Hadley & Grace(62)

She feels the people in the restaurant watching, the buzz of their excitement floating through the door, along with the flashes from camera phones that cause her heart to misfire.

Grace throws the diaper bag onto the seat, then climbs in after it. She stashes the gun in the side compartment, throws the truck in reverse, and peels backward from the spot.

She’s shifted into drive and is about to floor it for the exit when the biker who is standing steps toward them. He smiles at her through the windshield and then, for good measure, gives a hip thrust and a wink.

She slams down on the gas and cranks the wheel right. The monster tires kick up gravel as the truck skids sideways, then forward, and the biker leaps out of the way, though there’s no need. Grace isn’t aiming for him. The ramming bars on the front grille hit his bike first, followed by the satisfying crunch of metal beneath the tires as they roll over the remaining three. The truck bounces back to the pavement, and a second later, they’re on the street and racing into the night.





42





HADLEY


Hadley is fairly certain Grace just bulldozed several motorcycles, and she thinks she just fired a gun. Her whole body quakes, adrenaline and alcohol swirling dangerously in her brain.

“Grace, slow down,” she says, the trees on either side of them whipping past and the truck wobbling dangerously.

“Why?” Grace spits, pure venom in the word. “You worried we might get pulled over for speeding? No worries—you’ll just talk your way out of it. Up your record to nine out of ten. Of course there might be the small, wee little issue the cops might have with the one-way shoot-out you just had in a parking lot. Might be a smidge more difficult to talk your way out of that one.”

“Please, Grace, I’m not feeling so good. You really need to slow down.” The world is spinning very quickly, Hadley’s stomach lurching with it.

“Slow down! Slow down! You do realize that, at this moment, half the cops in Utah are on their way to that restaurant?”

In the back seat, Mattie cries, her soft sobs cutting through Grace’s rant.

Hadley turns to comfort her, then quickly turns back. “Really, Grace, I think I’m going to be sick.”

The truck squeals, then lurches right, and they bounce violently over a curb, then a sidewalk, to land with a thud in the parking lot of a mall with a movie theater. They skid around an RV parked at one end, and the truck jerks to a stop.

Hadley wrenches open the door and stumbles out. Her ankle buckles, and she collapses to her knees, the contents of her stomach following as she hurls tri-tip, corn, beer, and whiskey onto the pavement. Beneath the undercarriage of the truck, she sees two pairs of feet: Mattie’s black Converse high-tops and Grace’s knockoff white Keds.

“You’re okay,” Grace’s voice soothes. “Get it all out.” And Hadley realizes Mattie is vomiting as well.

Mattie in trouble—her face white with fear as she stood across the parking lot with that man, his arm around her. Then the gun was in my hand.

And BANG!

She was surprised how loud it was and how easily it went off. The twitch of a finger. Then a second time, her arm recoiling with the shock of it.

She shakes her head, trying to straighten the thoughts, certain they can’t be right.

Tears drip down her face, combining with the mucus that runs from her nose. She hates guns. Has always hated them. And this is why. They make it too easy to screw up, and to screw up permanently. The man laughed, mocking her as if she were nothing; then he had his arm around Mattie’s neck, and something just snapped. BANG! And just like that, she made things worse . . . again.

She squeezes her eyes against it, and when she opens them, Grace’s shoes are in front of her nose. Mattie is beside her, her arms folded tight around herself. “I’m sorry, Mom,” she mumbles, her face streaked with tears.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Hadley manages. “It’s my fault. All my fault.”

“What were you doing with them?” Grace asks Mattie.

“The guy asked if I could take a photo of them,” Mattie says. She toes the ground. “Then he wanted to take one with me, and I didn’t know what to say.” She wraps her arms tighter and shakes her head. “He wouldn’t let me go; then he started saying things . . .” Her voice trails off, and Hadley cries harder. She didn’t even know Mattie was in trouble. How could she not have known?

Thumping inside the truck causes them all to turn, and Hadley tries to stand to go to Skipper so she can calm him, but her equilibrium is seriously off kilter, and all she manages to do is stagger sideways, then fall back to her knees.

When she looks up, Mattie is gone. “It’s okay, Champ,” Mattie says from inside the truck. “Stop banging. It’s okay. Everyone’s okay.”

The thumping continues.

“Now, on the Saint Louis team,” Mattie says, altering her voice so it’s wonky, “we have Who’s on first?”

Thump. Thump. Thump.

“What’s on second,” she goes on, reciting the Abbott and Costello skit she and Skipper performed at his talent show this year. “I Don’t Know’s on third . . .”

“My sister’s not taking him,” Hadley says, looking up at Grace.

“I gathered that.”