“Finn?” Between Zach’s shrieks, I could practically hear Ste ven’s sanity cracking. His farm was close to the West Virginia state line. It would take me at least forty minutes to get there. And I’d have to pick Delia up at preschool on the way.
“Fine.” I rummaged through my wallet and found the twenty dollars I hadn’t spent on lunch that morning. Enough for gas. “I’m coming. Give me a few minutes to use the bathroom and grab Delia.”
“An hour, Finn. Please.” He sounded desperate. And a little pissed off. He’d had only one of our children for less than three hours, and he thought he could handle full custody of both? I considered taking my time, showing up late, just to see how much hair he had left when I finally arrived. But then Zach started crying in the background, the kind of wails Steven had always been too impatient to learn to quiet. I got up from the desk, a layer of dust revealing itself where my hands had briefly skimmed its surface.
This was my life. A two-thousand-dollar contract for months of work, no sleep, and ten minutes in the bathroom alone.
“Tell Zach I’m on my way.” I hung up the phone, switched off the computer, and tried not to wonder about Harris Mickler anymore.
CHAPTER 4
Steven had bought his sod farm less than a month after we’d divorced. I’d taken the kids to see it once. I didn’t know much about the place, other than the fact that it covered three hundred acres, it produced various kinds of grass he then sold to homebuilders and real estate developers, and he’d been making a small fortune from it since. Mostly, I pictured him and Theresa frolicking naked in emerald fields of cash and fescue, which was probably why I’d never bothered going back.
I had a vague recollection of where it was. My GPS led me the rest of the way, to a huge billboard marking the entrance to a gravel road. ROLLING GREEN SOD AND TREE FARM, it read. The long dirt driveway was flanked on both sides by fields of baby Christmas trees, the next big cash crop Steven would undoubtedly use as Exhibit A in his custody case against me. Not only could he afford to keep my children clothed and fed, he could give them the perfect Norman Rockwell Christmas to boot.
Sitting tall in her booster to see out the window, Delia directed me to park in front of a small construction trailer at the rear of the tree lot. I freed Delia from her car seat and followed her to the sales office, knocking once before poking my head inside the trailer door. Delia scooted around my legs and rushed toward the desk, beaming up at the pretty young blonde seated behind it. The receptionist couldn’t have been much older than nineteen or twenty, with a sweet smile and perky boobs. Just like Steven liked them. The poor thing. Theresa probably had no idea, and I almost felt sorry for her, too.
“Hi, Delia,” the girl cooed, rubbing my daughter’s head. Delia’s cap shifted a little, exposing the edge of the duct tape holding her hair in place. The girl wrinkled her nose at it, flashing me a conspiratorial grin as if she had discerned the backstory Delia’s hat was struggling to hide.
Oh, honey, I thought to myself, you have no idea.
“You must be Finlay?” the girl asked, standing to shake my hand. “I’m Bree. Mr. Donovan is expecting you.”
How sweet. She called him Mr. Donovan in the office. I wrinkled my nose and smiled back. “Thanks, Bree. I’m just here to pick up Zach.”
“They’re in the Zoysia. Just stay on the gravel about a quarter mile, until you pass the tractors on your left. He’ll be in the field right behind them.”
“Thank you,” I said, genuinely sad for her when I thought of all the heartbreak ahead of her—all the phalluses just waiting to be drawn in the dust on the windshield of her future. I wanted to tell her to run. To save herself while she still could. But I had been about the same age when I’d fallen for Steven, and if anyone had told me he’d turn out to be a philandering creep, I never would have believed them.
I took Delia’s hand and led her back to the car.
“Can I ride up front with you?” she asked when I opened the back door.
“No, sweetie. You need to be in your booster.”
“But Daddy lets me.”
“Daddy’s setting a bad example. It’s not very responsible of him. What if a policeman saw and gave him a ticket?”
Delia rolled her eyes. “This isn’t a real road, Mommy. Daddy says it’s private.”
“What if we were in an accident?”
“But nobody ever drives here!” she whined. “Only Daddy’s pickup truck. Sometimes, he even lets me ride in the very back.” She confessed this bit with an impish smile. I returned it, making a mental note to share that information with my attorney—if he’d bother to take my call. I was pretty sure his invoice was in the pile with all the other outstanding bills on my front step.