He steps into the scalding water.
Yankee Doodle, keep it up, Yankee Doodle dandy . . .
Shelly looked out at the audience, saw Mark, and, for a moment, forgot to sing, her hand waving excitedly. And that’s when he saw it: the gap in her smile where her two front teeth had been.
He slams his fist against the tiles, his shoulder protesting. Damn her.
Damn her. Damn her. Damn her.
Had Marcia called to tell him Shelly had lost her teeth, he would have told her what she needed to do, where the gold dollars, purchased specifically for Tooth Fairy-ing, were kept. He would have told her about the silver Sharpie in his desk and explained that she needed to leave a rhyming note along with the coin, the penmanship curly so it looked like a fairy had written it.
But his ex-wife didn’t call to tell him that their daughter had lost her first tooth. Or her second. It probably didn’t occur to her. Marcia is busy these days, running her business and “raising two kids on her own,” as she likes to say. She has no time to keep her ex-husband informed about small insignificant details like their six-year-old losing her teeth.
He is the Tooth Fairy—also Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and Saint Patrick. He should have been there, been a part of it.
After stepping from the shower, he wraps a towel around his waist and returns to the front room. In a single gulp, he finishes the remainder of the stale beer, then, with a heavy sigh, opens his laptop. Fitz has sent four video clips, two from each of the surveillance cameras outside Torelli’s office. He looks at the ones from the entrance camera first, then at those from the back lot; then he looks at them again, this time in sequence.
He calls Fitz. “What the hell?”
“Exactly.”
17
GRACE
Grace is dreaming of food. Bread, mostly, warm from the oven, the crust breaking open in her hands to reveal its soft, steamy insides. Jam and honey and butter waiting to be spread in great slathers across it. Grapes and apples. Blueberry muffins in a basket. A plate of thick waffles beside it. She holds the torn loaf, its heat spreading through her fingers as she reaches for the knife, her mouth watering as her nose fills with its yeasty smell . . .
Her eyes blink open as her mouth continues to water. The ceiling above her is smooth, entirely unlike the popcorn ceiling of her bedroom, and for a precious second, she thinks she is in her old apartment, the one she and Jimmy moved into when they first got married, light flooding in through the window as it always did in the morning. She loved that bedroom and that bed, the way the golden light would stream in each day to wake them. It was such a hopeful way to greet the day.
She can almost smell the pancakes Jimmy would make in the morning, fluffy as air, a special recipe made with lemon-zest ricotta, warm maple syrup on top. Her stomach rumbles, and she realizes something is baking nearby. Stretching her arms over her head, she inhales the heady scent, unable to remember the last time she slept so well or the last time it was so quiet.
Quiet!
She bolts upright as she realizes where she is. In a hotel room. Alone. No Miles. No money.
She leaps from the bed and runs for the door.
“Morning,” Mrs. Torelli says as she bursts into the brightness.
Grace spins to see Mrs. Torelli sitting in a plastic chair beside the door, Miles cradled in her arms. He stares up at her, his fists waving.
Grace blinks.
“Sleep well?”
Grace swallows back her panic as her eyes slide to the diaper bag at Mrs. Torelli’s feet. The bag has been neatly repacked, the diapers, bottles, and formula organized in the outer pockets, the money bulging in the zipped main compartment. Miles’s car seat is beside the bag. It looks freshly scrubbed, the lining cleaned of crumbs and several of the stains gone.
“Where’s your stuff?” Grace says, noticing that Mrs. Torelli has changed into a cotton skirt the color of plums and an ivory tank.
“Packed in the car. My daughter loaded it for me.”
As if on cue, a teenager with white-blonde hair with half an inch of dark roots walks from the door on the other side of Mrs. Torelli. She looks at Grace with dark-brown eyes the exact color of Frank’s, then turns to Mrs. Torelli. “Can we go now?” she says, her arms folded across her chest in a silent, trademark teenage harrumph.
The girl is edgy cool. She wears black leggings and a rock T-shirt from a band Grace has never heard of, and an awesome snake earring spirals through her left ear.
“Mattie, this is Grace,” Mrs. Torelli says.
“Hey,” Mattie says, not bothering to look at Grace again, and Grace nearly smiles, remembering being like that when she was a teenager, completely caught up in her own world while trying to figure out how she fit into the bigger one.
Mrs. Torelli sighs, lifts Miles so he is standing on her lap, and nuzzles his nose, apparently in no rush to give him up.
“Mo-o-om,” Mattie says, rolling her eyes.
“Mmmm?” Mrs. Torelli says, nuzzling Miles again, clearly enamored.
“Well, I guess we should be going,” Grace mumbles. “Thanks for, you know, looking after him.” She steps forward to take him at the exact moment the door beside them opens again and a boy in a Dodgers uniform walks through.
He steps between her and Mrs. Torelli, looks down at Miles, places his hands on the baby’s cheeks, then squishes them to make Miles’s lips into a fish mouth. “Hey, Rookie,” he says; then he proceeds to play Miles’s cheeks like an accordion, smooshing them in and out.
Grace steps forward, slightly concerned. The boy is around eight, slight as a rag doll, and there’s something different about him, a slowness that speaks to viewing the world through an altered lens.
She reaches around to take Miles just as Miles lets out a squeal that startles her. She stops, straightens, looks at the boy, then looks back at Miles, who is waving his pudgy arms and kicking his pudgy legs in what can only be described as delight.
The book Grace has on baby development says babies start to laugh at three months. But though Miles’s four-month birthday was two weeks ago, Grace has never seen him so much as crack a grin.
The boy removes his hands, then looks at Mrs. Torelli. “Time to get on the road, Blue,” he says, and Mrs. Torelli smiles at him with so much love Grace’s heart swells.
Grace takes Miles, and Mrs. Torelli pushes to her feet with a wince.
“You need to get that looked at,” Grace says. The ankle looks worse this morning, bulging, blue, and misshapen.
“Yeah, I’ll get right on that,” Mrs. Torelli answers with a sarcastic grin. “Mattie, give me a hand.”
Mattie steps up, and Mrs. Torelli wraps her arm around her daughter’s shoulders. The girl barely breaks five feet, and it’s obvious the arrangement is not going to work. They attempt a step, and Grace lunges, catching Mrs. Torelli by her bicep as she stumbles and yelps in pain. The lurch causes Miles to practically tumble from Grace’s arms, and he cries out, letting out a bloodcurdling wail.
Grace releases Mrs. Torelli and hugs him to her. “Sorry,” she says, holding him tight. “I’m so sorry.”
He continues to scream and rails against her, his little fists pushing against her shoulders as he arches his back to break loose. She reaches for his car seat on the ground, but he’s flailing so hard she’s afraid she might drop him.
“Mattie, help her,” Mrs. Torelli says.
“I’m fine,” Grace says, attempting to reposition him so he’s more secure as she continues to reach for his car seat.
“Mattie, now!” Mrs. Torelli practically screams.
Mattie lifts the car seat onto the plastic chair, and Grace pushes Miles into it as he continues to shriek. “Thanks,” she mumbles, her heart pounding.
She feels Mrs. Torelli watching her, and heat rises in her cheeks. Miles flails, his face purple with his hysterics as he kicks and screams, the crown of his head pressed painfully into the headrest.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Mrs. T
orelli says, hopping on one foot to where Grace is. “Hand him over.”
Grace hesitates.
“Now!” she snaps.
Grace’s hands fly over the harness, releasing and lifting Miles in a single panicked motion, and Mrs. Torelli takes him and flops him over her shoulder.
“Shhh,” she coos. “You’re okay.” She sways back and forth on her single foot, her left hand holding him as her right pats his back, and immediately he starts to calm, gulping air and grabbing onto Mrs. Torelli’s hair for comfort.
Grace bites her bottom lip and looks at the ground, her eyes filling. She sucks at this, sucks so bad it hurts. It’s one thing to suck at cooking or sewing or making small talk, but to suck at being a mom, that’s got to be the worst failing in the world. And so not fair to Miles. He deserves so much better.
Miles gnaws on his fist, his other hand still holding tight to Mrs. Torelli’s hair, and over his back, Mrs. Torelli says, “Grace, you don’t look so good; maybe you should sit down.”
Grace doesn’t feel so good, but she shakes her head. Mrs. Torelli is the one balancing on one foot. “I’ll take him now,” she says, holding out her arms as she swallows back the acid that’s risen in her throat and thinking she shouldn’t have eaten that second burger last night.
With a concerned frown, Mrs. Torelli hands Miles back, and mercifully, he does not cry. His body lies limp against her, sweaty and spent from his hysterics.
“Do you want us to give you a lift back to your car?” Mrs. Torelli offers.
“How? You can’t drive.”
“I thought I’d try driving left footed.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Grace says, certain she can’t be serious.
“How hard could it be?”
“Really hard. You’re going to kill yourself.”
Mrs. Torelli’s expression tightens, clearly not pleased with Grace’s opinion. “Well, I suppose we’ll see about that.”
Grace rolls her eyes, and Mrs. Torelli glowers at her. Then she lifts her chin, extends her hand, and says, “Well, I guess then this is goodbye.”
Grace shakes it, surprised by the well of emotions she feels. After all, she’s known the woman less than a day.
Mrs. Torelli hops away, using the wall for support, and Mattie shuffles behind her. The boy takes up the rear, loping after them with his face lifted toward the sky as if examining the clouds for rain.
And because Grace really isn’t feeling well, she lowers herself into the chair and closes her eyes, hoping the nausea will pass.
She keeps her eyes shut when the car door slams, but when she hears the SUV reversing, the herky-jerky sound causes them to snap open. She watches as the Mercedes backs up haltingly, the brake lights blinking like a warning signal; then suddenly they stop blinking and the car shoots backward, skipping over the curb to run over the sidewalk before slamming into a planter beside the stairwell.
Grace leaps up, slings the diaper bag over her shoulder, and, holding Miles with one hand and his car seat with the other, races down the stairs.
She throws open the driver’s door. “You okay?”
Mrs. Torelli blinks rapidly. “Yeah. Fine.” She cranes her head back to look at Mattie, then the boy; then she looks back at Grace. “I don’t know what happened.”
You’re an idiot. That’s what happened, Grace thinks, but she says instead, “You hit the gas instead of the brake.”
“I did?”
Grace nods. “Get out.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m driving.”
“Where?”
“To the hospital. You need to get that ankle looked at, and I’m not having your death and your kids’ deaths on my conscience.”
Mattie moves to the back, and Mrs. Torelli hops around the car and into the passenger seat. Grace buckles Miles into his car seat between the two kids, then climbs into the driver’s seat.
As she starts to drive, a strange vibration buzzes in her veins, the feeling a bit like vertigo, dizzying, like she is free-falling—plummeting and tumbling toward a destiny over which she has no control.
18
HADLEY
Grace agreed to take the kids to the cafeteria, so Hadley is alone in the emergency room as she waits for her discharge instructions. Her ankle is badly sprained but, thankfully, not broken. It’s wrapped with an ACE bandage, and the doctor has given her strict instructions to stay off it for several weeks and to keep it wrapped, iced, and elevated—no driving.
As she waits, she considers her options. She could ignore the doctor and try to drive anyway. She flexes her ankle to test the theory, and tears fill her eyes, letting her know driving is not an option.
They could take a bus or a train, but that would mean ditching the car and most of their belongings, and it would leave a trail for Frank to follow, which would be far too dangerous.
She looks at Skipper’s backpack on the floor, which has her share of the money, and wonders if it would be possible to pay someone to drive them. Maybe Grace? she thinks, then just as quickly dismisses the idea. Grace has close to a million dollars of her own; why would she want to drive them?
Which means she would need to hire a stranger, an idea that makes her hair stand on end—a single woman on crutches with two kids and a boatload of cash asking a stranger to drive them halfway across the country. Even she’s smart enough to realize that’s not a good plan.
She hates life-altering-decision moments like these. She’s never been good at them: always so terrified of making the wrong choice, inevitably she ends up hemming and hawing so long the decision gets made for her.
She needs a cigarette. She looks at the backpack again. Along with the money, it holds the contents of her purse—Skipper’s backpack the only bag they had, which would leave her hands free so she could grab onto things for balance.
She never smokes in front of the kids, so this might be her only chance.
She’s still thinking about sneaking outside when, through the slit between the curtains, she sees two men approach the nurses’ station. Both wear dark suits and have the rigid bearing of military men. One is white, the other black. They look like they’re here on official business, and Hadley leans in to listen, wondering who’s in trouble and why.
“Yes, Torelli, Hadley Torelli . . . ,” the white one says, nearly causing Hadley to fall off the table.
Heart pounding, she slides to the floor, slings the backpack onto her shoulders, and then grabs her new crutches and hobbles quickly out the back of the exam bay. Her brain spins as she races for the elevators, wondering how Frank figured it out so fast. Maybe he went to the office? He wasn’t supposed to. He was supposed to play golf. She called him before they left the hotel, and he said he was getting ready. He was excited. He had bought new clubs.
Irrationally, she pats herself down as she jabs the down arrow, checking for a bug or a tracer or some sort of homing device.
The elevator opens, and she races onto it and presses the button for the basement, then presses it again and again until finally the doors close.
When she reaches the cafeteria, she scans the large room and spots Grace and the kids in the corner, trays of empty plates in front of them. Grace holds a cup of coffee, while Mattie and Skipper play on their handheld PlayStations. The baby is in his car seat on the table, the striped bag on the ground at Grace’s feet.
Grace looks up, sees Hadley’s expression, and says, “What’s wrong?”
“Frank,” she stammers. “He found us.”
Before Hadley has finished the sentence, Grace is standing and moving so fast Hadley falls back a step. The coffee is no longer in Grace’s hand; the striped bag is over her shoulder; the car seat is being lifted; then she is racing for the door.
“Wait!” Hadley says, but Grace is already halfway across the room. “Mattie, grab Skipper and make him keep up.”
Hadley whirls and race-hops after her, instinct more than thought telling her it’s important not to lose her.
“Please.” Hadley hops faster, throwing the crutches out in front of her and propelling herself forward. She catches up as Grace pushes through a set of double doors with a sign above them that says EMPLOYEES ONly.
“Do you know those guys?” Hadley says, breathless.
Grace’s face snaps sideways. “Guys? You said it was Frank.”
“Yes. Frank’s guys, but . . . please, Grace, slow down.”
Grace doesn’t slow down; instead she continues to race forward, lugging the baby and the heavy bag as fast as she can. Hadley works hard to keep the arm-leg rhythm of the crutches in sync as she chases after her. The room they’ve entered is some sort of mechanical space, machines and computers whirring. A man in a workman’s uniform looks up from a clipboard and watches as they race by.
“Grace, they might not be Frank’s guys,” Hadley wheezes.
Grace stops so suddenly Hadley nearly crashes into her. “You just said they were Frank’s guys.”
“Yes, I thought they were. I mean, they have to be. Who else would be looking for me? But I don’t know. I think . . . it’s just . . .”
“Christ, Mrs. Torelli, spit it out.”
“One was black,” Hadley says.
Grace’s eyes squint, then tick side to side, and then she frowns.
“Exactly,” Hadley says. Grace knows as well as Hadley that Frank would never hire a black person.
“Blue?” Skipper says, racing up with Mattie beside him and looking up with worry.
“It’s okay, Champ,” she says.
“What did they look like?” Grace says.
“I don’t know. One white. One black. Both big and athletic and dressed in suits. They kind of looked like jocks dressed as businessmen, except for their shoes.”
“Their shoes?”
“Yeah, their shoes were . . . I don’t know . . . practical. The kind a restaurant manager might wear. You know, made for comfort, not style.”
Grace’s face blanches, the color draining clear out of it.
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