Chapter 3
Janet gestured toward the lumpy patch of gravel connecting the corrugated metal garages and the main grandstand, then turned and marched up the path without waiting.
Mack followed, her mind churning. Why the hell did someone like Janet Joyner want to talk to her?
At midnight? At a dirt track in the middle of nowhere Indiana?
Mack once dreamed about talking with the woman she’d hero-worshipped, had even thought she’d earned it, but that was a long time ago and her life was a far cry from racing stars and heroes now.
She was dead on her feet, dirty, and so hungry her stomach stopped growling hours ago.
She trudged after Janet, wondering if maybe she was already home in her bed, having a bizarre dream.
Janet waited until Mack caught up, no easy feat when Janet stood at least a foot taller than Mack’s five feet even. “Your dad never mentioned me?”
The smell of wet spring grass rose up as their feet crushed the stubborn shoots that pushed through the gravel.
Mack made a mental note to spray herbicide, and immediately decided against it.
Crappy for the environment and crappy for her budget.
The grass would be dead by the third or fourth weekend of the hot Hoosier summer anyway.
She exhaled heavily, finally understanding the woman’s presence. “Oh.” She tried to keep her voice casual and kind. “No, sorry. My dad’s had a lot of girlfriends.”
Her dad dated women the way he’d once smoked cigarettes—any brand, no loyalty. Mack had seen dozens of girlfriends come and go, and she saw it as a kindness to warn any woman that got involved with Wes Williams not to get too comfortable because he’d change the sheets tomorrow.
Janet threw her head back and laughed heartily, her voice both husky and loud. “I was never one of your dad’s girls. But I knew him in his skirt-chasing days. We weren’t close enough to stay in touch after his accident.”
Mack closed her eyes against the memory of almost losing the only parent she’d ever had.
Wes was more than her father, he was her best friend, her coach, a beloved grandpa to Shaw, and the only person who’d ever really understood Mack.
She’d thought she and her sister were close, but turned out that Laurie didn’t care much about who Mack was at all.
“So y’all raced together?”
“A bit. I didn’t stay in dirt long. Always had bigger plans.”
Unconsciously, Mack murmured a tone of agreement. She’d had bigger plans, too.
Janet’s smile fell, and she blatantly studied Mack. She didn’t seem like the type to care about dirt and sweat, but Mack swiped a hand over her face anyway.
“You race often, Mack?”
Mack rubbed at the grass with her boot, kicking up more of the spring fragrance. “Nope. Subbing for a friend.”
“Hmm. I met a little girl at the concession stand who told me her mama was racing tonight. She yours?”
They’d reached the dark area between the garages and the grandstand, and Mack could no longer make out the features of Janet’s face.
She walked a few feet over to the large chain-link fence bordering the parking lot and leaned back against it, facing the racetrack.
It was nice like this, quiet and empty. “Yeah. Shaw’s my daughter. ”
“I figured. She’s got that wide Williams mouth.” Mack squinted at Janet through the dim light but could barely make out the line of her profile. “Cute name.”
Mack nodded, wondering if Janet could guess that she’d named her daughter after the famous three-time winner of the Indianapolis 500, Wilbur Shaw, who’d also saved the famed Speedway from becoming a housing development in the 1940s.
She’d stared down at her newborn daughter and wanted a name that made her feel hope, not the desolation she’d actually felt in that moment.
“I’m surprised you don’t still do winged sprints. I know you’ve got the kid, but you could run races in the Midwest.”
Mack cracked her neck from side to side and lifted her waist-length ponytail off her sweaty neck.
She was too tired to come up with a lie.
“We sold the car during a rough patch. 2020 nearly did us in.” It broke her heart to sell that car.
She’d won so many races and had some of the best moments of her life in that machine, and selling it felt like the final death blow to her racing career.
But the car was just an excuse; even if she still had the sprint, she couldn’t race and keep everything going.
Mack’s shoulders sagged with fatigue. She should get Shaw home and tucked into bed. Hero or not, Janet needed to get to the point. “Ms. Joyner—”
“Janet.”
“Um, okay. It really is nice to meet you. You were my hero as a kid.” Mack looked down at her feet, mortified that she’d said it out loud but too tired to be anything less than honest. “It’s late and I need to get my daughter home. Did you need something from me? Or . . . want to talk to Wes?”
The older woman stepped away from the fence and faced Mack. She looked at Mack for an awkwardly long time, then seemed to come to a decision. “You ever think about the Indy 500?”
Mack startled. How could she ever forget it? The question confused her. “We watch it every year. Your driver Leo Raisman is my daughter’s favorite.”
Janet shook her head impatiently. “No. Do you ever think about racing in the Indy 500?”
Mack’s skin flushed, quick and hot, at the shameful memory of her long-ago dreams. She didn’t think about racing in the Indy 500, she dreamed about it.
She relaxed the tightness in her throat before answering in what she hoped was a cool, unaffected voice. “Uh, not really.”
“Hmm. That’s a shame. I came here to see if you wanted to qualify for this year’s race.”
Around Mack, the air froze and her senses shut down. The darkness covered her eyes completely, and the smell of the grass and motor oil receded.
The Indianapolis 500—one of the most storied car races in the world—had been her dream for twenty years until she ruthlessly made herself excise it.
Except she hadn’t. Not entirely.
During the day, Mack was consumed by her to-do list—making pediatrician appointments, fixing the ancient washing machine, painting the track grandstand—running ragged, too busy to remember any part of herself that still had racing ambitions.
She even felt content at times, proud of the stability she’d built for her small family.
But at night, her traitorous brain reminded her of what she’d once spent every moment working toward: being the first woman to win the most famous car race in the world.
Try as she might, she could not work that dream out of her mind.
Behind them, a small voice called out. “Mama, can we go now?”
Mack straightened and held up a finger once more. “Be right there!” she called back, her voice shrill and overloud. She stayed facing the distant figure of Shaw, trying to focus. She was so tired that she’d imagined that Janet Joyner had asked her to drive in the Indy 500.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I kinda spaced out there for a minute. It’s been a long night. What was it that you said you wanted?”
“I’m entering a second car into the race this year. I want you to drive that car.” Janet’s face was still unreadable in the darkness. “Call me crazy, but I don’t think your racing days are over.”
“You are fucking crazy.”
“Probably,” Janet conceded, a cluster of small wrinkles formed around her wry mouth.
“I know your history, and I know what I saw out there tonight. You went from last to fourth in a B-feature heat. One more lap and you’d have had first.” She paused and lifted her hands in a lackadaisical gesture.
“But if you’re not interested, I can find a hundred other people who are. ”
Ten years had passed since Mack raced at an elite level.
Janet was right: There were dozens of young drivers, all of them more prepared than she currently was, hustling to find a ride with an IndyCar team.
She could fill the grandstands full of talented drivers who didn’t have the baggage of a kid, a father who needed full-time care, and a struggling family business.
Those were the people who got IndyCar rides, not washed-up single moms who drove carpool and watched the Indy 500 from the sofa.
“I’m not giving you anything for free,” Janet said. “I’m offering you the seat, but you’ll have to find sponsorship like any other driver. Offer is open for twenty-four hours. Qualifying starts in less than a month and there’s a shit ton to do.”
Janet held out a paper rectangle. A dormant surge of hope flooded Mack’s nervous system and her breath quickened with the possibility that the offer was real.
She pictured herself standing on the dais at Indianapolis, waving to three hundred thousand fans before rocketing down the track at two hundred miles per hour.
She hated how she wanted to believe Janet, hated the pinprick of optimism puncturing her usual pragmatism.
Wanting something you couldn’t have was a weakness, and Mack didn’t indulge in worthless wishes.
She held her hands in tight fists at her sides.
Frowning, Janet grabbed Mack’s hand, slammed the card into her palm, and strode off toward the back of the parking lot.
Mack closed her eyes and tried to calm her breathing.
“Wait!” The word escaped her mouth without her brain approving the message. Janet stopped and turned back, but Mack panicked, scared of her own longings. “Why me? I haven’t really raced in . . . a while.”
In the darkness, Janet’s expression was opaque, and she stood without speaking for so long that Mack thought she wasn’t going to answer. “I’m finally able to fund a second car. I want a woman in that car.”
“But why me?”
Janet muttered something that sounded like “Fucking millennials, always needing a gold star” as she walked back toward Mack.
“I remember you from when you were younger. At first I watched you because you were Wes’s girl, but then I watched because I couldn’t look away.
You had that fire. Anyone who watched you knew you were something special.
And I saw you out there tonight. You had no business gunning for the front but you drove like you still had something to prove.
” She glanced down at her feet, seeming to search for words.
Finally she said, “Janet Joyner Racing isn’t the biggest team at Indy and I don’t have the time or cash to fuck around.
I want someone who will fight for the front even when they’re ten laps down, and that’s what I see in you. I saw it then and I still see it now.”
Mack’s skin was clammy even though her insides were on fire.
She squeezed her eyes shut and shivered in the cool spring air.
Was she really still that person? That part of her felt, if not dead, buried under the crush of her daily responsibilities.
For nearly a decade, she’d transformed herself from Mack Williams, fastest woman on four wheels into Mack Williams, quietest woman in the carpool lane.
How could a stranger see fire in her when all Mack saw was ash?
When she opened her eyes, Janet was gone.