Hadley & Grace

by Redfearn, Suzanne

  Skipper looks back and gives a crooked smile and a thumbs-up, and Jimmy gives a thumbs-up back.

  Dang conspiracy, the two of them ganging up against her. Three of them, if you count Miles, who is as smitten with his dad as Skipper and Hadley are.

  Jimmy smiles an infuriating I-had-nothing-to-do-with-it smirk, and she opens her mouth to tell him exactly what’s what, and that, despite him charming the pants off everyone around them, it doesn’t change things. But before she can get the words out, he has closed the distance between them and his lips are coming down on hers.

  It is almost midnight when they return to the motel. They’ve been driving around McCook for hours, memorizing and rememorizing every street and every possible route. The town is laid out in a typical midwestern grid of letters and numbers. The streets travel in both directions, and alleys divide the lettered streets.

  Grace rubs her tired eyes as Jimmy opens the door to their room. They stagger in, and she falls into his arms, hooking her thumbs in the back pockets of his fatigues and leaning her head against his chest. He leans down and kisses her hair, his strong arms wrapping around her. Under her ear, his heart keeps time, and she listens to its comforting thump.

  The plan has changed, and the terror of what they are doing eliminates any concern she had about his gambling and has erased her anger over the past. All they have for certain is tonight, and she is not going to waste it. Jimmy is hers, flawed but perfect, and if they make it through this, she will never forget that again.

  He leads her to the bed and lies down beside her, and when he opens his mouth, she puts her fingers to his lips to stop him.

  All night, they cling to each other, their lovemaking frantic and desperate, then gentle and slow. She shushes him each time he apologizes, and he kisses away her tears when she breaks down and weeps. For hours, he lies with his head on her stomach, and they talk about the new life inside her and what they should name him or her. Jimmy doesn’t argue with Mark for a boy, but he has a real problem with Virginia if it’s a girl.

  “Do you realize how much grief she’s going to get in middle school?”

  She lifts her eyebrow as if to say, Really?

  “Virginia the virgin. Virgin Virginia. We’re setting her up to be a slut, simply to disprove her name.”

  Grace laughs. “Seriously, you think she’s going to get teased because the word virgin is in her name?”

  “I guarantee it.”

  “Fine. We’ll call her Ginny.”

  “Great, she’ll end up a drunk.”

  “I won’t let her become a drunk,” she answers, a hint of sadness in her voice.

  62

  HADLEY

  It is the longest night of Hadley’s life. The minutes tick by like hours when she knows Mattie is so near and that she can’t go to her. Grace’s plan is dangerous and, if they pull it off, brilliant. But so many things can go wrong it terrifies her to think about it.

  She sits on the edge of the bed, stroking the gentle slope of Skipper’s jaw. Miles sleeps beside him, swaddled tight, his arms over his head like a cactus. Her boys. Strange how quickly she has come to think of Miles and Grace as family, but unquestionably that is what they are—a part of her, people she would stake her life on and risk her life for.

  An ache balloons in her chest as she thinks how she has endangered them and continues to do so, her debt so large she knows in a lifetime it will never be repaid. With a deep sigh, she stands and walks to the window. Parting the curtains, she stares across the parking lot at the bright marquee of the motel across the street, her vision blurring as she thinks about tomorrow and what they need to do.

  When the morning finally brightens enough to turn the room gray, she gets the boys up and takes them to the dining room beside the lobby for breakfast. Skipper eats cinnamon oatmeal as Hadley spoons small bites into Miles’s mouth. Miles gurgles and spits with delight, and the sight is almost enough to unclench the panic strangling her heart.

  Grace and Jimmy arrive a few minutes later, Grace tense, Jimmy relaxed. Grace leans down and kisses Miles on his head, her lips lingering. Jimmy rests his hand on her back. The hurt between them is gone, dissolved into a new perspective that no longer allows room for old wounds, and watching them is like staring into the sun, warm and blinding and painful.

  For the millionth time, Hadley searches her brain for an alternative, some other way to get through this.

  “It’s time,” Grace says, her voice raspy from a night of emotion.

  Jimmy lifts Miles from his car seat and flies him around like an airplane before depositing him in the baby pack Hadley has strapped to her chest. Hadley also holds Skipper’s hand. Jimmy carries the empty car seat. Grace carries nothing.

  Jimmy kisses Miles gently on his head, kisses Grace passionately on the lips, then strides away, his head held high, his gait long and sure—a bona fide hero—not the illusion of a uniform but the character of the man who wears it.

  Grace watches him go, her chin thrust out. “Let’s go,” she rasps, going for bold confidence but failing.

  Hadley follows her through the lobby, hobbling as quickly as her injured ankle will allow, and Skipper hustles beside her, aware of how important it is for him to keep up.

  They walk outside. The sky is a soup of dark clouds that weighs the air and makes the morning dim.

  They reach the street, wait for the traffic to clear, then jaywalk to the motel on the other side.

  “Hurry, Champ,” Hadley encourages. “Faster.”

  “Private,” he corrects her as he picks up his pace, all of them almost running now.

  Hadley’s eyes dart around the parking lot for the Economy Suites. Tony’s car is parked in the third spot, exactly where Mattie said it would be. Four spots away is a green Fiat with no one in it. Other than that, the lot is empty. Maybe Grace was wrong? she thinks as she continues to race for Tony’s car. Maybe they’re not here?

  Daggers of pain shoot through her ankle, but she doesn’t slow, the car now only twenty feet away. She glances at the window of the second room on the bottom floor. In the lower-left corner is a two-inch square of yellow—a Post-it Note placed there by Mattie signaling that the plan is a go.

  She lunges for the back door of the car at the exact moment the door to Mattie’s room opens, and tears fill Hadley’s eyes at the sight of her baby running toward them.

  Hadley pulls Skipper with her into the back seat as Mattie yanks open the passenger door.

  “First Base!” Skipper yells as Mattie throws the striped bag on the floor and leaps in after it.

  “Hey, Champ,” she says, turning back to look at him.

  The car is rolling before her door has closed.

  Miles squeals and kicks in his pack against Hadley’s chest as they drive over the curb to bounce onto the road. Half a second later, Hadley crouches over him and reaches out to brace Skipper as they’re thrown sideways when Grace whips around the next turn.

  When she straightens, she cranes her head to look behind them, and her heart misfires when she sees a gray sedan racing behind them.

  “You were right,” she says in disbelief, staring at the blue swirling light in the windshield.

  Grace says nothing, her eyes tight on the road as she continues to gun it down the street.

  Hadley can’t believe it. Until this moment, she didn’t actually believe anyone could predict so much based on so little. But Grace did. She said the feds were waiting, and they were.

  The car skids into an alley, then banks sharply onto a side street.

  “Seat belts,” Hadley yelps at the exact moment Skipper yells, “Red!” and Hadley looks up to see them charging toward an intersection with cross traffic moving steadily through it.

  “Grace!” she screams.

  Grace doesn’t hit the brakes. She doesn’t even slow. The car flies toward it at breakneck speed, and Hadley squeezes her eyes shut as she pulls Skipper against her and bends tight over Miles.

  The car swerves and ho
rns blare, but miraculously, when Hadley sits up, they are past it.

  She looks back to see the sedan two football-field lengths behind them and counts the seconds between them. Four. Grace estimated they would need at least six for the plan to work.

  They travel in the general direction of north, circumventing the town in a haphazard pattern that appears random but that Hadley knows is planned. They pass from the town into a residential neighborhood, then come out the other side into farmland, the fields recently cropped, leaving nothing but miles of stubbled gold around them—no place to run and no place to hide.

  Grace floors it down the laser-straight two-lane road, and a moment later, the abandoned silos come into view, six massive concrete drums reaching for the sky.

  “Seat belts off,” Grace says.

  Hadley unhitches her belt and grabs Skipper’s hand as her other hand moves to hover above the door handle.

  “Ready?” she says to Skipper.

  He nods, a soldier set for battle. They practiced last night, pretending the bed was the back seat of Tony’s car.

  The silos seem to take forever to get closer; then suddenly, like a time warp, they are upon them. Hadley’s heart lodges in her throat as the car bumps from the road onto the gravel of the site. The tires kick up dirt, creating a dust cloud behind them, and when Hadley looks back, she can no longer see the sedan.

  Grace cranks the wheel right, sending them skidding around the office building; then she yanks it left, and they slide the other way so the car is now aimed for the narrow space between the silos. At full speed, she barrels toward it, and a second later, the shadows of the drums swallow them, and a second after that, the car slams to a stop.

  Hadley throws open the door and yanks Skipper with her as she dives toward the loading dock to her left. Pain shoots through her ankle as she lands, but she manages to scrabble into the corner and wedge herself in tight as she hugs the boys against her.

  She lifts her head barely in time to see Jimmy leap into the driver’s seat, taking Grace’s place.

  He peels away, and three seconds later the sedan races past. She stares after it in disbelief, unable to believe it drove right by.

  She doesn’t move. Neither does Mattie, who squats in the shadows across from her, or Grace, who lies flat on the ground beneath the ramp beside them.

  Only when the dust has settled and the taillights have disappeared does she run across the dirt to pull Mattie into her arms, tears streaming down her face even though she’s smiling, her emotions too big to hold inside, her whole body trembling with relief.

  63

  GRACE

  Grace stares at the diminishing dust cloud until there is nothing left to see. Tears brim in her eyes, and her hand goes to her belly, the skin taut like she has eaten a big meal, though she hasn’t put anything in her stomach since the pasta she ate the day before. Your dad is really something, she says silently to their child. And he loves you. Someday, I’ll tell you just how much he loves you.

  “We need to go,” Hadley says, sounding like Grace usually sounds.

  Grace takes one last look into the distance, then turns away, unable to believe it worked, relieved and heartsick at once. She knew their only advantage was the element of surprise, to do something so daring and unexpected the feds would be caught completely off guard.

  Grace spent a long time thinking things through. The moment Frank shot Mark, an APB would have been issued on Tony’s car. The local police would have spotted the car at the silos and called the FBI.

  The reason they didn’t apprehend Mattie was because she’s a minor. Had she been an adult, they could have taken her in and coerced her into cooperating. But because she’s only a kid, the moment they engaged her, they would have needed to call social services. And, as Grace knows from experience, social services is real particular about how kids are treated, and there’s no way they would have let the feds use a fourteen-year-old as bait. So instead, they let her be, using her as a carrot without having to involve the mother-bear agency.

  “Wow,” Mattie says, stepping up beside her. “They really were watching me. What if I was like in serious trouble?”

  Grace wraps her arm around Mattie’s shoulders and nuzzles her head with her chin, the relief of her being safe and beside her overwhelming.

  “If you were choking on your tongue, they might have stepped in.” She nuzzles her again. “You did good.”

  “I did good too,” Skipper says. “Out like a bullet. Duck and cover.” He puts his hands over his head to demonstrate.

  “You did, Champ,” Mattie says. “You did real good.” She holds out her hand for him to high-five, which he does as he says, “I go by Private now.”

  Mattie nods her approval as her gaze runs up and down him, taking in his new duds. “I like it. Very heroic. And I go by Tillie now, but you can still call me First Base.”

  Hadley steps up beside them. “Where’d you learn to drive?”

  Grace winks at Mattie, and Mattie winks back, and Hadley frowns, pretending to be upset but not pulling it off even a little, her relief at having Mattie back completely destroying the act.

  As a group, they walk toward the edge of the lot to the Nissan, which is parked where Jimmy left it, beside the maintenance shed and out of sight from the road.

  Originally, it was supposed to be Hadley who drove away in Tony’s car, leaving Grace and the kids behind to go to Omaha, and then on to London. Then, last night, Jimmy changed the plan, coming up with the idea of him doing it instead. He was adamant and unwilling to take no for an answer.

  “My way to make things right,” he said. “Please, Grace, let me do this.”

  And so she did. And now, here she is with Hadley and the kids while he is driving Tony’s car on a two-lane highway that stretches through Nebraska, then South Dakota, then North Dakota, then all the way to Canada.

  He won’t make it that far. The car will run out of gas somewhere in South Dakota, but hopefully it will buy enough time for Grace and the kids to get on the plane to London and for Hadley to put some distance between her and McCook.

  The illegal tint on Tony’s windows, which is so dark it is impossible to see through, along with the rain forecast for later this morning, should make it difficult for anyone to realize a man is behind the wheel instead of her and that he is alone. She is counting on that as well as all the media attention to keep the FBI on their best behavior. If they think there is even the slightest chance that children are in the car, they will be cautious, and Jimmy is going to drive very safely. His goal is to draw this out as long as possible. “A nice long drive in the country,” is how he put it.

  Fifteen minutes after leaving the silos, they are back in town and parked in front of the Amtrak station. The timing was planned down to the minute. The train to Omaha is already on the track and scheduled to depart in ten minutes.

  Hadley pulls Mattie into a fierce hug. “I love you,” she says, the words strangled.

  Mattie pulls away. “We’re going to be okay,” she says.

  Hadley manages a nod.

  Mattie toes the ground and looks back at her mom, and Grace watches as she fights to keep the tears in her eyes as she says, “Thanks . . . you know . . . for what you did . . . for all of it. You were amazing.”

  Grace sees how the words affect Hadley, her eyes going glassy as she studies her daughter for what might be the last time for a long time. She places her hand on Mattie’s cheek. “Be good.”

  “Not too good,” Mattie answers with a wry smile; then bravely she turns for the train, and Skipper, unaware of the significance of the moment, bounds after her.

  “Do you want me to get him?” Grace offers.

  Hadley shakes her head. “Let him be. As long as Mattie’s with him, he’ll be okay.”

  “You sure about this?” Grace says, her eyes trailing after them.

  Instead of answering, Hadley says, “Listen to Mattie when it comes to Skipper. She knows what he needs: his medical issues,
his allergies, the condition with his heart. She can help you, but you still need to take him to a doctor when you get settled. She’s a good girl, a good big sister, but don’t let her get all motherly on you. She does that, thinks she’s Skipper’s mom sometimes, and uses it as an excuse to not make friends of her own.”

  Miles pushes off Grace’s chest like he is trying to break free.

  “You can’t push her,” Hadley goes on, “but if you encourage her, she’ll surprise you.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Grace says, a lump lodged in her throat.

  Miles kicks harder, protesting being left behind by Skipper and Mattie. Hadley takes hold of one of his little fists, then leans in to drop a lingering kiss on his head. Stepping back, she levels her gaze on Grace’s and says, “You can do this. You’re going to be fine.”

  Grace looks down at Miles, then back at Hadley and lets out a heavy sigh. “Of course I can. Easy peasy.”

  Hadley’s lips almost curl. “Okay, let’s not get cocky.”

  “Three kids and me, international fugitives living under false identities in London? No problem. I’ve totally got this.”

  “And, don’t forget, one on the way.” Hadley nods toward Grace’s belly.

  “Right,” Grace says. “And one on the way.” Easy peasy.

  64

  HADLEY

  Hadley watches as the train disappears into the gray haze and, for a long moment, stands silent as a light mist falls around her. Only when the whistle blows to signal a new train arriving does she climb back into the car, her eyes dry and strangely at peace. Her family is together and safe, and she feels calm in a way she has never experienced before.

  On her way out of town, she stops at the post office. As she drops the package in the mail slot, she hopes Mark’s wife will respect her wishes and keep it private. But if she doesn’t, oh well. It will be what it will be. Again, the odd apathy—carefree or careless, as if none of it any longer matters. A shutting down or a release, whichever, she simply no longer has the energy to give a damn, her emotions plumb worn out, with nothing left to give.