Hadley & Grace(58)
“Good,” Mattie answers absently, her focus still on Miles. A moment later, she says, “Mom, what happens if it doesn’t work out?” She is trying hard to sound unconcerned, like whatever the answer, it’s okay and no big deal, but her voice wavers.
Hadley forces her own uncertainty away as she sweeps a tendril from Mattie’s face and sluices it behind her ear. “Then I’ll need you to be stronger than ever.”
Mattie offers a brave smile, and Hadley’s heart swells with pride, amazed at her daughter’s strength and courage, glad she got some of Frank’s toughness.
Mattie looks back at Miles and helps him roll over again, with the same overjoyed result; then she mutters, “I hope I do better.”
“Better?”
“You know, than before.”
Hadley says nothing. She thinks Mattie was doing okay. Perhaps she wasn’t as popular as she would have liked, but she got good grades, stayed out of trouble, got glowing remarks from her teachers. Or maybe she’s thinking more about her dad and wishing, like Hadley, she’d been stronger or maybe able to change things.
Hadley looks away, hoping she does better as well, that somehow they make it through this so they can start again and she can be the mother she’s always intended to be. Her eyes slide to Grace, a mite of a woman, yet no one would mess with her or Miles—no one, not even Frank. He tried, and look what happened. She showed up with her ragged striped bag to take what was hers.
Skipper lopes up and sits beside Mattie, so Hadley changes the subject. “What happened yesterday when you were with Grace?”
“Home run,” Skipper says before Mattie can answer. “Over the fence.”
“Wow,” Hadley says, looking at Mattie for translation, but she doesn’t give one.
“Cleared the bleachers,” Skipper says to emphasize the point, and Mattie grins.
“You’re not going to tell me what that means?” Hadley says.
“What what means?” Grace says, walking up and lifting Miles into her arms.
“Champ says you hit a home run.”
“Grand slam,” Skipper says, his face lit up, and Mattie and Grace exchange a conspiratorial look.
“Will someone please tell me what that means?”
When no one answers, she says, “Really?”
They all just continue grinning, and Hadley pushes to her feet with a huff. “Well, from here on out, no more home runs. From now on, we lie low and don’t draw attention to ourselves.”
She hops off angrily, hating and loving that she was left out of whatever the four of them shared that was obviously so grand.
They drive through miles and miles of high desert, passing through several small towns. A couple of times they stop for potty breaks and to stretch their legs, but mostly they just drive, all of them exhausted and grouchy from the long day of travel, their third in a row.
Near eight, Grace pulls into a barbeque restaurant on the outskirts of Salt Lake City that she says she visited with her husband after they got married. Loud music thrums from the open doors, and people spill out onto the wraparound porch. The smell of meat and barbeque sauce drifts past Hadley’s nose, and her stomach rumbles.
Her diet has been completely blown to smithereens the past three days, but surprisingly, it is not as distressing as she would have thought. More a blasé concern. The feeling similar to how she feels about flossing. Each day she thinks about it, knowing that if she doesn’t floss, eventually it will catch up with her and she will wind up with gum disease, but when it comes right down to it, the future seems very far off and she doesn’t care quite enough to actually get it done.
They settle at a picnic table lined with a red-checkered plastic tablecloth, and Hadley stays with Miles as Grace and the kids go off to get the food. Miles’s eyes are wide with wonder as he takes in the music and the lights and the buzz of activity around them, which Hadley agrees really is something.
Pat’s Barbeque is a genuine cowboy bar. Across the room, a country band croons from a stage, and in front of it, men, women, and kids decked out in cowboy boots, Wranglers, and large silver belt buckles dance.
Grace plops a heaping plate of tri-tip, corn on the cob, coleslaw, and cornbread in front of her, along with a mug of beer, and Hadley uses her napkin to wipe the butter from the corn and the barbeque sauce from the meat before nibbling at both. Meanwhile, Grace slathers her ribs with extra sauce and drenches her potatoes in gravy, then digs in.
Skipper saws at his steak. Miles babbles and fists a chunk of cornbread into his mouth, some of it making it, most of it landing elsewhere. Mattie gnaws on her ribs, stopping every few bites to ask Grace something about engines or cars, a subject Grace seems to know a lot about and for which Mattie has a sudden fascination.
It’s strange, the normalcy of it. The five of them having dinner together, an odd facsimile of family that feels bizarrely right, and Hadley can’t recall the last time she’s enjoyed a meal so much.
“Dance?”
All of them look up to see a lanky cowboy extending his hand to Grace. Grace blushes, then pushes from the table, and all of them watch in amazement as he leads her to the dance floor and as she expertly joins in a line dance of kicking, stomping, clapping, and twirling that looks like it takes years to master.
The outfit Grace bought suits her—rolled-up faded blue jeans, a white V-neck T-shirt, and knockoff white Keds. She looks spunky and young and full of life, exactly how a twenty-six-year-old should look, and as Hadley watches her, her guilt rises until it strangles her for the danger she’s put her in.