Hadley & Grace(51)

Grace shakes her head, her foot hovering over the accelerator as thoughts of flooring it and leaving Hadley behind spiral through her mind. Her next thought is to throw the truck in reverse and ram it into the cruiser, hopefully disabling it. But Hadley is in the way. Move, she encourages, the idea glowing bright.

She also thinks of the gun, Frank’s revolver a foot away, in the front pouch of the backpack. She thinks of anything that will stop what is happening from happening, from her being arrested and hauled off to jail, where she will await trial for multiple federal offenses, including firing at a federal officer, stealing his car, and kidnapping him. All of which will put her away for the rest of her natural life.

Miles gurgles, “Geggggg,” and her eyes snap to him in the mirror, her mind whirling with panic, and she reaches into the backpack and slides the gun onto her lap.

“What are you doing?” Mattie hisses.

Grace moves it beneath her sweatshirt and ignores the question, her eyes on Hadley, watching as she continues toward the officer.

“Ma’am, you need to return to your vehicle,” he says firmly.

Hadley tilts her head as if she doesn’t understand, then says, “Oui, the ve-heck-el, that is car, no?” her French accent very thick and very fake.

The policeman, a bald middle-aged man with a thick mustache and wide face, cracks a smile and steps from behind his door. “Yes, ma’am, the vehicle is the car.”

Hadley hops backward until she is against the tailgate of the truck. “Now you frisk me?” she says, causing Grace’s eyes to bulge from her skull.

“Are you kidding me?” Mattie says, clearly as unimpressed as Grace.

Not only is the act entirely unconvincing, it is also ridiculous. Who, French or not, asks a cop if they are going to frisk them?

Grace’s foot returns to hovering over the accelerator, ready to peel away, certain the officer is going to pull his gun and demand to know what drugs Hadley is on.

“No, no, no,” the officer says, his hands waving in front of him and his smile now spread cheek to cheek across his face.

“No?” Hadley says. “You not do that here? This my first time pushed over.”

“Pulled over,” he corrects.

Hadley tilts her head, and Grace cannot see her expression, but she imagines it—her catlike eyes wide and her brows askew as she looks up innocently through them.

“I am pulling you over, not pushing you over,” he explains.

“You not say this a pushover?”

Mattie and Grace guffaw together. “Really?” Mattie says.

Miles answers, “Aa, aa, aa, aa.”

Skipper, seemingly as immune to the stress around him as Miles is, holds the ball out and says, “Ball. Say ball.”

“Champ, not now,” Mattie says.

Obediently, Skipper hands the ball to Miles, and Miles laughs with delight and puts it in his mouth, then drops it, and Skipper hands it back to him.

Grace returns her attention to the mirror. The officer is now a foot from Hadley, his posture relaxed, his large belly jiggling in amusement over something else Hadley has said.

“So why you push . . . I mean pull me over? My friend drive too slow? She drive like old lady. My ninety-year-old aunt drive faster. How you say, nervous ninny? She nervous ninny.”

Annoyance bristles through Grace’s fear.

“‘Nervous Nellie,’” the officer says. “But no, that’s not why I pulled you over. Broken taillight.” He points to the left-rear bumper.

Hadley hops to stand beside him, slightly closer than necessary, her head tilting as she looks at the offending light. “You give me ticket for that?”

“Technically, I give your friend a ticket, since she’s the one driving.”

“But it not her truck. It my brother’s truck.”

“But the way it works is she gets the ticket; then she needs to give it to your brother, and he needs to make sure he gets it fixed. It doesn’t cost any money. It’s what’s known as a fix-it ticket.” He explains it very deliberately, as if he is a professor teaching a particularly slow student.

Hadley shakes her head, and her face grows serious. “No,” she says. “You cannot give ticket to give my brother.” Her voice trembles, full of fear. “You give me ticket. Give me ticket for speeding or whatever. I not care. But you not give ticket to give my brother. He kill me.”

Grace has almost forgotten Hadley is acting, her emotions caught up in this poor immigrant woman’s plight of getting a ticket she will need to give her ogre of a brother.

“Hey, settle down. You’re okay,” the officer says, and Grace realizes Hadley might actually have turned on the waterworks.

Hadley’s head continues to shake, and she is trembling, her whole body quaking as she says, “Not okay. You not know my brother.”

The officer sighs, and Grace nearly cheers, knowing what is coming. “Tell you what,” he says. “How about I let this one slide?”

Grace does a small fist pump as Hadley looks up at the officer through her brow with an expression that’s a cross between seduction and worship. “You do that? You not push over?”

“Yeah, I do that. I not push you over,” he says with a self-congratulatory grin. Then with the tip of an imaginary hat to Grace, he returns to his cruiser, his shoulders pulled back heroically.