“No,” Theresa said without looking at me. “Amy was busy.”
“We can’t stay,” Steven said. “We’re having lunch with a developer in Leesburg. We’ll swing by on our way home to pick up Delia and Zach. I just wanted to bring her present. I thought maybe she could open it now before we go.”
Before I could open my mouth to argue, Steven had wrangled Delia and her friends, assembling an audience in front of the gaudy box that took up the breadth of my foyer. Theresa and I stood awkwardly beside each other in the small envelope of space that was left. She made a show of checking her messages on her phone, her fat diamond engagement ring on full display as she scrolled. We’d exchanged hardly more than a few words since the Panera incident. Unless you counted our testimony in court about the Play-Doh incident a few months ago.
“Delia sees right through you,” I said. “She’s five, not stupid.”
Theresa raised an eyebrow. “I guess her powers of perception didn’t come from her mother.”
“Nice.”
“If the shoe fits.” She glanced down at my sneakers as if she’d never be caught dead wearing the same ones.
“You can’t buy Delia’s loyalty.”
“Maybe not,” she said, examining her nails, “but I can buy her a decent haircut.”
Theresa hadn’t looked at me once since she’d walked into my house. Maybe it was guilt, but I doubted it. She’d looked me dead in the eyes the day Steven told me he was moving out, hungry to record the precise moment of my emotional demise. She’d practically gloated the day he put that ring on her finger. Shame wasn’t a color that existed in Theresa’s wardrobe. So what was she hiding now? “Why are you doing this? You don’t even like children.”
“Because having the children with us will make Steven happy.” Her red lips pressed into a tight, thin line. So that was it. Steven wasn’t happy. And that bothered her, enough to sacrifice her pristine white carpets and her bustling social life. This was the dark mess in her closet, the secret she was hiding from their families and friends.
“Taking my kids won’t fix your relationship. But why stop with my husband, right?” Theresa shifted on her designer heels. She checked the time on her phone, pretending she hadn’t heard me. “You know, I was willing to let Steven go without a fight, but not my children.”
“Why don’t you have your attorney call mine. Oh, wait,” she said, thoughtfully tapping a nail to her chin. “I forgot. You don’t have one.”
The blow hit low. Vero was right. I needed a lawyer who could compete with Guy. An old lawyer. A rich lawyer. I needed a fifty-thousand-dollar lawyer. “I won’t make this easy for you.”
“You already have.” She whirled on me, her fiery green eyes narrowing on mine. “I don’t like this arrangement any more than you do, Finlay. Who do you think is going to end up mothering your children when you’re not able to do it anymore? If you loved your kids as much as you say you do, maybe you’d be nicer to me.”
My mouth fell open. Delia squealed as she managed to untangle the bow from the box and tear her gift from the paper. She gasped, the puppy on her wish list all but forgotten. The Barbie Dreamhouse was three stories high, just like Theresa’s town house. “We’ll take it to your room at Theresa’s,” Steven told her, hefting the box. “You can play with it tonight when you get home.”
Delia chased him to the door, clambering for one last look at it. The small plush dog I’d bought and gift wrapped for her suddenly seemed pathetic, a token of something she wanted that I couldn’t afford. Theresa was right. I had made this easy for them. And if I went to prison, Steven and Theresa were the only parents my children would have left.
I jumped as a car door slammed in the garage. Delia raced to the kitchen to meet Vero, who’d be walking in any moment with the pizzas. Steven hurried out the front door, ushering Theresa in front of him, anxious to be gone. “Make sure the kids are packed and ready by five. I’ll be back for them after the party,” he called over his shoulder. The front door closed just as Vero came in through the kitchen, a mountain of pizza boxes stacked in her arms.
* * *
That night, after Steven had picked up the kids, I sat on my front stoop, the cold from the concrete seeping through my socks as I stared after the shrinking taillights of his truck. The kids would only be gone one night. They’d be home again tomorrow, and they were only a few blocks away, but I hated how easily he swooped in, took what he wanted, and left. I hated how unfair it was, and how nobody else seemed to notice or care.