my mom called.”
He put down his spoon. “Everything okay?”