Hadley & Grace(18)
She looks at Miles, asleep in his car seat, his mouth hanging open and his little fists balled on top of the straps; then she reaches into the In-N-Out bag, grabs a burger, unwraps it, and sinks her teeth into it. Her eyes close as the salty deliciousness touches her tongue, and she feels a little like Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind when she declares, “I’ll never be hungry again.”
Sensing Mrs. Torelli watching her, she opens her eyes and says, “Want some?” She holds out the bag with the fries.
Mrs. Torelli shakes her head, but her eyes track the bag like a dog following a bone, and Grace nearly laughs. Mrs. Torelli is probably one of those women who starves herself to stay thin, constantly counting calories and how many steps it takes to burn them off. Though Mrs. Torelli will never be skinny. She’s far too curvy for that. A woman with boobs and hips, something Grace has neither of.
When half the burger is gone, Grace looks back at the money, takes a deep breath, and starts to sort the bundles into piles—hundreds, fifties, and twenties. There are only a few bundles of fifties and twice as many bundles of twenties, and the remaining bundles are hundreds.
She counts the bills in one of the bundles of twenties, then does the same with a bundle of hundreds. There are one hundred bills per bundle.
She points to each pile in order. “Two grand. Five grand. Ten grand.”
“Each?” Mrs. Torelli says, clearly stunned.
Grace nods; then she looks at the bundle of hundreds still in her hand. She tests its weight, which can’t be more than a few ounces. Ten grand, she thinks. Childcare for a year, a new car, half a year’s rent. It seems impossible that so little could be worth so much.
Sitting back on her heels, she starts on the french fries and sips her shake.
“You sure you don’t want some?” she says to Mrs. Torelli, part of her enjoying the torture she’s causing. Grace has never understood the diet mentality. Her grandmother used to say the first three letters in diet are a warning, and Grace agrees. Her grandmother wasn’t five feet tall, and she died a content 180 pounds, and if she were still alive, she’d tell you she’d enjoyed packing on every ounce with the kind of southern cooking that made Paula Deen famous.
When the fries are done, Grace counts the number of bundles in each pile, then counts them again before letting out a long, slow whistle.
“Well?” Mrs. Torelli says.
15
HADLEY
Hadley hears the number, but it doesn’t register. She repeats it to herself: One million, eight hundred seventy-two thousand. She attempts to see it in her mind: a one, a comma, three digits, another comma, three more digits. She rounds it. One point nine million.
She shakes her head. “That can’t be right.”
It can’t be. She and Frank do well, but they don’t have that kind of money. She thinks about Frank—the stress he’s been under, the late-night phone calls, his extravagant splurges over the past couple of years—then she pushes the thoughts away, a bad feeling in her gut.
She glances at the door that connects her room with the kids’ room. She checked on them when she got here. At some point Skipper had climbed in beside Mattie, and they were curled together like a pair of kittens. Mattie probably wasn’t even aware of it, believing the warmth beside her to be Prince Charles.
A million dollars. Tears spring to her eyes as she thinks of what it means. She looks at Grace slurping her shake, and she wants to kiss her, plant a great big smacker on her forehead or cheek. She wants to whoop and holler and throw the money in the air and dance a jig around the room.
Instead, her voice cracking with emotion, she says, “Thank you.”
Grace looks up, then quickly looks away, her face pink.
She sets the shake down and starts to divide the pile of twenties—one for Hadley, one for herself, one for Hadley, one for herself . . .
Hadley drops her leg from the bed and pulls the bundles of hundreds toward her to do the same.
As she counts, she thinks how unimpressive it looks. Nearly two million dollars, and it barely takes up a quarter of the bed. Some people work a lifetime to earn this much money; how disappointed they would be to see how measly the result of all that effort is.
When they’re done, Grace begins to put her share back in the bag. She’s almost finished when the baby starts to stir. First, he yawns; then he turns his head and makes hopeful sucking motions with his mouth.
Beside Hadley, Grace freezes, her body rigid as if stunned with a Taser. Her hands are suspended in front of her, a bundle of money clenched in each.
The baby lets out a small whinny, and Hadley watches as Grace squeezes her eyes shut, takes a deep breath as if steeling herself for battle, then snaps them open. She drops the money to the bed, then scrabbles off it to undo the straps of the car seat. She lifts him into her arms as he starts to cry, and she hugs him tight against her and jiggles him up and down.
He cries harder.
“Maybe he’s hungry,” Hadley suggests.
Grace shoots daggers at her, and Hadley clamps back her next suggestion that he might also need his diaper changed.
A piercing howl shatters the air, followed by another, then another, until the baby is screaming at the top of his wee little lungs and Hadley’s skin is on fire, his wailing at a specific bloodcurdling decibel level that implores you to take action and do whatever is necessary to stop it.