Hadley & Grace(40)
She wants to reassure him it’s going to be okay, but since she has no idea whether it’s going to be okay or not, she says nothing. All of this is so crazy; she can’t get her head around it. Everything’s happened so quickly. One minute she was smoking a cigarette; the next she was crawling across the parking lot with a gun in her hand.
Until yesterday, she had never even touched a gun. Now, in a matter of days, she has pointed one at two separate people on two separate occasions.
She considers apologizing, explaining to him why she did what she did, but each time, she glances at Grace and knows it would piss her off, so instead she says nothing, feeling awful for how uncomfortable he must be.
The agent glances over again, concern on his face, and Hadley realizes she is crying, tears streaming down her face. Embarrassed, she wipes them away, then turns so he can’t see her.
He scoots forward on the seat so he’s leaning over the center console and closer to Grace.
“Grace?” he says.
Grace ignores him.
He scoots forward another inch and tries again. “Grace?”
The car stops so abruptly all of them fly forward. Seat belts hold those who are tethered in, while the agent slams into the console with an oof.
“Grace!” Hadley snaps as she helps him back to his seat.
Grace glares at her in the mirror, then returns her foot to the gas.
The agent doesn’t talk again. He sits with his head down and his shoulders hunched, his left folded more than his right.
When they’ve been driving for almost an hour, Hadley says, “Grace, do you have a plan?”
The sun is up now, and the kids will need to eat soon, and all of them need a restroom.
“I’m looking for a sign,” Grace answers absently.
Hadley swallows, not sure what that means: A sign from God? A sign from the great beyond? Hadley wonders if maybe Grace has lost it, if stress has pushed her over the edge, so she is now putting their fate in the hands of the Almighty.
“There,” Grace says a few minutes later; then she turns sharply from the highway onto a narrow dirt road that shoots straight into the desert.
The sign they pass reads:
CALICO EARLY MAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE:
OPEN TUES.–SAT.
9:00 AM–4:30 PM
PUBLIC WELCOME
←2 MILES
Today is Sunday. The site is closed and won’t open again for two days. Hadley looks at the agent, whose face has turned pale.
“Grace, this isn’t a good idea,” Hadley says.
“You have a better one?”
“Yeah,” the agent says. “Turn yourselves in.” He turns his shoulder as he says it, in case Grace slams the brakes again, his arm positioned to take the brunt of the impact instead of his chest and face.
Grace doesn’t slam on the brakes; instead she says, “Yeah, that’s a swell idea. I’ve been thinking how I could use a vacation. Three squares a day for the next ten to twenty years. Free room and board. Only two small problems with that plan. First, I’m particular about the thread count of my sheets. And second, the itsy-bitsy issue I have with not seeing my kid grow up.”
“Look,” the agent says, “at this point, you ladies haven’t even been charged with a crime. You’re only wanted for questioning.”
“So,” Grace says, as if seriously considering what he’s saying, “what happened this morning—the minor incident with the guns, the carjacking, the kidnapping—if we turn ourselves in, all that will be forgotten?”
The agent hesitates, and Hadley looks at him, her heart pounding as she waits for him to reassure them that this morning was, in fact, not a big deal, a misunderstanding that could easily be straightened out if they turn themselves in and explain what happened. After all, Hadley was just reacting to the circumstances. She was scared and worried about Grace.
Mattie cranes her neck to look at her, her brown eyes wide, and Hadley swallows as she turns to Grace, then back to the agent.
Carefully, as if measuring his words, he says, “It’s not up to me, but I’m sure a prosecutor will take the circumstances into account—”
The car slams to a stop so violently Hadley could swear the back tires lift off the ground. Hadley’s seat belt chokes her, and Mattie and Skipper lurch forward, Mattie’s arm flying in front of Skipper to protect him as the agent crashes with incredible force into the console. His chest takes the blow, and it knocks the wind clean out of him.
He wheezes and gasps as Hadley helps him back up. She pats his back, not knowing what else to do, fresh tears escaping and running down her face. Miles squeals and kicks his legs, thinking it is all great fun. The agent glances at him, then drops his face to look at his lap.
They drive the rest of the way in silence, except for Mattie, who whispers almost silently to Skipper that it’s going to be all right as he rocks back and forth with his hands over his ears.
Hadley stares out the window at the thin road winding its way through the desert, her mind catching again and again on the words prosecutor and take the circumstances into account, her brain unable to process what is happening and that she is the one who caused it, that because of what she did, she and Grace are now criminals.
The agent shifts his leg to touch hers, a small comfort but the only one he can offer. It is kind but does little to quell her panic. She wishes she could click her heels three times and reverse time, find herself back in her warm bed at home, with Skipper and Mattie safe in their rooms down the hall. She wishes she had never decided to leave, that she could have a redo or an undo, return to the time before she and Grace ever met. But, she supposes, that is the lesson in life, the one she trips over again and again. There is no going back. One decision leads to the next and then the next, a continual stumbling forward over each past mistake until you find yourself someplace entirely different from where you started or from where you ever intended to go.