Hadley & Grace

by Redfearn, Suzanne

  Grace blinks, then blinks three more times as she processes the words, shocked to find the idea not only not ludicrous but maybe even possible.

  Hadley gives a thin, proud smile. “See, I told you I had a plan.”

  “Melissa could get in a lot of trouble,” Grace says. Hadley told her that she reminded her of her friend Melissa, though when she said it, Grace thought she was talking about their personalities.

  “If they trace it back to her,” Hadley says, “she’s going to say I stole the passport and her credit card information before I left. It’s why you need to fly out of Omaha, so it looks like we planned it from the start.”

  Grace stares at Hadley for a long minute, surprised at how well she’s thought things through. Flying out of Omaha is brilliant. After what happened last night, it’s the last place the FBI will think they’ll choose.

  “I got to thinking,” Hadley says, “after I used that woman’s license to check us in, that you could pass for Melissa. So I called her—”

  Grace bolts upright, startling Hadley and stopping her. “Melissa fosters kids, right?” she says, remembering this because she was a foster kid herself, though not one lucky enough to land with someone like Melissa. “And you said one was a boy a year younger than Skipper, and the other two are in high school.”

  “Yeah,” Hadley says as she shakes her head, thinking she knows where Grace is going. “I can’t pretend to be Melissa. I don’t look like her.”

  “Not you. Me,” Grace says, her heart pounding very fast. “I take them. I take Mattie and Skipper with me.” The words are out before Grace has fully considered them, and only after she says them does she realize the magnitude of what she’s suggesting.

  At first, Hadley looks confused, her brows furrowed as if working through a difficult equation; then they arch upward as the puzzle snaps into place. “You take them to London? Without me?”

  Her head shakes as Grace nods.

  More brow furrowing and head shaking, and Grace looks down at the mattress. Hadley is right. It was a stupid idea. Hadley’s known Grace less than a week; she’s not going to trust her to take her kids halfway around the world without her.

  But then Hadley says, “And I would join you later?” And Grace can’t make out if it’s a question or a statement.

  “Exactly,” Grace says. “You have Blaire’s license. You have money. And it would be a lot easier if you were alone. And even if they do catch you, you can use the story—”

  “No.” Hadley cuts her off. “I’m not lying about what happened.”

  Grace swallows.

  Hadley’s expression softens. “Grace, if this doesn’t work out, I’m telling the truth. You are not going to jail.”

  Prison, Grace thinks, but she doesn’t correct her.

  “If they catch me, I’m telling them exactly what happened, except perhaps with a few omissions and embellishments that make you look like the superhero you are.”

  Grace gives the thinnest smile, and for a long minute, they sit silent as the idea continues to take shape, growing larger and rounder until it fills the whole room and takes on a warm, dangerous glow that terrifyingly feels like hope.

  45

  HADLEY

  Mattie sits on the bed, a towel wrapped around her head. Her face is drawn and her eyes swollen and red from her emotions. On her lap is her book, and though she is staring at it, she doesn’t appear to be reading.

  Skipper sits on the other bed, looking at nothing, his eyes blank. All of this has been too much for him.

  “Baby,” Hadley says to Mattie.

  Mattie looks up, her sadness radiating across the room, unable to forgive herself for her role in last night’s events. A victim. Helpless. Hadley is too familiar with the feeling, and she prays her daughter isn’t destined to follow in her footsteps.

  “It’s going to be okay,” she says, the words as pathetic as they sound, and Mattie looks back down at her book.

  Hadley’s head throbs, like a grenade has blown up in her skull. Tentatively she touches her fingers to her scalp, surprised to find it still feels hard and not soft and mushy like a cantaloupe smashed open. She can’t believe she drank like that. Daggers of regret pierce her brain as she thinks of what might have happened had she and Grace not walked from the restaurant when they had. Then another stab of pain as she thinks about the gun and firing it.

  Mattie will be better off with Grace. Skipper too. Grace will be a good example for Mattie. She’s tough and brave and would never let anything happen to them. Her heart hurts almost as much as her head.

  She sits on the edge of the bed beside Skipper and puts her hand on his knee. “Champ, you okay?”

  He turns slowly, his eyes so clear they are flat of depth. “I’m not going to live with my mom?” he says. Somehow he must have figured this out during the disjointed events and outbursts of last night.

  Hadley shakes her head, concerned how he will take this latest disappointment from his mom. His whole life, Hadley has tried her best to protect him from Vanessa’s slights and unreliability, not promising him things unless she was certain of them and softening the blows by making excuses and telling lies. The way she explained him needing to go back to live with her was in baseball terms.

  “You were the best pickup of my life,” she said the day after Vanessa called with the news that she wanted Skipper back. “A first-round draft pick rookie.”

  “That was when I was a baby?” he asked.

  “Yep, your rookie year, straight out of training camp. Your mom’s team lost their coach, so her team was suspended until they could find a new one, and I swooped in and signed you.”

  He smiled.

  “But,” she said, “there was this thing called a ‘contingency clause’ in your contract, and it said that, if your mom’s team got a new coach and the team was reinstated, she had the option to sign you back.”

  “Contingency clause,” he repeated. Skipper likes certain words. He doesn’t always understand them, but his remarkable mind holds on to them.

  “And that’s what happened,” Hadley went on. “Her team is back in business, and she needs her star player.”

  She knew Skipper didn’t completely understand, but he accepted it. He knows players get traded all the time and that, even though sometimes they don’t like it, it’s not always up to them, and they don’t have a say in the matter.

  But now he says, “That’s good. She’s my mom, but she’s not my family.” He doesn’t say it meanly but rather matter-of-factly, stating it in the straightforward way he has when he’s made his mind up about something.

  He returns to looking at the wall, and Hadley pats his leg, then, with a heavy sigh, walks toward the door.

  As she waits for the elevator to take her to the parking garage, she wonders how she got to this place in her life. She thinks about the gun in her hand and the feeling that came over her as she fired it, such raw rage it was as if she was possessed by it. She thinks of the man’s face when it went off: no longer cocky but rather shocked and then scared, his mouth open in panic as he dived to the ground to cower with his hands over his head.

  The elevator dings, and the image shifts, and she imagines her aim true, his eyes wide as he looks down to see the hole in his chest. When he looks up, he is Frank, and she fires again, then again and again—bang. Bang, bang, bang, the shots ripping across his chest and slicing his body in two.

  She blinks her eyes, her heart pounding, then steps onto the elevator and hits the button for the garage.

  46

  GRACE

  Miles is eating, sort of. He sucks on his bottle and chews on the nipple at the same time, a halfhearted effort that’s making the process painfully slow. Grace tries not to be impatient, but it is impossible. Yes, he’s cute, but these sorts of things do not enamor her the way they do other moms, and it’s all she can do not to scream at him to finish already so they can get on with it.

  She closes her eyes and focuses on her breathing to keep
the sickness that still roils in her gut at bay. One foot in front of the other, her grandmother’s voice coaxes. Just keep moving forward, and eventually you get where you’re going.

  The idea works in theory but has never actually worked in Grace’s life. One foot in front of the other has landed her in a heap of trouble more than once. She squeezes her eyes tighter, all her efforts concentrated on not throwing up.

  “What’s taking so long?” Hadley says from the doorway, causing Grace’s eyes to snap open. Hadley looks at Miles and frowns. “He’s playing you. He’s done.”

  Grace looks down at her son, then back at Hadley, then back at her son and feels herself bristle as he gums a smile at her, milk drool spilling from his mouth. The manipulative little imp: a damn charmer, just like his dad. He knows exactly when she’s getting irritated and exactly how to disarm her. She pulls the bottle away, and he gives half a protest that’s quickly forgotten when Grace drapes him over her shoulder and gives him a mock spanking on his padded behind.

  “Up and at ’em,” Hadley says. “Daylight’s a-burnin’. Burp him, then meet me in the bathroom.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a surprise.”

  Grace shakes her head as she looks distrustingly at Hadley. Not only does Grace hate surprises, but she’s had enough surprises the past four days to last a lifetime.

  “Chicken,” Hadley chides.

  Grace nods, not ashamed in the least to admit she is scared to death of whatever Hadley has planned. As if in agreement, Miles lets out a large belch, and Hadley marches up, swoops him from Grace’s arms, and carries him away, as if taking him hostage.

  Grace considers not following but knows she’s only putting off the inevitable. So, with a heavy sigh, she pushes from the bed and staggers after them. She passes Skipper, who’s sitting on one of the two beds staring at the wall in front of him. She follows his gaze to see what he is looking at, sees nothing, and continues on.

  Mattie is already in the bathroom. She sits on the edge of the tub wrapped in a bathrobe, her shoulders folded forward and her eyes on the ground. Her white-blonde hair has been dyed russet brown, the deep, warm color of chestnuts, and cut to a bob that stops above her chin. She is not wearing makeup, and the half dozen earrings she normally wears, along with her trademark serpent, are gone. She looks small and young and broken, and Grace’s heart twists at the sight of her.

  “Mattie, you hold Miles,” Hadley says, holding him out to her.

  Mattie takes him, and Miles immediately starts to grab for her nose, a favorite game of his. She turns him around so he can no longer do it, and he wriggles against her to get down, so she places him on the bath rug at her feet.

  “Leather Black or Midnight Delight,” Hadley says, holding up two boxes of hair dye.

  Grace shakes her head violently, her skull moving back and forth around her eyes, which are fixed on the boxes. Grace has no illusions about her looks. She is no great beauty. Her only defining feature is her fiery curls, combined with her pale skin and hazel eyes, the startling combination taking her away from ordinary. A stranger once called her coloring “quixotic.” She looked the word up when she got home: romantic, visionary. He was wrong, but she liked the idea of it so much that she often says the word out loud when she looks at herself in the mirror.

  “Fine. I’ll go first,” Hadley says, and with no more prelude than that, she sets the boxes of hair dye on the counter, picks up the scissors beside them, and lops off a chunk of her hair.

  Grace and Mattie wince together. It’s like watching the slaughter of a minx. Hadley’s hair is remarkable, a sleek plate of black that belongs in Vidal Sassoon commercials. She chops at it again, the tresses falling to the floor. Snip, snip, snip: she continues to butcher large chunks until all that remains is an uneven helmet of black. She holds the scissors out to Mattie. “You need to do the rest.”

  Mattie looks at the scissors, sighs, and reluctantly pushes to her feet. Expertly, she moves around Hadley as if she is a professional hairstylist, and again Grace is surprised by the multitude of talents Mattie possesses that she seems to keep hidden. When she’s done, Hadley’s hair is as short as Ellen DeGeneres’s and just as chic.

  Grace stares in amazement. It almost seems impossible, but the haircut actually makes Hadley more beautiful, her neck elongated, her cheekbones lifted. She looks like a Greek goddess—empowered, bold, and fearless—like she should be chiseled of marble and holding up a temple.

  “Okay?” Hadley says, her eyebrow lifting in challenge.

  Grace shakes her head again and backs up.

  “Seriously, Grace, are you going to make me hold you down? You look like Melissa, except your hair.”

  Grace is saved by the unmistakable sound of pooping coming from the floor, Miles’s face scrunched up as he does the deed, the smell filling the tight confines of the bathroom.

  Grace bends down to pick him up, but Hadley gets there first. “I’ve got this, and when I come back, I want you in a robe and ready to have your hair dyed.”

  Grace sits heavily on the toilet and lifts the box of Midnight Delight, cringing as she studies the before and after pictures. She shakes her head, sets it down, reaches over, and locks the bathroom door.

  Mattie glances over from where she sits again on the edge of the tub, and her mouth almost twitches with a smile but doesn’t quite make it.

  Grace shifts to sit beside her, their shoulders touching. Letting out a slow sigh, she says, “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Mattie looks at the ground.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Grace says.

  Mattie says nothing.

  “But I suppose that’s the part that sucks the most,” Grace goes on. “At least if it was your fault, then you’d have had some say in it.”

  Mattie looks sidelong at her, the color of her eyes so like Frank’s that Grace needs to make a concerted effort not to react.

  “It seems like it happens all the time,” Mattie mumbles, looking back at her knees. “It’s like the crappy people of the world have all the power because . . . well, because they’re crappy.”

  Grace nods. It’s a hard truth she wishes Mattie would never need to learn.

  The door rattles. Grace ignores it.

  Mattie wraps her arms around herself as she bends over her thighs so her chest is on her knees.

  Hadley knocks. “Really? Are you kidding me? How old are you, twelve?”

  “I wish I was better,” Mattie says so softly Grace almost doesn’t hear.

  Grace rubs her back.

  “Like you,” Mattie says.

  Grace shakes her head. She wants Mattie to be nothing like her.

  “Last night, you weren’t even scared,” Mattie goes on.

  Grace rears back. “Are you kidding? I was terrified.”

  “You were?” Mattie says, her eyes flicking sideways.

  “Of course,” Grace says. “The only difference between you and me is I’m older, so I know sometimes there’s no choice. Doesn’t mean I wasn’t scared. And when I was your age, I’d have done exactly what you did: tried to sweet-talk my way out of it.”

  Mattie looks away, and Grace feels her shame. She didn’t tell Grace that’s what she did, but Grace knows it nonetheless. It’s exactly what she would have done at that age if some guy was holding her by the neck.

  “You know you have to come out at some point,” Hadley says through the door. “I have your son.”

  They ignore her.

  “Grace?” Mattie says.

  “Hmmm?”

  She hesitates, and Grace waits her out, watching as Mattie sucks in her bottom lip, then eventually blows it out. She pushes her feet out in front of her and swishes them back and forth like windshield wipers. The toenails are painted midnight blue, most of the polish chipped off. Finally, she pulls her feet back in, wraps her hands around her knees, and says, “You ever feel like there’s another you?”

  Grace lifts an eyebrow.

  “You know, l
ike hiding inside you?”

  “You mean like behind my kidney or gallbladder?”

  Mattie doesn’t smile. Her eyes study her knees as her head shakes back and forth. “No. Like there’s this really great person buried deep inside, and she really wants to get out, but she can’t because you’re already this other person, and I don’t know, it’s like she’s in the way or something, blocking the better you from getting out?”

  Grace doesn’t answer, the question so close to her own thoughts it startles her, though she’s always posed the question slightly differently, often thinking of herself as “the girl who might have done something wonderful,” wondering who she might have been had her grandmother not died and had she not made the mistakes she made, if things might have turned out differently and if she could have turned out to be more than she is.

  “Not someone else,” Mattie goes on, struggling to put her thoughts into words, “but a better version of yourself, one who’s stronger, and who, you know, does things right?”

  “My grandmother used to say, ‘We all have a backbone. Up to you to learn how to straighten it.’”

  Mattie gives her a thin smile. “I think I would have liked your grandmother.”

  “She definitely would have liked you,” Grace says, and she gives Mattie’s shoulder a nudge; then she leans forward, her elbows on her knees, and she says, “I’m going to tell you something, something I haven’t told anyone.”

  Mattie glances over, and Grace holds her gaze for a beat before turning back to look at her hands. With a deep breath, she says, “My name isn’t really Grace.”

  Mattie turns her whole head to look at her.

  “My name is Savannah,” Grace goes on. “Savannah Grace Swift.” She feels a tug at her heart, the name like a ghost, her mother’s spirit so close it takes her breath. Growing up, Grace’s name was one of her favorite things, one of the few things her mother had left her. Savannah Swift. It was just so darn beautiful.