Hadley & Grace(93)

“You don’t know?” Fitz says.

She looks up.

“Frank is dead.”

The words float. She heard them—Frank. Is. Dead—but can’t quite make sense of them.

“They found him holed up in a motel in Red Willow,” Fitz says, “a town east of McCook. He came out firing and was killed.”

“You killed him?” she says.

“I wasn’t there,” Fitz says carefully.

She stares.

Frank. Dead.

Like Mark.

“He’s dead?” she says, the words whistling thread thin.

“Mrs. Torelli?” Fitz says.

The quake starts at her chin, a small tremor that grows and spreads outward, down her neck and to her spine before moving to her arms, her legs, her fingers, and her toes.

Fitz moves to the seat beside her. “Mrs. Torelli, I’m sorry. I thought you knew.”

She wraps her arms around her gut as sobs spill out of her in great hiccups and heaves. She feels Fitz’s hand on her back and hears him saying words that don’t reach her brain.

A week ago she was whole; her family was whole. Frank was alive. He was buying baseball cards for Skipper and talking about lineups. She didn’t know Mark or Grace. Mark was a continent away, being a father to Ben and Shelly. Grace was making a life for herself, her past safely behind her. Then, like making the wrong move in Jenga, she pulled out the wrong brick—made a single horrible wrong move that sent three worlds tumbling.

“Shhh, Mrs. Torelli, you’re okay,” Fitz says. “He’s gone and will never hurt you again. You’re safe now.”

He’s got it wrong. He thinks she is sobbing with relief. He couldn’t be further from the truth. She doesn’t want Frank to be dead. She wants him home, worrying about the tick in the Mercedes, bragging about the pizza oven to their neighbors, laughing with her about the neighbors’ dog and whether he might indeed be half sheep because of his strange bark. She hates Frank for what he did, for who he was at times and for how difficult he made their lives, but she also loved him. For fifteen years, she loved him. Then she did what she did, and it sent all of them over the edge.

She keens against it, wishing she could turn back time.

“Mrs. Torelli, what can I do?”

Aware of people staring and of how uncomfortable she is making Fitz, she stammers, “Please . . . can I . . . I need to . . . is it okay if I go to the restroom? I’ll leave the key.”

She pulls the Nissan key from her pocket, sets it on the table, and staggers away. Her ankle nearly gives out, but she makes it to the women’s room, locks herself in a stall, and collapses her head to her knees as sobs continue to spill out of her.

A minute or an hour, she has no idea, but eventually her tears run dry, leaving her hollowed out and empty, and shakily, she pushes to her feet to return to Fitz and face whatever is to come.

She walks into the restaurant to find him gone, three dollars tucked beneath the saltshaker on the table for a tip and the Nissan key on top of a napkin. The note scrawled on it reads: On my way to Bismarck. Send my regards to Grace. F.

She stares at it for a long moment.

“I understand you’re looking for Dennis Hull.”

Hadley turns to see a raisin-skinned man with a black ponytail talking to her.





EPILOGUE





GRACE


The ball rockets back and forth, and Skipper’s eyes dart with it, a smile chiseled on his face. Today he wears his favorite football ensemble—a red-and-gold-striped soccer shirt, white shorts, and a black Nike headband with a red Swoosh.

Deon Hotto is his favorite player, though Benson Shilongo is a close second. He has also become a huge fan of cricket and rugby and golf, and his uniforms vary with the seasons.

The tickets to the Africa Cup of Nations final match cost a small fortune, but Jimmy insisted it was worth it. Their family’s anniversary was worth celebrating, he said. That’s what he calls it—June second, the day their remarkable family was formed. Grace always reminds him they were together on that day less than three seconds, and that Jimmy and Tillie didn’t actually meet until months later, but that kind of reasoning does nothing to discourage Jimmy or his romantic notions. June second was the beginning—the day that, in his mind, it all worked out.

He holds the baby against his shoulder, burping him after his bottle—Mark James Herrick, born five months ago. The kid is a carrot top, his hair so orange it nearly glows in the sun. Skipper has taken to calling him Newbie, which has kind of stuck, except with Hadley, who still insists on calling him Mark.

Hadley fusses with Miles, who is now more than a handful. He got his walking legs at eleven months and has not stopped toddling into trouble since. At the moment, he is trying to climb over the railing and onto the field, inevitably to get the “ball,” which, much to Skipper’s delight, was his first word.

Each day he grows to look more like Jimmy, his pudge thinning into muscle and his smirk growing more and more mischievous. Hadley says that, though he looks like his dad, his personality is Grace’s, and she warns them that they are in real trouble, that he will be either the next great hero or villain, depending on how they raise him. A great responsibility.

Hadley chomps hard on her gum. She showed up smoking a pack a day and immediately tried to wean herself from the habit using the patch, meditation, and hypnotism on tape. When none of that worked, she went cold turkey, and she’s been struggling on again, off again, ever since.