As they make their way from the stands, Jimmy talks to Tillie about the upcoming stock car race at Killarney. “I’m putting my money on Frikkie,” he says.
“That’s because you’re a fool,” Tillie says. “McGrath has it this year.”
Tillie has become an avid racing fan. She loves cars, racing, and anything to do with cars and racing. Her dream is to become the next Danica Patrick, though she wants to drive Formula One, not NASCAR.
“You can’t pick a winner based on how cute the driver is,” Jimmy protests.
“Put your money where your mouth is.”
“Fine,” Jimmy says. “A hundred grand.”
Grace smiles.
“Two hundred,” Tillie shoots back.
Jimmy shakes his head. “Too rich. I’m still broke from the last race.”
“Fine. A hundred. But if you lose, you’re taking me to the Rallycross Championship.”
Jimmy spits on his hand and holds it out. Tillie spits on her own hand, and they shake.
Grace makes a mental note to order more Monopoly money. Jimmy is going to lose, and he is going to need a loan from the bank. She can already see it coming.
Jimmy has adapted remarkably well to life outside the army. She did a jig when she discovered Jimmy’s sentence for his involvement was only six months in prison. The charges were eluding police in three states and aiding and abetting known criminals. He was given leniency because of his military service and because his lawyer did a brilliant job defending his crimes as a heroic act of passion for his pregnant wife and child.
A week after he was released, he boarded a plane to Africa using his brother’s passport, arriving a week before Mark entered the world.
Grace chose Namibia because it is one of the most stable nonextradition countries in the world and because the national language is English. They have found living here is a lot like living in America, except they are a minority, and every once in a while, a zebra, rhino, or giraffe will stroll across the road.
Before Jimmy even unpacked his bags, Hadley had him enrolled in Gamblers Anonymous. There is no program in Windhoek, so he attends online meetings, and Hadley is all over him about not missing them.
Jimmy has learned quickly that enduring an hour-long meeting is preferable to being harangued for the next month for not holding up his end of the bargain. Grace pretends to be on Jimmy’s side when he complains, but secretly she cheers Hadley, knowing that the reason she’s being a pit bull is for her.
So, nowadays, the only gambling Jimmy does is with Skipper and Tillie using play money. Tillie leads, with close to six million in the bank. Skipper is a distant second, with two million, refusing to bet on anyone but his favorites. And Jimmy is always broke, a reminder that he sucks as a gambler.
As they walk, Grace watches them—her family, so perfect and fragile it terrifies her. Jimmy assures her it will be okay, but it all feels tenuous as a butterfly’s life, and it takes constant convincing for her to believe him, his optimism warring against her paranoia that something so perfect can’t last.
“Grace, are you on vacation or are you going to give me a hand?” Hadley says, breaking Grace from her thoughts.
Grace scoops Miles into her arms, and immediately he wriggles to get down. She raspberries his belly, causing him to squeal and distracting him long enough for Hadley to open the stroller.
“No stwrollewr. No, no, no,” he protests.
So Hadley pushes the empty stroller as Miles dodges and darts and stumbles his way in his drunk toddler way through the crowd. Tillie follows him, huddling over him with her arms held protectively around him like a human bumper. She mutters sorrys and excuse mes as she goes.
Each day she grows to look more like Hadley, stretching taller and her features growing more refined—a shorter, younger replica of her mom, except her eyes, which are still entirely her dad’s.
Grace isn’t sure how she feels about Frank being dead. Hadley’s pretty broken up about it, but each time Grace thinks of him being gone, she can’t help but feel relieved. Frank wouldn’t have stopped until he’d tracked Hadley down, and part of her is thankful they don’t need to worry about it.
Miles face-plants on the sidewalk and lets out a wail. Tillie scoops him up. He is fine and pulling away before she can even check for a scratch.
Mark smiles at her from over Jimmy’s shoulder. He is so different than Miles was as a baby, or maybe it’s Grace who is different as a mother. His beginning was so unlike Miles’s. He came into the world surrounded by devotion and smothered with love.
A strange family—the seven of them—all of them using Melissa’s last name of Jenkins. Hadley’s false papers add three years to her age, making her a whopping forty-two, and Grace takes every opportunity to tease her about it. Hadley makes the appropriate faces of annoyance and acts suitably offended, but Grace can tell it’s an act, her vanity no longer as important as it once was. During that fateful week, something was lost that has not entirely been recovered, in its place ennui that Grace worries is permanent.
A week after they escaped, Mark’s ex-wife did an interview on 60 Minutes as part of a segment they were doing on Hadley and Grace’s great escapade. Her name is Marcia, and she is a handsome woman, blonde and well put together.
She talked about Mark and the day of his death and the package that arrived a few days after. In the package were two letters, one for each of the kids, to be opened when they turned eighteen. It also contained a hundred thousand dollars with a note attached that said, College fund. Attached to the money was a Post-it that said, Please get your son a dog, and Marcia endeared herself to the world when a floppy-eared beagle puppy bounded onto the set.
A lot of the interview focused on the call Mark made the morning of the day he died. Marcia didn’t come right out and say that it was as if he knew he was going to die, but she did say that, looking back on it, it seemed as if he knew things were no longer going to be the same. She cried, and Lesley Stahl handed her a tissue; then she went on to explain how difficult their separation had been. She told Leslie how Mark had resisted the divorce, but then how, on the morning of the day he died, she felt like he had made peace with it.
At that point, she broke down completely, and it was a full minute before she was able to go on, to explain that she thought it was because he might have met someone.
The assumption by the world was that it was Hadley, and the juicy tidbit stoked the already raging fire of fascination with their story.
Since the episode aired, rumors have been floating around about a movie being made. Grace cringes at the idea, certain someone like Angelina Jolie will be cast to play Hadley, while some actress who looks like Nanny McPhee will play her.
Jimmy folds the double stroller into the back of their minivan as Hadley straps Miles into his toddler seat. Tillie and Skipper climb in beside him, and Grace nuzzles Mark’s nose before putting him in his car seat. She climbs into the passenger seat as Jimmy slides into the driver’s seat. She still can’t get used to the left side being the passenger seat, and Jimmy finds it endlessly amusing how she startles each time he makes a turn.
“I get to choose the music,” Tillie says, reaching over the center console to switch the radio to a Namibian grunge station that only plays songs that sound like trash cans being run over by freight trains.
“That’s not music,” Grace protests.
“This coming from a woman who could win a gold medal for worst playlist.”
“Bruce Springsteen is the Boss.”
“The boss of what? Tone-deaf musicians?”
Screeching guitars blast from the speakers, and Grace rolls her eyes, a hidden smile on her face. Jimmy pulls into the traffic waiting to exit the park, and Grace glances back at their almost full van. A single seat remains, a spot between Hadley and Mark in the last row. Perhaps one more? she wonders. Or is that asking too much?
She turns forward again, the sky ethereal blue and eternal through the windshield, and her thoughts sp
iral back to the moment that started it all, marveling as she often does at the likelihood of two women being in the same spot at the same time to commit the exact same crime.
Coincidence is not something Grace believes in, and the chances of what happened that night are too infinitesimally small for her to simply write off as happenstance. No, it seems to her that some hidden connectivity existed in that moment that profoundly influenced their lives, intertwining their fates and bringing them to this remarkable place and time.
Her eyes burn with the cerulean intensity. Maybe a girl, she thinks, to even things up? Annabelle? Her grandmother’s name.
Might even have already happened. She has been feeling a bit green lately.
Everyone will call her Annie, except Hadley, who will insist on calling her Annabelle. And who knows what Skipper will call her.
She smiles, fully covered in gloat.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Dear reader:
I am often asked where the ideas for my stories come from. The answer is: never the same place. The idea for Hadley and Grace came from my enduring love for the movie Thelma and Louise. I wanted to write the same sort of exciting road-trip adventure that also had an underlying theme of self-discovery and empowerment.
As it turned out, I couldn’t actually tell the story as it was originally conceived by the talented Callie Khouri. Fortunately for us, times have changed, and sending a big “screw you” to all the misogynist men of the world for being oppressive twits who bully women while women sit back and take it no longer works. We’ve come a long way from gawking truck drivers, bar-swine rapists, and patronizing do-gooder cops as typical male stereotypes. So, while the plot is similar—two women on the run who become accidental outlaws—the story needed to change.
I knew I wanted children involved, and I knew I wanted Skipper to be a part of it. I had just finished reading the real-life Skipper Carrillo’s biography, Have a Home Run Day!, written by his sister, Alicia Rowe, and his clear-eyed, pure-hearted vision of the world inspired me. So, I started with Skipper and went from there.
Grace is a character near and dear to my heart. While she is not me, she is the closest I’ve come to writing a version of myself. I told my son the other day that if I could give my younger self one piece of advice, it would be to realize that the energy you put out is the energy you get back. If you are defensive and closed off, then life will be harder than it needs to be. There might be good reason for you to be that way, as there was for Grace, but as soon as she allowed Hadley, Mattie, and Skipper in, her world changed. During that fateful week, while Hadley became tougher, Grace actually became softer, her heart opening, an evolution that was both wonderful and terrifying to witness. I didn’t realize that was going to be her journey until after it happened, and it was a beautiful discovery, one that resonated with me personally.
I hope you have enjoyed this wild ride as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Suzanne
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Enormous thanks to the following people, without whom this book would not have been possible.
Skipper Carrillo. This story started with you, and I could not have created the character without the man. It is rare in this world to meet a person who shines so bright and with such special light it changes the way you view the world.
Alicia Rowe and the entire Rowe/Carrillo family, for allowing me to use the real-life Skipper’s indelible spirit and love for baseball as the inspiration for the fictional Skipper in this story. While the real Skipper inspired the character, I want to make it clear that this story is a work of fiction, and that the character’s circumstances and family are entirely a product of my imagination. Skipper Carrillo’s mother and father were loving, devoted parents and bear no resemblance to any of the characters in this story.
My family.
Kevan Lyon, my wonderful agent.
Alicia Clancy, my editor, for her invaluable insight and feedback.
The entire team at Lake Union, including Bill Siever, Laura Barrett, Riam Griswold, Ashley Vanicek, and Kathleen Lynch, for once again turning a humble manuscript into the beautiful finished work it has become.
Sally Eastwood and Lisa Hughes Anderson for reading the story when it was ugly.
Skipper Carrillo at our restaurant, Lumberyard, celebrating his eightieth birthday after taking an “Angels” photo in front of artist Colette Miller’s Global Angel Wings, which are painted on the wall of our other restaurant, Slice Pizza and Beer. As legit an angel as there ever was.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
In the beginning of the story, both Hadley and Grace believe they are failing their children. How did you feel about them as mothers at the start of the story?
Frank is a dangerous man. How do you feel about Hadley leaving the way she did? Jimmy has a gambling problem that endangers Grace and Miles’s future. How do you feel about her leaving the way she did?
Skipper is a special boy who sees the world with a unique perspective. How did you feel about him as a character? Have you ever met someone like him?
Grace has an ongoing relationship throughout the book with her dead grandmother. Have you ever lost someone yet still felt their presence in your life? Do you think that presence is real, a memory, or a conscience?
Hadley and Grace take close to two million dollars from Frank. Do you think it was right for them to take the money? What if Grace had just taken the amount Frank owed her? Would that have been right?
Do you believe in karma? How about coincidence? Grace and Hadley end up at Frank’s office at the exact same time to rob him, which sets in motion a series of events that alters their destinies. Do you think a hidden connectivity exists between us that often dictates our lives?
There is a remarkable synergy between the characters. Grace has street smarts, and Hadley has charm and is a gifted liar. Grace connects with Mattie. Mattie has a special understanding of Skipper. Hadley has a way with Miles. And, by the end of the story, they all would lay their lives on the line for the others. For Skipper, biological affiliations hold no weight. How do you feel about that? Do genetics dictate a family, or does something more powerful than blood tie people together and make them a unit?
Grace and Hadley are accidental criminals. How accountable should they be held for their crimes? Do you think they deserve to be punished? Go to prison? If they were caught, do you think Grace’s punishment, because of her past record, should have been more severe?
Mark and Hadley share an incredible moment. How do you feel about what happened between them? Do you believe in natural chemistry, or, as Hadley put it, “the simple unique magnetism of two particular organisms toward each other?” Do you find what happened between them romantic or tragic?
Jimmy, against Grace’s wishes, shows up to help. How do you feel about Jimmy? Do you think Grace did the right thing in forgiving him?
At what point did you figure out Grace was pregnant? Were you happy for her, or did you feel sorry for her? Do you think maternal abilities are natural, or can they be learned?
An underlying theme of the story is about each of us having a better self within us hidden under strata of fear. Do you ever feel that fear stops you from being the best version of yourself? Grace tells Mattie the story of how she started over when she moved to California, and Mattie decides to become Tillie. Do you think making a clear break like this is helpful in changing? Or do you believe we are hardwired to be who we are and incapable of true transformation?
Who was your favorite character? Why?
Movie time: Who would you like to see play each part?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2015 April Brian
Suzanne Redfearn is the bestselling author of four novels: Hush Little Baby, No Ordinary Life, In an Instant, and Hadley and Grace. In addition to being an author, she’s also an architect specializing in residential and commercial design. She lives in Laguna Beach, California, where she and her husband own two restaurants: Lumberyard and Slice Pizza and
Beer. You can find her at her website, www.SuzanneRedfearn.com, on Facebook at SuzanneRedfearnAuthor, or on Twitter @SuzanneRedfearn.
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