“Hadley, stop talking.”
Hadley stops, her mouth suspended midword.
“We need to go,” Grace repeats.
Hadley shakes her head, then drops it back to her arms. “You go back to dancing. I’m just going to take a little rest.”
“Judas frigging Priest. Hadley, get up.”
“It’s funny that you don’t swear,” Hadley says, looking up through drunk eyes. “It’s like you should totally swear because it fits your personality, but then you don’t. It’s funny.”
Grace rolls her eyes. “Hadley. Get. Up.”
“Where’s Mattie?” Hadley says, looking around Grace as if she might be hiding her.
“She’s waiting for us in the car.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Hadley attempts to stand but immediately falls back to the bench, jostling it and causing Skipper to tumble to the ground. He startles awake and thrashes to a sitting position, his eyes darting side to side to remember where he is.
Grace helps him up as he wipes the sleep from his eyes. “Skipper, do you think you’re strong enough to carry Miles to the truck? I need to help your mom.”
“I don’t need help. I’ve got this,” Hadley says, pushing herself up again and grabbing for her crutches, one of them falling from her grasp to dangle from the bench.
Grace hands the car seat to Skipper, and it takes all his strength, but with great determination, he lugs it toward the door.
“Watch out for cars,” Hadley slurs after him.
Grace sighs out through her nose, hoists the backpack onto her shoulders, slings the diaper bag across her chest, grabs the crutch that fell with her right hand, then wraps her left arm around Hadley’s waist to support her. They take a step, and the diaper bag falls forward and nearly knocks them to the ground.
“You need to carry the backpack,” Grace says.
Slipping from beneath Hadley’s arm, she threads the pack onto Hadley’s shoulders, adjusts the diaper bag so it’s slung behind her instead of in front of her, then picks up the extra crutch again and wraps her arm around Hadley’s waist. This time, she manages to drag Hadley toward the door, Hadley’s crutch-step motion missing every third stride and nearly buckling Grace each time.
They’re almost outside when Hadley stops so abruptly they nearly topple over. “You need to go,” she says.
“We are going,” Grace says, irritated.
Hadley shakes her head, and her whole body waves with it. “No. Not from here.” She uses her crutch to gesture to the room. “From us.”
“We are,” Grace hisses. “Tomorrow. Remember?”
Hadley shakes her head more adamantly. “No. Now. You need to go, now.” She starts to take the backpack off her shoulders. “I have Miles’s sweater.”
Grace stops her. “What are you talking about?”
“You need to go,” Hadley says again, still struggling to pull the strap from her shoulder while Grace pins it in place.
“Hadley, stop.”
Hadley does; then her shoulders fold forward and she starts to cry, her body hiccuping with her tears.
“What’s going on?” Grace says.
Hadley drops her chin to her chest, and her head shakes back and forth. “We’re going to get caught,” she mumbles. “I’m going to jail, so you need to go. My sister . . .” The words trail off, swallowed by her sobs as her head continues to sway.
And life begins to make sense. Hadley called her sister, and her sister no longer wants to take Skipper.
“Okay,” Grace says. “Let’s go.”
“But—”
“But nothing. The plan is still the same. Miles and I are going to split but not until tomorrow. For tonight, we’re still a team.”
“A team?” Hadley says, looking up through her wet lashes. “You and me?”
Grace rolls her eyes.
“Like Bonnie and Clyde?”
“Yeah, like Bonnie and Clyde. Now, let’s go.”
“Can I be Bonnie?”
“You can be Pinocchio for all I care—just start walking.”
She wraps her arm back around Hadley’s waist, and Hadley hops along as best she can, still sniffling but no longer distressed.
One catastrophe at a time, Grace thinks. It was one of her grandmother’s favorite sayings. She’ll deal with the next calamity after she gets through this one.
The cold air slaps them as they step onto the porch, a welcome relief as Grace sweats from the effort of lugging Hadley. She squints into the darkness to see Skipper beside the truck and Miles in his car seat on the ground beside him.
She wonders why he’s not inside with Mattie. But only for a second. Her eyes follow her ears to squint into the darkness at a trio of men who have Mattie cornered at the edge of the parking lot. Mattie giggles uncomfortably, and Grace knows that laugh: it’s the same laugh she’s given when trying to get out of a tight spot without panicking.
One of the men has his arm draped over Mattie’s shoulders, and another stands menacingly close.
Grace steps toward them, forgetting she is holding Hadley, and nearly sends them both tumbling down the steps.
“Stay here,” she says, unwrapping Hadley’s arm from her shoulder and handing her the second crutch.
As Grace walks across the asphalt, her disbelief and anger sizzle as she realizes the three idiots surrounding Mattie are the same bikers who cut in front of her at the gas station three days ago. The fourth biker is to the side, the one who went into the minimart and came out with the doughnuts. He leans against his motorcycle sipping a beer. When he sees her, he tips an imaginary hat. She ignores him, her eyes tight on Mattie.
Mattie sees her and shifts, and the man holding her turns. He tightens his grip, and Grace stops.
“Get your hands off my daughter” cuts through the air behind her, and Grace turns to see Hadley drunkenly crutch-hopping down the steps.
“Whoa, momma,” the biker says; then he pulls Mattie closer so he now has her in almost a choke hold, the crook of his elbow around her neck, which forces her to bend. Mattie looks up at Grace, her eyes rounded with fear. “Hey, I know you,” he says to Grace. “Where do I know you from?”
Grace is about to say something about leather pants and venereal diseases when, behind her, a gunshot ruptures the air.
Grace whirls to see Hadley holding Frank’s gun in the air like she is starting a race. “I said, get your hands off my daughter.”
“Hadley—” Grace starts, but that’s as far as she gets before the gun fires again.
Grace ducks, and the bikers dive. The one who was leaning against his bike scurries behind it. The two that had been beside the one holding Mattie crawl army-style on their bellies toward a car. And the one who had been holding Mattie now cowers behind a log.
Mattie stands frozen, staring at her mom. Grace grabs her hand and yanks her forward. “Go!” she says, propelling her toward the truck.
“Don’t fuck with me!” Hadley roars, waving the gun in the air.
Heart ricocheting in her chest, Grace walks toward her and takes the gun from her hand. “Get in the truck,” she says, retrieving Hadley’s crutches from the ground and handing them to her.
Hadley hobbles away, still mumbling about not fucking with her.
Grace follows, walking backward with the gun panning in front of her. She has no idea if the bikers are armed, but she’s not taking any chances. The bikers behind the car and log stay hidden. The one behind the motorcycle stands with his hands in the air.
She feels the people in the restaurant watching, the buzz of their excitement floating through the door, along with the flashes from camera phones that cause her heart to misfire.
Grace throws the diaper bag onto the seat, then climbs in after it. She stashes the gun in the side compartment, throws the truck in reverse, and peels backward from the spot.
She’s shifted into drive and is about to floor it for the exit when the biker who is standing steps toward them. He smiles at her throug
h the windshield and then, for good measure, gives a hip thrust and a wink.
She slams down on the gas and cranks the wheel right. The monster tires kick up gravel as the truck skids sideways, then forward, and the biker leaps out of the way, though there’s no need. Grace isn’t aiming for him. The ramming bars on the front grille hit his bike first, followed by the satisfying crunch of metal beneath the tires as they roll over the remaining three. The truck bounces back to the pavement, and a second later, they’re on the street and racing into the night.
42
HADLEY
Hadley is fairly certain Grace just bulldozed several motorcycles, and she thinks she just fired a gun. Her whole body quakes, adrenaline and alcohol swirling dangerously in her brain.
“Grace, slow down,” she says, the trees on either side of them whipping past and the truck wobbling dangerously.
“Why?” Grace spits, pure venom in the word. “You worried we might get pulled over for speeding? No worries—you’ll just talk your way out of it. Up your record to nine out of ten. Of course there might be the small, wee little issue the cops might have with the one-way shoot-out you just had in a parking lot. Might be a smidge more difficult to talk your way out of that one.”
“Please, Grace, I’m not feeling so good. You really need to slow down.” The world is spinning very quickly, Hadley’s stomach lurching with it.
“Slow down! Slow down! You do realize that, at this moment, half the cops in Utah are on their way to that restaurant?”
In the back seat, Mattie cries, her soft sobs cutting through Grace’s rant.
Hadley turns to comfort her, then quickly turns back. “Really, Grace, I think I’m going to be sick.”
The truck squeals, then lurches right, and they bounce violently over a curb, then a sidewalk, to land with a thud in the parking lot of a mall with a movie theater. They skid around an RV parked at one end, and the truck jerks to a stop.
Hadley wrenches open the door and stumbles out. Her ankle buckles, and she collapses to her knees, the contents of her stomach following as she hurls tri-tip, corn, beer, and whiskey onto the pavement. Beneath the undercarriage of the truck, she sees two pairs of feet: Mattie’s black Converse high-tops and Grace’s knockoff white Keds.
“You’re okay,” Grace’s voice soothes. “Get it all out.” And Hadley realizes Mattie is vomiting as well.
Mattie in trouble—her face white with fear as she stood across the parking lot with that man, his arm around her. Then the gun was in my hand.
And BANG!
She was surprised how loud it was and how easily it went off. The twitch of a finger. Then a second time, her arm recoiling with the shock of it.
She shakes her head, trying to straighten the thoughts, certain they can’t be right.
Tears drip down her face, combining with the mucus that runs from her nose. She hates guns. Has always hated them. And this is why. They make it too easy to screw up, and to screw up permanently. The man laughed, mocking her as if she were nothing; then he had his arm around Mattie’s neck, and something just snapped. BANG! And just like that, she made things worse . . . again.
She squeezes her eyes against it, and when she opens them, Grace’s shoes are in front of her nose. Mattie is beside her, her arms folded tight around herself. “I’m sorry, Mom,” she mumbles, her face streaked with tears.
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Hadley manages. “It’s my fault. All my fault.”
“What were you doing with them?” Grace asks Mattie.
“The guy asked if I could take a photo of them,” Mattie says. She toes the ground. “Then he wanted to take one with me, and I didn’t know what to say.” She wraps her arms tighter and shakes her head. “He wouldn’t let me go; then he started saying things . . .” Her voice trails off, and Hadley cries harder. She didn’t even know Mattie was in trouble. How could she not have known?
Thumping inside the truck causes them all to turn, and Hadley tries to stand to go to Skipper so she can calm him, but her equilibrium is seriously off kilter, and all she manages to do is stagger sideways, then fall back to her knees.
When she looks up, Mattie is gone. “It’s okay, Champ,” Mattie says from inside the truck. “Stop banging. It’s okay. Everyone’s okay.”
The thumping continues.
“Now, on the Saint Louis team,” Mattie says, altering her voice so it’s wonky, “we have Who’s on first?”
Thump. Thump. Thump.
“What’s on second,” she goes on, reciting the Abbott and Costello skit she and Skipper performed at his talent show this year. “I Don’t Know’s on third . . .”
“My sister’s not taking him,” Hadley says, looking up at Grace.
“I gathered that.”
“Come on, Champ,” Mattie urges. “I Don’t Know’s on third . . .”
Thump. Thump. Thump.
“It’s why I told you to go,” Hadley says. “It’s over. There’s no way we’re not going to get caught.”
“Look, Miles is smiling,” Mattie says.
The thumping stops.
“See, everyone’s okay,” Mattie goes on. “Miles has never heard us do this. Let’s do it for him. I Don’t Know’s on third . . .”
Skipper’s voice, thick with emotion, says, “That’s what I want to find out. I want you to tell me the names of the fellas on the Saint Louis team.”
Hadley sighs in relief, and Grace exhales as well.
They both listen as Mattie and Skipper continue the routine; then Grace turns back to Hadley and says, “So much for laying low and not drawing attention to ourselves.”
“Yeah, so much for that.” Hadley looks up through her brow. “Did you really run over those guys’ motorcycles?”
A small twitch of a smile as Grace says, “I believe I did.”
“I love you,” Hadley says as fresh tears spring to her eyes.
“Jiminy Crickets,” Grace says, clearly not sharing the sentiment; then she pivots and marches away.
“Where are you going?”
“To get us out of this mess.”
43
MARK
Mark is sitting by himself at a tiny table in the front window of Café Bean, an imitation Starbucks on the outskirts of Las Vegas. He stares at the newspaper. The half-page photo on the front page shows a blurry shot taken through the window of a barbeque joint in Salt Lake City called Pat’s. In it, Hadley is firing a gun. The photo actually caught the flash from the muzzle, a white splotch that looks almost like a blemish on the dark image. In the background is Grace, four men, and Mattie. Grace and one of the bikers are closest, the others behind them. It’s hard to make out the details, but one of the men has his arm around Mattie, presumably the reason Hadley was shooting.
The headline reads, Real-Life Thelma and Louise Blaze through Salt Lake City.
He sighs, sets the paper down, rubs his eyes.
Blinking them open, he takes a sip of his coffee, then reads the article for the fourth time, stunned each time with how almost accurate it is:
Like the fictional characters Thelma and Louise, two women have abandoned their suburban lives, hit the road, and found themselves on what appears to be an inadvertent crime spree that has them running from the law. But unlike the movie, these women are not on the run alone; with them are their three children, ages fourteen, eight, and four months.
Hadley Torelli, 38, and Grace Herrick, 26, left their Orange County, California, homes on Friday. It is not clear what prompted the women to leave, but on Saturday, the two eluded officials who attempted to detain them first at a hospital in Mission Viejo, where Torelli was being treated for a sprained ankle, then in Barstow. Why the FBI was pursuing the women is unclear, and the FBI has refused to comment.
Both women left behind husbands. Torelli has been married fifteen years to prominent Orange County businessman Frank Torelli, and Herrick has been married six years to US Army corporal James Herrick, who is currently serving in Afghanistan.
If this story sounds stranger than fiction, it is, and it gets stranger. Last night, the women, who had not been seen since leaving the agent, showed up at Pat’s Barbeque, a restaurant in Salt Lake City, where the evening ended in a shoot-out in the parking lot with a group of motorcyclists, followed by Herrick using the truck they were traveling in to run over the motorcyclists’ motorcycles.
Witnesses say the women appear to be traveling with a substantial amount of money, and everyone interviewed has described the women as friendly, polite, and generous. Nancy Carron, an 85-year-old woman from Mission Viejo who loaned her car to the women so they could drive to Barstow, said this about Torelli: “She was lovely. Poor thing. I could see she was in pain. And that little boy of hers was darling, eyes so light they reminded me of sea glass.”
Carron loaned her car to the women in exchange for ten thousand dollars. “They left Pujols, that’s what I call my car, right where they said they would,” Carron says. “They even left a lovely note. Of course then the FBI got involved. Took the note and the money. Thieves.”
Carron is not the only one Torelli and Herrick have been charitable with. The women also gave ten thousand dollars to Hunter Schwarz, a 23-year-old motel clerk who was working at the Wills Fargo Motel in Baker the night the women stayed there. The note penned on the top bill of the bundle of hundreds they left beneath his pillow read, “Get yourself a new smile and a new girl.” Hunter explained he has been saving to have two teeth that were knocked out in a fight replaced. He had no idea the women had left the money until the FBI showed up and went through his things.
Unfortunately, neither Carron nor Schwarz will get to keep their gifts. The money has been seized as “evidence,” and again the FBI has refused to comment.
Hadley & Grace Page 19