“Where’s Zach going?” Delia asked as I started the van and eased out of the garage.
“Zach’s going to Daddy’s house. You’re going to school. And Mommy…” I pressed the remote button on my visor and waited for the door to close. Nothing happened.
I set the brake, ducking down to see into the garage. The light on the motor was off. So were the front stoop lights, and the light in Delia’s bedroom window she always forgot to turn off. I pulled my phone from the diaper bag and checked the date.
Shit. The electric bill was thirty days past due.
I thunked my head against the steering wheel and rested it there. I’d have to ask Steven to pay it for me. He’d have to call the power company and beg them to turn it back on—again. I’d have to ask him to come over and manually close my garage. And Guy would probably hear all about it by the time I got home.
“Where are you going, Mommy?” Delia asked.
I lifted my head and stared at the stupid pink shovel on the pegboard. At the darkened window of the office I hadn’t stepped foot in for weeks. At the weeds creeping up the front walk and the stack of bills the mail carrier had tossed on the front step when they’d overflowed the mailbox. I put the van in reverse, catching my kids’ snotty, syrupy, cherubic faces in the rearview mirror as I backed slowly down the driveway, my heart aching at the possibility of losing them to Steven and Theresa. “Mommy’s going to figure out how to make some money.”
CHAPTER 2
It was thirty-six minutes after ten when I finally made it to the Panera in Vienna, too late for breakfast but too early for the lunch rush, and I still couldn’t find a parking space. When I’d called Sylvia and explained I’d be too late to make our reservation at her fancy brunch restaurant pick, she’d asked for the name of a place that was close to a Metro station, opened early, and wouldn’t require one. Feeling guilty and frazzled while navigating a traffic jam on the toll road, Panera was the first place to fly out of my mouth, and Sylvia had disconnected before I could take it back.
The lot at Panera was full, brimming with shiny Audis and Beemers and Mercedes. Who were these people, and why did they not have office jobs? For that matter, why didn’t I?
I swung my minivan into the adjoining lot of the dry cleaner and picked a few last strands of Delia’s hair from my pants before finally giving up. Slipping on a huge pair of sunglasses that obscured most of my face, I tied my silk wig-scarf around my head, fluffed the long blond waves cascading from the bottom, and smeared burgundy lipstick beyond the natural lines of my mouth. I sighed at my reflection in the rearview mirror. This was the same version of me inside the cover of my books, but also, it wasn’t. In my headshots, I seemed mysterious and glamorous, like a romance novelist who wanted to preserve her secret identity from hordes of rabid fans. But in the drab lighting of my run-down minivan, with hairy syrup stains on my pants and diaper cream under my nails, and with a loose strand of my own brown hair poking stubbornly out of the bottom of the scarf, I just looked like I was trying too hard to be someone I’m not.
Let’s face it, I wasn’t wearing my wig-scarf to impress my agent—Sylvia already knew who I was. And who I wasn’t. Today, I just wore it to keep me from being kicked out of this particular Panera. If I could make it through lunch without being recognized as the disaster who’d been banned from this establishment eight months ago, that would be enough.
I threw my knockoff designer diaper bag over my shoulder, took a deep breath, and got out of the van, praying Mindy the Manager had quit or been fired since the last time I’d been here, when Theresa had requested to talk out our differences over lunch.
I stepped into the restaurant, peering through the long blond locks of the wig I’d left hanging over my eyes. Sylvia was already in line, scrutinizing the menu on the wall behind the registers as if it was written in some strange foreign tongue. I stood beside her for a full minute and a half, then said her name before she finally gave me a double take. “Finlay? Is that you?” she asked.
I slipped behind her, shushing her as I peeked over her shoulder at the employees behind the counter. When I didn’t see Mindy the Manager among them, or any familiar cashiers, I tucked the loose strands behind my ear. “Sorry I couldn’t meet you downtown,” I said. “My morning sort of exploded.”
“I can see that.” Sylvia had gone from scrutinizing the menu to scrutinizing me. She drew her glasses lower over the bridge of her nose with a long red fingernail. “Why are you wearing that?”
“Long story.” My relationship with Panera was complicated. I liked their soup. Panera didn’t like that I’d poured it over another customer’s head. In my defense, Theresa had started it when she’d attempted to justify her reasons for sleeping with my husband.
“You have something on your pants,” Sylvia said, grimacing at a hairy patch of syrup.
I pressed my lips tight. Tried to smile. Sylvia was everything you’d imagine New Yorkers to be if you watched too much television. Probably because she was from Jersey. Her office was in Manhattan. Her shoes were from Milan. Her makeup looked like it had flown in on a DeLorean circa 1980, and her clothes might have been skinned from a large jungle cat.
“I can help you over here,” an attendant called from behind an open register. Sylvia stepped to the counter, interrogated the young man about the gluten-free options, and then proceeded to order a tuna baguette and a bowl of French onion.
When it was my turn, I found the cheapest thing on the menu—a cup of the day’s soup. Sylvia held out her credit card and said, “It’s on me,” so I added a ham and brie sandwich and a slice of cheesecake to go.
We carried our trays to the dining room to find a table. As we walked, I filled Sylvia in on the gory details of my morning. She’d had children once, a long time ago, so she wasn’t entirely without sympathy, but she wasn’t exactly moved by the trials of my single motherhood shit-show.
All the booths were full, so we aimed for the last empty table for two in the middle of the bustling dining room. On one side of us, a college student wearing headphones stared at the screen of her MacBook. On the other side, a middle-aged woman picked at her bowl of macaroni and cheese alone. Sylvia squeezed between the tables and settled herself into a hardback chair, looking exasperated. I dropped my wallet in my diaper bag and set it down in the small gap on the floor beside me. The woman next to me glanced at it, then blinked up at me. I smiled blandly, sucking on my iced tea until she finally turned back to her lunch again.
Sylvia made a face at her sandwich. “Tell me again why we picked this place?”
“Because head wounds take forever to clean up. Sorry I was late.”
“Where are we with your deadline?” she asked around a mouthful of tuna. “Please tell me I took the train all the way down here for good news.”
“Not exactly.”
She glared at me as she chewed. “Tell me you at least have a plan in place.”
I slumped over my tray and picked at my food. “Sort of.”
“They paid you half up front for this job. Tell me you’re close.”
I leaned across the table, pitching my voice low, thankful the college student beside me was wearing headphones. “My last few murders were so formulaic. I’m becoming too predictable. I feel like I’m falling into a rut, Syl.”