Hadley & Grace

by Redfearn, Suzanne

  This year would have been better than last. The economy is looking up, so her wealthy neighbors would have been slightly less stressed. The wine would be more expensive, the upcoming elections the topic of choice. She sighs thinking about it, glad not to be a part of it, to not be nodding and smiling and making small talk while sucking in her stomach and counting the minutes until they can leave.

  She glances at her watch. Frank might be there now. She hopes he is. She hasn’t called him since after their dinner at Denny’s in Baker two days ago, which means that, even if he is not aware of the trouble she’s in or that she stole the money, he knows she is not following the plan. Her brain goes white thinking about it, uncertain what scares her more—being caught by the FBI or being tracked down by Frank.

  She pushes the thought away and instead focuses on the moment. She is lying on the edge of a river in Nevada watching Miles entertain himself while Mattie and Skipper sit with their feet in the river playing on their PlayStations as they pop blueberries in their mouths.

  Mattie sticks out her purple tongue, and Skipper cracks up laughing. It makes Hadley smile all the way to her spine. It’s been a long time since she’s seen such joy between them.

  Grace lies on a large boulder, napping. She was feeling a bit under the weather this morning but seems to be doing better now. Hadley finds herself worrying over Grace a lot today. She looks very tired and, despite her stoicism, seems a bit lost.

  The plan is for Grace to drive them to Salt Lake City; then, in the morning, Hadley will buy a car and give driving a go. Her ankle is slightly better, and by tomorrow, she should be able to bear enough weight on it to press a gas pedal.

  The thought of Grace and Miles leaving makes Hadley horribly sad. In the past three days, she has grown incredibly attached. She looks at Miles on the blanket, his legs kicking in the air and his little fists waving in front of him. She is going to miss him . . . miss both of them.

  Skipper lets out a whoop of victory, and Hadley looks up and gives Mattie a smile, knowing she let him win, a generosity and kindness Mattie would not have shown a week ago—the moping, angry girl of before replaced with a girl remarkably like her daughter from a year ago.

  This morning, at breakfast, she even initiated a conversation, asking Hadley about cars and about the first one she ever owned. They all had a good laugh when Hadley told her it was her dad’s old Bentley, a beast of ostentation the size of a semi with a red leather interior and chrome rims. She totaled it a month after he gave it to her, and she swears that was his plan all along.

  After Mattie asked about the car, she brought up the preposterous idea of Grace teaching her to drive so Mattie can help out once they’re left on their own. Hadley smiles thinking about it, the idea ludicrous. Mattie is only fourteen.

  She flexes her ankle again and conceals the wince, concern shadowing her tranquil mood. The drive from Salt Lake City to Denver is nearly eight hours. That’s a lot of driving on an ankle that still refuses to bend.

  Mattie walks up and plops on the blanket beside Miles, her cheeks flush from the cool air and her hair windblown. Hadley smiles at her. Even her makeup is lighter today, the faint freckles on her nose showing through the brush of foundation.

  She lies on her stomach so her face is even with Miles’s, who is flailing like an upside-down turtle, trying to unlock the mystery of getting back to his tummy. Mattie gives him a nudge to help him out, and he lets out a squeal of delight, pushes up on his arms proud as a peacock, then promptly rolls himself back to his back and starts flailing again.

  Mattie giggles, a light sound like wind chimes, and suddenly her baby is a little girl again—wide eyed and holding her Pooh Bear as she climbs into Hadley’s lap to snuggle against her. Time is a thief, she thinks. You believe you have an infinite amount of it, but then you blink and everything that was has been replaced with something else entirely.

  “How you doing, baby?” she says.

  “Good,” Mattie answers absently, her focus still on Miles. A moment later, she says, “Mom, what happens if it doesn’t work out?” She is trying hard to sound unconcerned, like whatever the answer, it’s okay and no big deal, but her voice wavers.

  Hadley forces her own uncertainty away as she sweeps a tendril from Mattie’s face and sluices it behind her ear. “Then I’ll need you to be stronger than ever.”

  Mattie offers a brave smile, and Hadley’s heart swells with pride, amazed at her daughter’s strength and courage, glad she got some of Frank’s toughness.

  Mattie looks back at Miles and helps him roll over again, with the same overjoyed result; then she mutters, “I hope I do better.”

  “Better?”

  “You know, than before.”

  Hadley says nothing. She thinks Mattie was doing okay. Perhaps she wasn’t as popular as she would have liked, but she got good grades, stayed out of trouble, got glowing remarks from her teachers. Or maybe she’s thinking more about her dad and wishing, like Hadley, she’d been stronger or maybe able to change things.

  Hadley looks away, hoping she does better as well, that somehow they make it through this so they can start again and she can be the mother she’s always intended to be. Her eyes slide to Grace, a mite of a woman, yet no one would mess with her or Miles—no one, not even Frank. He tried, and look what happened. She showed up with her ragged striped bag to take what was hers.

  Skipper lopes up and sits beside Mattie, so Hadley changes the subject. “What happened yesterday when you were with Grace?”

  “Home run,” Skipper says before Mattie can answer. “Over the fence.”

  “Wow,” Hadley says, looking at Mattie for translation, but she doesn’t give one.

  “Cleared the bleachers,” Skipper says to emphasize the point, and Mattie grins.

  “You’re not going to tell me what that means?” Hadley says.

  “What what means?” Grace says, walking up and lifting Miles into her arms.

  “Champ says you hit a home run.”

  “Grand slam,” Skipper says, his face lit up, and Mattie and Grace exchange a conspiratorial look.

  “Will someone please tell me what that means?”

  When no one answers, she says, “Really?”

  They all just continue grinning, and Hadley pushes to her feet with a huff. “Well, from here on out, no more home runs. From now on, we lie low and don’t draw attention to ourselves.”

  She hops off angrily, hating and loving that she was left out of whatever the four of them shared that was obviously so grand.

  They drive through miles and miles of high desert, passing through several small towns. A couple of times they stop for potty breaks and to stretch their legs, but mostly they just drive, all of them exhausted and grouchy from the long day of travel, their third in a row.

  Near eight, Grace pulls into a barbeque restaurant on the outskirts of Salt Lake City that she says she visited with her husband after they got married. Loud music thrums from the open doors, and people spill out onto the wraparound porch. The smell of meat and barbeque sauce drifts past Hadley’s nose, and her stomach rumbles.

  Her diet has been completely blown to smithereens the past three days, but surprisingly, it is not as distressing as she would have thought. More a blasé concern. The feeling similar to how she feels about flossing. Each day she thinks about it, knowing that if she doesn’t floss, eventually it will catch up with her and she will wind up with gum disease, but when it comes right down to it, the future seems very far off and she doesn’t care quite enough to actually get it done.

  They settle at a picnic table lined with a red-checkered plastic tablecloth, and Hadley stays with Miles as Grace and the kids go off to get the food. Miles’s eyes are wide with wonder as he takes in the music and the lights and the buzz of activity around them, which Hadley agrees really is something.

  Pat’s Barbeque is a genuine cowboy bar. Across the room, a country band croons from a stage, and in front of it, men, women, and kids decked out in cowbo
y boots, Wranglers, and large silver belt buckles dance.

  Grace plops a heaping plate of tri-tip, corn on the cob, coleslaw, and cornbread in front of her, along with a mug of beer, and Hadley uses her napkin to wipe the butter from the corn and the barbeque sauce from the meat before nibbling at both. Meanwhile, Grace slathers her ribs with extra sauce and drenches her potatoes in gravy, then digs in.

  Skipper saws at his steak. Miles babbles and fists a chunk of cornbread into his mouth, some of it making it, most of it landing elsewhere. Mattie gnaws on her ribs, stopping every few bites to ask Grace something about engines or cars, a subject Grace seems to know a lot about and for which Mattie has a sudden fascination.

  It’s strange, the normalcy of it. The five of them having dinner together, an odd facsimile of family that feels bizarrely right, and Hadley can’t recall the last time she’s enjoyed a meal so much.

  “Dance?”

  All of them look up to see a lanky cowboy extending his hand to Grace. Grace blushes, then pushes from the table, and all of them watch in amazement as he leads her to the dance floor and as she expertly joins in a line dance of kicking, stomping, clapping, and twirling that looks like it takes years to master.

  The outfit Grace bought suits her—rolled-up faded blue jeans, a white V-neck T-shirt, and knockoff white Keds. She looks spunky and young and full of life, exactly how a twenty-six-year-old should look, and as Hadley watches her, her guilt rises until it strangles her for the danger she’s put her in.

  “Mom, you okay?”

  “Huh? Yeah, fine. Mattie, keep an eye on Miles and Skipper. I’ll be right back.”

  She hops outside on her crutches, leans against the porch railing, and pulls out the burner phone. Tomorrow, Grace and Miles are leaving, which means it’s time for her to start thinking about the steps she needs to take without her.

  In front of her, a group of bikers goofs off, drinking beers and messing around. She turns away from them and lifts the phone to her ear.

  “Ness,” she says when her sister answers.

  “Christ, Had, where have you been? I’ve been, like, trying to call you for days. Your cell is like out of service or something. Did you know the FBI are looking for you?”

  Hadley’s pulse kicks up a notch with the realization that the FBI has called her sister. It makes sense. It’s just that, until Vanessa said it, Hadley hadn’t considered the possibility, and somehow, her sister knowing makes it all seem so much worse.

  “Had, you there?”

  “Yeah, I’m here.”

  “What the hell’s going on? They were calling like every five minutes; then they showed up at my hotel—”

  “They showed up? In Belize?”

  “Well, not them, but some Belizean cops. Two guys came by to tell me the FBI was calling and that I needed to call them back. As if I didn’t know they were calling. Tom’s totally freaked out.”

  “It’s okay—”

  “The hell it is!” she practically screams.

  Hadley pulls the phone from her ear. “Ness, calm down.”

  “Calm down! I can’t calm down. Tom is pissed. He was so stressed he ended our honeymoon early.”

  Hadley has only met Tom once. She joined him for a quick lunch when he had a layover in LA during a business trip. She was not impressed. He is a man who loves to talk, mostly about himself, and he’s not all that exciting a subject, his interests limited to mountain biking and his investments.

  “Tom’s a straight arrow,” Vanessa says, “and he didn’t sign up for this.”

  “Ness,” Hadley says, working hard to keep her voice calm, “I understand you’re upset, but things are fine. Skipper is fine.”

  Silence.

  Hadley feels a prickle down her spine. She looks at Skipper through the window. He sits where she left him, his baseball hat askew and his shoulders slumped as he stares at the people dancing, eating, and talking around him.

  After a long minute, when her sister still hasn’t responded, Hadley says, “I’m calling because we need to change the plan. I can’t bring Skipper to Tom’s anymore, so I need you to meet us.”

  Nothing.

  “Ness? Did you hear me?”

  “It’s been horrible,” Vanessa mumbles, and it sounds like she might be crying. “Tom’s so upset he won’t even talk to me.”

  It’s Hadley’s turn to be silent, her skin sizzling as she waits for what’s coming, knowing it but unwilling to accept it until her sister says it out loud.

  “I can’t,” Vanessa stammers. “I’m sorry, Had . . . but Tom . . . he doesn’t want this . . . I just can’t.”

  A beat later, the line goes dead, and Hadley pulls the phone from her ear and stares at it. She considers hurling it across the parking lot, but the idiotic bikers are still across from her, one of them trying to balance a beer on his head, so she decides against it.

  She looks again at Skipper as a woman walking past notices him and smiles. He smiles back, and she grins wider, unable to help herself. Skipper often gets that reaction, a remarkable boy who can’t help but be noticed.

  Tears well in Hadley’s eyes, and her heart aches. Without him, she and Mattie might have a chance. With him, they have none.

  41

  GRACE

  The cowboy Grace is dancing with is named Burt. Tall as Jimmy but with no muscle on his bones, he swirls and twirls and do-si-dos like a cowboy Fred Astaire, and it’s all Grace can do to keep up. The old routines return with only a few missteps, and by the third song, she’s found her groove and is having a great time.

  Hadley disappeared for a few minutes, but now she’s back. She sits at the table holding Miles on her lap and guzzling her beer. Mattie is beside her looking bored. Grace grabs Burt’s hand and pulls him with her. “Come on,” she says to Mattie when they reach the table.

  Mattie tilts her head and looks at her like she’s lost her mind, an expression just short of an eye roll that says, Are you kidding? There’s no way I’m doing that. I hate country music, and I am far too cool and far too afraid of being uncool to even attempt it.

  Grace doesn’t budge. Her hand remains outstretched as she gives a retaliating look that says, Are you freaking kidding me? You’d rather sit here, bored out of your mind, beside your mom?

  And Grace’s look wins, because Mattie’s mouth twitches with a smile; then with a grumble, she allows Grace to pull her up and onto the dance floor. Burt shows Mattie the basics, and after a few songs, she has the cha-cha and the wobble down and is smiling ear to ear.

  Mattie is curvy like her mom, and the hip-swaying moves suit her; Grace notices several guys’ eyes sliding her way. And while she wants to slap their faces for looking at a fourteen-year-old the way they’re looking at her, she also feels proud.

  She glances at Hadley to see if she’s noticing, but Hadley is not looking at the dance floor, her focus on her drink in front of her, whiskey from the looks of it, the pitcher of beer gone. Miles is in his car seat, and Skipper is asleep on the bench. A flicker of concern crosses Grace’s mind, but it is distracted by a reed-thin boy who has walked up and is asking Mattie if she’d like to join him for a Coke.

  Mattie glances at Grace for permission, which throws Grace off, as she isn’t used to having any sort of authority over anyone. Then, realizing there is an awkward pause, she gets it together and offers a nod, the swelling in her chest ballooning as she watches them walk off toward the bar. Halfway there, Mattie throws a smile back over her shoulder, and Grace gives her a double thumbs-up, the swelling growing to near bursting.

  “Your sister?” Burt says.

  “No, we’re not related,” she says, though it doesn’t feel that way. At this moment, it feels very much like Mattie is blood.

  “Darts?” Burt offers.

  Grace glances back one more time at Hadley, Skipper, and Miles. They seem fine, so she turns to follow Burt to the game room.

  They’ve taken two steps when Mattie runs up to them. “We need to go,” she says, her eyes w
ide. She shoots a look back at the boy who asked her to join him for a Coke. He sits at a table beside the bar, smiling at his phone.

  “He knows who we are,” Mattie says. “He’s some sort of crime buff, and he saw us on the FBI crime site this morning. He said he wanted to take a selfie; then, as soon as he did, he was like, ‘My friends are going to love this. Me and an outlaw.’ Then he said the thing about seeing us on the site.”

  “Frick,” Grace says.

  “What’s going on?” Burt asks.

  “Mattie, go to the car.” She hands Mattie the keys.

  “Something wrong?” Burt says.

  “No.” Grace paints on a sweet smile. “Everything’s fine. Adolescent drama. Thanks for the dance.” She walks from him to the kid, who is still smirking at his phone.

  She swipes it from his hands.

  “Hey,” he says.

  “You think it’s cool to hang with outlaws?” she says, her gaze piercing his. “Here’s a tip: don’t mess with a woman who has a gun and knows how to use it.”

  His face blanches.

  She looks down at the screen. Snapchat. She deletes the post of him and Mattie with the hashtags #scoringwithanoutlaw, #sizzlinghot, #patsbarbeque. Then she opens his photo library and deletes the photo.

  “Did you post it anywhere else?”

  His face still white, he shakes his head.

  “If I find out you’re lying, I will come back here, hunt you down, and castrate you like a newborn bull.” She uses her most badass look, the one that is icy calm and that Jimmy says would scare the bejeezus out of anyone.

  The kid nods numbly, and satisfied he’s sufficiently terrified, she gives him back his phone, pulls a twenty from her pocket, and sets it on the bar. “For the sodas,” she says, then walks away. It’s always best to leave people liking you.

  She marches to Hadley. “We need to go.”

  Hadley’s head is collapsed on her arms, three empty glasses in front of her. She looks up through red-rimmed eyes. “Grace,” she slurs. “Hi, Grace. Are you having fun? You’re a good dancer. You should dance more often—”