Hadley & Grace(59)

“Mom, you okay?”

“Huh? Yeah, fine. Mattie, keep an eye on Miles and Skipper. I’ll be right back.”

She hops outside on her crutches, leans against the porch railing, and pulls out the burner phone. Tomorrow, Grace and Miles are leaving, which means it’s time for her to start thinking about the steps she needs to take without her.

In front of her, a group of bikers goofs off, drinking beers and messing around. She turns away from them and lifts the phone to her ear.

“Ness,” she says when her sister answers.

“Christ, Had, where have you been? I’ve been, like, trying to call you for days. Your cell is like out of service or something. Did you know the FBI are looking for you?”

Hadley’s pulse kicks up a notch with the realization that the FBI has called her sister. It makes sense. It’s just that, until Vanessa said it, Hadley hadn’t considered the possibility, and somehow, her sister knowing makes it all seem so much worse.

“Had, you there?”

“Yeah, I’m here.”

“What the hell’s going on? They were calling like every five minutes; then they showed up at my hotel—”

“They showed up? In Belize?”

“Well, not them, but some Belizean cops. Two guys came by to tell me the FBI was calling and that I needed to call them back. As if I didn’t know they were calling. Tom’s totally freaked out.”

“It’s okay—”

“The hell it is!” she practically screams.

Hadley pulls the phone from her ear. “Ness, calm down.”

“Calm down! I can’t calm down. Tom is pissed. He was so stressed he ended our honeymoon early.”

Hadley has only met Tom once. She joined him for a quick lunch when he had a layover in LA during a business trip. She was not impressed. He is a man who loves to talk, mostly about himself, and he’s not all that exciting a subject, his interests limited to mountain biking and his investments.

“Tom’s a straight arrow,” Vanessa says, “and he didn’t sign up for this.”

“Ness,” Hadley says, working hard to keep her voice calm, “I understand you’re upset, but things are fine. Skipper is fine.”

Silence.

Hadley feels a prickle down her spine. She looks at Skipper through the window. He sits where she left him, his baseball hat askew and his shoulders slumped as he stares at the people dancing, eating, and talking around him.

After a long minute, when her sister still hasn’t responded, Hadley says, “I’m calling because we need to change the plan. I can’t bring Skipper to Tom’s anymore, so I need you to meet us.”

Nothing.

“Ness? Did you hear me?”

“It’s been horrible,” Vanessa mumbles, and it sounds like she might be crying. “Tom’s so upset he won’t even talk to me.”

It’s Hadley’s turn to be silent, her skin sizzling as she waits for what’s coming, knowing it but unwilling to accept it until her sister says it out loud.

“I can’t,” Vanessa stammers. “I’m sorry, Had . . . but Tom . . . he doesn’t want this . . . I just can’t.”

A beat later, the line goes dead, and Hadley pulls the phone from her ear and stares at it. She considers hurling it across the parking lot, but the idiotic bikers are still across from her, one of them trying to balance a beer on his head, so she decides against it.

She looks again at Skipper as a woman walking past notices him and smiles. He smiles back, and she grins wider, unable to help herself. Skipper often gets that reaction, a remarkable boy who can’t help but be noticed.

Tears well in Hadley’s eyes, and her heart aches. Without him, she and Mattie might have a chance. With him, they have none.





41





GRACE


The cowboy Grace is dancing with is named Burt. Tall as Jimmy but with no muscle on his bones, he swirls and twirls and do-si-dos like a cowboy Fred Astaire, and it’s all Grace can do to keep up. The old routines return with only a few missteps, and by the third song, she’s found her groove and is having a great time.

Hadley disappeared for a few minutes, but now she’s back. She sits at the table holding Miles on her lap and guzzling her beer. Mattie is beside her looking bored. Grace grabs Burt’s hand and pulls him with her. “Come on,” she says to Mattie when they reach the table.

Mattie tilts her head and looks at her like she’s lost her mind, an expression just short of an eye roll that says, Are you kidding? There’s no way I’m doing that. I hate country music, and I am far too cool and far too afraid of being uncool to even attempt it.

Grace doesn’t budge. Her hand remains outstretched as she gives a retaliating look that says, Are you freaking kidding me? You’d rather sit here, bored out of your mind, beside your mom?

And Grace’s look wins, because Mattie’s mouth twitches with a smile; then with a grumble, she allows Grace to pull her up and onto the dance floor. Burt shows Mattie the basics, and after a few songs, she has the cha-cha and the wobble down and is smiling ear to ear.

Mattie is curvy like her mom, and the hip-swaying moves suit her; Grace notices several guys’ eyes sliding her way. And while she wants to slap their faces for looking at a fourteen-year-old the way they’re looking at her, she also feels proud.