Finlay Donovan Is Killing It(Finlay Donovan #1)(3)

From the empty dining room, I watched Delia twirl what was left of her hair around a sticky red finger. Zach whined, fidgeting in his high chair. If I couldn’t earn a paycheck in the next three months, Guy would find a way to take my kids and give them to Theresa, too.

“I’m late. I can’t discuss this with you right now. Can I bring Zach to you or not?” I will not cry. I will not—

“Yeah,” he said wearily. Steven didn’t know the meaning of weary. He had coffee and got eight uninterrupted hours of sleep every night. “Finn, I’m sorr—”

I disconnected. It wasn’t as satisfying as a knee to his groin, and yes, it was probably childish and clichéd, but a small part of me felt better after hanging up on him. The very small part (if there was any) that wasn’t covered in syrup and late for my meeting.

Whatever. I was still not okay. Nothing was okay.

I felt another tug on my slacks. Delia looked up at me, tears brewing in her eyes, her hair sticking up in blood-matted spikes.

I blew out a heavy sigh. “Duct tape. I know.”

Musty autumn air rushed in when I opened the service door to the garage. I flicked on the light, but the cavernous space was still dim and depressing, empty except for the oil stain left behind by Steven’s F-150 on the concrete and my dust-coated Dodge Caravan. Someone had drawn a phallus in the grime on the back window, and Delia hadn’t let me clean it because she’d said it looked like a flower, and it all felt like a metaphor for my life right now. A workbench lined the back wall of the garage, topped by a giant pegboard for tools. Only there weren’t any tools. Just my ten-dollar big-box-store generic pink planting trowel—one of a handful of things Steven hadn’t taken when he’d cleaned out the garage. Everything else belonged to his landscaping business, he’d said. I dug around in the scraps left behind on the workbench—loose screws, a broken hammer, a near-empty bottle of upholstery cleaner—and found a roll of silver duct tape. It was as sticky and hairy as my children and I carried it inside.

Delia’s teary doe eyes were gone. She looked at the roll of tape with all the assurance of a girl who had yet to be let down by the most important man in her life.

“Are you sure about this?” I asked, holding a fistful of her tawny strands.

She nodded. I grabbed a knit hat off the coatrack in the foyer and turned back to the kitchen. Zach was watching us, a piece of waffle stuck to his head, pushing and pulling his sticky fingers together and apart with a wide-eyed expression that bordered on mystical. I’m pretty sure he was taking a dump.

Great. Steven could change him.

My scissors were buried under a pile of dirty breakfast dishes, so I drew a knife from the block on the counter instead. The tape peeled away from the roll with a loud shriek, and I held the strands of clipped hair against the side of Delia’s head while wrapping the tape around her like a hideous silver crown until the hair was (mostly) secured in place. The knife was dull, barely sharp enough to hack the tape from the roll.

Jesus.

I forced a smile as I pulled the knit cap over her head, just low enough to conceal the evidence. Delia grinned up at me, her tiny fingers raking the mop of Frankenstein-like strands from her eyes.

“Happy?” I asked, trying not to cringe and draw attention to the chunk of hair that had fallen loose and was now resting on her shoulder.

She nodded.

I stuffed the knife and tape in my shoulder bag along with my cell phone and plucked Zach from his high chair, holding him high enough to get a whiff of his droopy drawers. Satisfied, I slung him on my hip and slammed the door behind us.

I was okay, I told myself as I slapped the remote door opener on the wall of the garage. The motor lit up, a horrible grinding noise drowning out the children’s chatter as it hauled the door open, flooding the garage with autumn-gray sunlight. I loaded us all into the minivan, setting Zach’s sagging drawers gingerly in his car seat. It wasn’t as satisfying as a kick to my ex’s groin, but today, a sticky two-year-old in a shitty diaper felt like the best I could do.

“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.”