3. Grace
Grace
I pull the rental onto the gravel shoulder, hazards clicking a steady, mocking rhythm, and dig through my bag for my phone.
At the Helena airport, I’d typed Winslow Grove into the GPS, but somewhere between playlists and mental spirals, I blew right past the turnoff.
Toby’s email sits at the top of my inbox, a massive wall of text that reads like a technical manual. It’s thorough—bordering on obsessive—covering every logistic detail from the travel itinerary to Hartley’s career stats.
Yet apart from the flight details, this isn’t Toby’s handiwork. The email is from Chantal, and every time I look at it, a stone sinks to the bottom of my stomach.
This is a major feature. With the paper’s budget cuts, I’m a one-woman production crew—research, writing, photography, video. The whole package.
I skim the message again, hunting for the directions buried under the carefully curated highlights of a life lived at two hundred miles per hour.
Finally, right after the reminder that my deadline only gets me home a week before Christmas, the road name jumps out. I switch to the map app and swallow a growl.
A feature on a retired Formula One driver. I’ve been put on ice, and this profile is the holding cell. It isn’t the man or the sport that bothers me. It’s the fact that I’m on a desolate road in Montana while the paper’s legal team in LA plays poker with a pharmaceutical giant.
The Trintol story is everything, and right now, it’s a bargaining chip in a boardroom. My only connection to the negotiations is Toby, and if I want to stay in his good graces—and keep my story on the printing press—I can’t pester him for updates.
My phone lights up, Jimmy Eat World’s “The Middle” filtering through the speakers. I swipe to answer, and the interior of the car fills with the sound of my sister’s voice and a sense of home washes over me.
“Buffy, help me.” I drop my forehead to the steering wheel, the plastic cool against my skin.
“What’s wrong?” Her concern pulses through the line. “Did you speak to Toby? I meant to call the other night, but Palmer surprised me with a little getaway before he left on business.”
“Aww, that’s sweet. Don’t sweat it.” I lift my head and stare at the road. “I’m still in a holding pattern.”
“What happened, G?”
Elizabeth Buchanan—now Murdoch—is nothing if not caring. My fingers tap a restless, jagged beat against the wheel as I look at the on-screen map. The exit for Winslow Grove sits several miles behind me. I missed the turn ten minutes ago.
“The bastards sent a cease and desist.”
She releases a wicked cackle. “Oh my god, you got them. Isn’t that exactly what this means?”
I huff out a dry, futile laugh. “I wish. I mean, sure, Vitale is definitely nervous.”
Toby would have my head if he knew I’d breathed a word about Trintol to anyone outside of him and the legal department. But months ago, in a moment of sheer frustration and weakness, I let it slip.
No surprise, Buffy pressed for every detail, and truthfully, I needed to tell her. My sister and Morgan—the woman who was with our brother when he died—are the only ones who understand the significance.
“So, what does this mean?”
“Nothing.” I blow out a puff of air, the sound echoing in the quiet cabin of the rental. I can’t rehash the Toby/Wickes conversation. It doesn’t help with the acceptance I’m supposed to be practicing. “I’ve been told to sit tight. Nothing I can’t handle. What’s up with you?”
“Oh, hon. Listen, I’m having margaritas and tacos, and I wish you were here.” Her smile comes through the line—soft and fizzy—and it loosens the knot in my chest.
The corners of my mouth lift for the first time since I landed. “Me, too.”
“Then come early. Now. Today. Don’t wait till Thanksgiving.” Hope lifts her voice an octave. “There’s nothing keeping you there.”
Shit. Thanksgiving.
“I wish...” The words scratch my throat. “If I could...” I guide the car back onto the empty road, gravel spitting against the wheel wells as I find the pavement.
“But it’s a no?” Confusion colors her tone, followed by that quiet disappointment she’d never admit to. “Why? You’re still coming for Thanksgiving, right?”
Buffy and I have always been close—fraternal twins, shared a womb, matching origin story—but she lives across the country now with her husband, Palmer, a golden retriever in human form.
She ran from Los Angeles the second he dangled New York as an escape. She needed distance from our parents and Palmer knew it.
“I’ve been given an in-depth feature assignment.”
She squeals. “Grace, that’s great!”
“No, it isn’t. This means I won’t be there for Thanksgiving.”
“What? No.”
I cringe at her whining tone. “Buffy, I’m sorry. They’re treating Trintol like a biohazard. If I stay here and play nice with a retired race car driver, Toby might—might—let me publish. At least if the pharma lawyers don’t buy the paper out from under us first.”
“Grace, where is here?”
“Um, I’m doing a sports feature on a retired Formula One driver, and I’m in Montana. Where he lives.”
“Montana? No.” Her sympathy wraps around the line like a blanket.
“I’ll be here for six weeks.”
“Oh, G…” She sighs, a long, heavy exhale that crackles through the speaker.
“Are you sure you need to put yourself through this? I know Trintol would be a huge story. Probably the biggest of your career, and I get why you’re white knuckling it.
” She pauses, and I can hear her shifting on the other end, likely pacing her kitchen.
“But I also know why you’re really doing it. ”
“It’s a story that needs to be told.” My grip tightens on the steering wheel. “People are getting hurt. The same way Cary—”
“Cary is gone, Grace.” Though the words are quiet, they carry a physical weight. “The man who did it is behind bars. He’s never seeing the sun again. You’ve already won that fight.”
“It doesn’t feel like a win. It feels like a trade-off.”
“Listen to me.” I can almost see her leaning into the phone, brow furrowed.
“Cary wouldn’t want this for you. He wouldn’t want you spending the rest of your life trying to right a wrong that can’t be undone, even by chasing every corporate villain in the country.
He knew you loved him. He’d want you to live in the world, not rid the rot from it. He’d want you to be happy.”
I stare at the horizon, where the mountains turn into jagged black silhouettes against a purple sky. My throat tightens with the kind of ache no amount of professional success ever quite dulls.
“I’m doing my job, Buf.”
“No, you’re trying to save a brother who’s already at peace. Just... try to breathe out there, okay? Even if only for six weeks.” Her voice cracks, and pressure builds behind my sternum.
I swallow hard, forcing the lump down where it can’t get any traction and blink back the gathering tears. “Yeah. Well… enough about me. How’s Palmer?”
“He’s in Arizona. Back tomorrow.” She launches into a lively rundown of his latest client, her voice warm, clearly indicating she’s letting me off the hook. For now.
I sigh, gaze narrowing on the upcoming turn. When Winslow Grove High School appears through the trees, I pull in, cutting across the quiet parking lot.
“Buffy, I have to go. I’m here for the first interview.”
“Oh, okay, but wait—” A loud slurp echoes through the line, likely the bottom of her margarita. “Who is it?”
“Maddox Hartley.” I shift the car into park and wait for the fallout.
Her gasp is instant. “Oh my god. The Mad One. Grace, I’m so jealous. That man is seriously hot and one of the best drivers the sport has ever had. I cried when he announced his retirement. I still don’t understand why he quit. He’s young, he was winning—”
If I let her go on, she’ll talk until I hit retirement age. “That’s what I intend to find out.”
Last night, between running laundry cycles and shoving clothes into a suitcase, I did homework.
I watched a few races and interviews, reviewed his sponsorship deals, and forced myself to read the polished press release about his retirement.
None of it answered the real question: Why does a man at the top of his sport walk away?
“Um, Grace…” Her voice dips into sisterly hesitation.
“Yes, Buffy. I will.” As I get out of the car, crisp fall air encompasses me, cool and grounding.
“You’ll what? I didn’t say anything.”
“Oh, please. I’ll get you an autograph.”
She hollers, delighted, and I end the call while she’s still riding the high. A small smile tugs at my mouth as I walk across the parking lot and head inside.
In the aftermath of Cary’s death, Buffy and I clung to each other. The only person who knew what it felt like to still be standing when he wasn’t. I buried myself in work and she was the one thing that kept me tethered.
Then, two and a half years after his death, I lost her too—to a husband, to a different life, to another coast. I tried not to take her move personally.
She was also grieving, and at least I had work.
Outside of me and Palmer, Buf didn’t have much else.
The charity she’d built with Cary lost its shape without him, and so did she.
And then there were our parents. They’re unbearable on a good day.
After Cary died, they became more watchful, more controlling—always in our faces, always too close, like losing him gave them reason to tighten their grip on what was left.
It would have been understandable if they’d been loving, caring parents.
Grief does strange things. But they weren’t.
Their attention was about optics and appearances, and it became something closer to torture.
Since New York, Buffy’s found a way to keep his memory without drowning in it. I haven’t. I poured the anger into work but some of it was reserved for my parents. When they got to be too much, I set firm boundaries and kept my distance. Buffy’s too kind for that. She needed a literal out.