“Great. Me and the prince.”
“You know,” she says, careful to keep her voice even, “I was thinking you might have been right about it being better for us to leave tonight instead of in the morning.”
His eyes squint, looking for a manipulation or some sort of deception, and she lowers her gaze, praying he believes her and doesn’t see the fear that is driving her. “But only if you think it’s a good idea.”
He looks back at the television and turns on the volume, and she sits beside him, silent.
The game comes back on, Astros versus the A’s, the A’s ahead by a dozen runs in the bottom of the eighth.
At the next commercial, he says, “The pasta was good.”
“Thanks,” she says. “I probably should have just made that in the first place.”
He watches the flickering screen awhile longer before finally saying, “You have the itinerary?”
She works hard not to react as her heart jumps in her chest. “I printed it, and I also have it on my phone.”
“Don’t take the 5. It’s under construction.”
“No. I’ll take the toll road.”
He turns to her. “If you get tired, pull over.”
“Of course.”
“You need to watch out for big rigs. They can’t see you.”
“I’ll be careful.”
He nods, finishes off his whiskey, then, with pure devotion in his eyes, looks at her and says, “Nine days. I don’t know how I’m going to live without you.”
She leans in and kisses him softly. “Somehow you’ll manage, and before you know it, we’ll be back.”
At the door, she stops. “Do you want to say goodbye to Skipper?” she asks.
He shakes his head. “I think it will just make it harder on him.” He glances down, then back at her. “He knows I love him, right?”
“Of course.”
“And he won’t just remember how I acted tonight?”
“He will remember what a great dad you were to him.”
Five minutes later, they are on their way. She glances at Mattie beside her and Skipper behind her, unable to believe it, stunned that it is happening. For fifteen years, she’s been searching for a way out, and now, just like that, she is doing it, driving away with the kids. Her heart pounds with adrenaline and a small sense of pride.
“We’re not going back?” Mattie says, startling Hadley from her thoughts.
“You packed your mom’s apron,” she says to Hadley’s surprised expression.
Hadley swallows hard, wondering if her last-minute decision to shove the keepsake in her bag will tip Frank off as well. The apron is hand embroidered with daisies and stained in a dozen places; her mother wore it almost every day of Hadley’s childhood, and it is one of the few things of her mom’s she has left.
“Don’t worry,” Mattie says, reading Hadley’s fear. “Dad never goes in the kitchen drawers.” And all the pride Hadley felt the moment before deflates, knowing how much she has failed her daughter all these years.
A minute later, Mattie asks, “Who will take care of Prince Charles?”
“Your dad,” Hadley says, and Mattie turns away. It’s not a good answer. Frank will not love him the way Mattie does. He will not look after him the way Hadley does. He will not play with him the way Skipper does.
Mattie’s almost silent tears twist Hadley’s heart. She had no choice. They couldn’t stay for the dog.
Half an hour later, they pull into the parking lot of a hotel beside the freeway.
“Why are we stopping?” Mattie asks.
“There’s something I need to do before we leave,” Hadley says. “We’ll stay here tonight and get an early start in the morning.”
She uses cash to pay for two rooms, gets the kids settled, then returns to the car and drives back the way they came.
Twenty minutes later, from the loading area behind Frank’s office, she calls the Hilton in Victorville, the hotel they are supposed to be staying at tonight, and she books a room.
When she hangs up, she looks again at Frank’s itinerary, checking it carefully for anything she might have missed. For her to pull this off, she needs to consider everything and not make any mistakes. Frank is paranoid, neurotic, and brilliant. One misstep and it will be over. Fairly certain she hasn’t screwed up yet, she slides the phone into her pocket and climbs from the car.
The lot is empty and the buildings around her dark and buttoned up for the long weekend. An American flag flaps from the flagpole near the street, left flying in honor of Memorial Day.
Using Frank’s spare keys that she still has from driving his truck, she opens the back door and quietly steps inside.
8
GRACE
Grace cuts the engine and looks back at Miles, who is sound asleep in his car seat behind her, his chest moving in steady rhythm with his breath. She watches him for a long time. It’s nearly ten. God willing, he will sleep until midnight.
She turns back to look at the entrance to Aztec Parking. Other than the light beside the door, the business park is dark. Through the window, she sees the faint glow of her computer monitor, and she stares at it until her eyes blur, waiting another long minute to roll the decision around one more time in her head.
If she does this, there will be no turning back.
Again and again, the answer circles back. If she doesn’t do this, then where will she be? She looks again at Miles, thinks of Jimmy and what he’s done, and squeezes her eyes tight. As much as she loves him, this is no longer about that. She can’t continue to risk her future and Miles’s future and to live with the uncertainty of whether they will have rent money or food.
Her stomach rumbles, weighing in on the decision, and yet she waits a minute longer, knowing what she needs to do but dreading it just the same. One of those moments, she thinks, the fork in the road you recognize, knowing it will irrevocably change your life.
Finally, with a deep breath, she lowers the window an inch and eases from the car. She locks it, scans around her one more time, then walks to the door and lets herself in.
The contract for Jerry’s lot is still on Frank’s desk. She tucks it in the empty diaper bag slung over her shoulder. If Frank wants to make a deal with Jerry, he can make it himself.
She opens the door that connects Frank’s office with the hall leading to the common areas of the building—the storage room, lockers, restrooms, and employee lounge. It clicks closed behind her, and she squints to adjust her eyes to the darkness, the only light borrowed from the thin halo of moonlight that shines through the window in the door that leads to the back parking lot and a sliver of fluorescence glowing beneath the storage room door because someone forgot to turn off the light.
Though her heart pounds, she is not scared. For the past three months, she’s spent more time inside these walls than she has her own home.
She reaches for the light switch when a noise freezes her. Her face snaps to the storage room door, and her eyes fix on the strip of light beneath it. She stares so long and hard her eyes buzz but, after a long moment and nothing, wonders if she’s only imagined it.
With a deep sigh, she reaches again for the switch, her fingers finding it at the exact moment a shadow crosses the sliver of light.