“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.
I strapped Delia into her car seat and we bobbed down the gravel road, kicking up dust behind us as we cut through Steven’s farm. I hated to admit that it was a beautiful piece of land. Wide open and flat with unobstructed views of the rolling Appalachian foothills to the west, the fields neatly sectioned in squares of varying shades of green. I found Steven’s pickup truck easily among them. The red paint popped against the bright shamrock backdrop, and I could just make out the arch of Steven’s back as he chased Zach behind the cab. Zach zipped around it, emerging on the other side, his heavy diaper nearly dragging along the ground.
Well played, Steven. Well played.
Steven scooped him up at the sight of my van and rushed him toward me, eager to get us all out of his way before his clients arrived. If I knew Steven, he’d have his pretty assistant hold them back at the office until our van was gone. He was a master at shell games, hiding his interests and using distractions to move them smoothly out of sight, preserving his impeccable image. Though I doubted even Steven could hide the toddler-size stains Zach had left on his logo-emblazoned dress shirt.
He dumped our son unceremoniously in my arms, much like I had done to him earlier that morning. Zach’s pacifier—the one that clipped to the front of his overalls—was nowhere to be found as he screamed bloody murder in my ear. “Thanks for coming all the way out here,” Steven said over Zach’s shrieks. “I wish I had time to say hi to Delia, but my client’s going to be here any minute.” He waved over my shoulder, then swore under his breath. I turned to see Delia already out of her buckles and climbing out of the van. She ran toward us, leaping into Steven’s arms. He planted a kiss on top of her cap and set her down beside me, his gaze drifting anxiously down the road.
“Must be a big one,” I said, struggling to get Zach to settle.
“The developer for that new planned community in Warrenton I was telling you about,” Steven said absently. “Twenty-five hundred units over the next ten years.” He held up a finger to one of his crew members, letting us both know he only had a minute to wait.
I bounced Zach on my hip. He rested his head on my shoulder and his wails faded to pathetic moans. “Great, well, I don’t want to keep you. Where’s Zach’s blanket?”
Steven cringed. “I left it at the house this morning. Along with his paci.” Which was clearly why he had wanted me to rush out here so fast. I stopped bouncing to gape at him. Zach arched in my arms and started wailing again. “Here.” Flustered, Steven fished around in his pocket and unhooked a house key from his key ring. “You can stop by my place and get it. Just leave the key under the mat, and for god’s sake don’t tell Theresa I let you in.” He took me by the arm and began shuffling us toward the van.
I planted my feet and set Zach on the ground. The crying abruptly stopped, and he gleefully took off running. Steven failed to catch him as Zach waddled full tilt for the field.
I cupped a hand over my eyes, shielding out the afternoon sun as I watched Zach toddle off. “It was a long drive out here and I’m low on gas. All I’ve got with me is a twenty. Do you mind?” I held out a hand. If he wanted us to go that badly, the least he could do was cover the trip.
Jaw clenched, Steven reluctantly pulled his attention from Zach. “Twenty is plenty to get you home. It’s not that far.” He smiled tightly. Probably so he wouldn’t look like a total asshole in front of Delia.
I reached down and put a hand on our daughter’s head, plucking off her cap. A few chunks of loose hair came away with it. Steven’s face fell. His eyes darted back to the gravel road behind us as he peeled a twenty from the wad in his pocket and shoved it in my hand. Delia snatched her hat back, repeatedly failing to pull it over her head. I ran to fetch Zach before he could climb the bright yellow tractor that had captured his attention.
“Thanks for watching Zach this morning,” I said when he was finally writhing and whining in my arms. “Guess we’ll be going.”
Dust kicked up behind two approaching cars. The glistening Mercedes came to a stop behind the phallus on the rear window of my minivan, and I’m pretty sure Steven had never looked so relieved as he did the moment I buckled the kids into their car seats and shut the doors.
“It’ll be faster if you go out the back way,” he said, opening my door for me in a gesture that probably looked chivalrous from a distance. “Follow the gravel road to the end. It connects with the rural route behind the farm. Make a right, then another right, and follow the signs back to the highway.” Steven waved good-bye and rushed off to greet his clients, whose cars were now blocking the road we came in on.
I started the engine and rolled down the windows. A cool breeze blew over the acres upon acres of new grass, rippling them like the surface of a huge green sea. As we drove through it, I couldn’t help but admire what Steven had built here. Planting, growing, harvesting. Seeing something he’d started and stuck with, all the way through. Tractors turned over the rich dark earth on either side of me, spreading fresh seed into the trenches behind them. Others cut long, crisp strands of dense sod that looked like they could resurface a golf course. And still others pried up long stretches of turf, rolling them into tubes and stacking them onto flatbeds.