Chapter 6
Wes always said country was country and city was city, no matter the place, and Mack felt the truth of those words as she stood in the foyer of her sister’s downtown Indianapolis condo.
The warm oak floors, soft white palette, and wall of windows in her sister’s twenty-second-floor condo seemed closer to Manhattan than the wood paneling and shag carpeting in her Haubstadt house.
Mack looked down at her feet to make sure her worn sneakers were free of dirt, and toed them off just in case.
“You can come all the way in.” Laurie impatiently gestured her inside.
“Your place is nice,” Mack said as she studied the home her sister had made.
Everything was neutral: A white upholstered chair and white linen couch sat upon a pristine jute rug, beige linen chairs flanked a large whitewashed trestle table, and Mack could see through to the equally colorless kitchen.
Shaw could ruin this place in less than thirty seconds.
“Thanks. Are you hungry? Thirsty?” Even in the comfort of her own home, her sister wore a crisp shirtdress and gold jewelry.
“No, I’m good.” Mack patted her messy braid, suddenly feeling childish in her ancient Wes Williams #88 airbrushed sweatshirt and cutoff jean shorts.
Thirty years old and still Mack felt coarse and plain—too short and too much of the Williams chin—next to her sophisticated older sister.
She’d somehow forgotten what a knockout Laurie was, with her dark glossy hair and ridiculously long legs.
Once they’d hit puberty, the adults around them couldn’t stop pointing out their differences.
My god, Laurie, you could be the next Cindy Crawford!
And Mack, you look so much like your dad.
Their mother died two days after Mack’s birth and left no information about the father of her four-year-old daughter, Laurie.
Without much thought, Wes brought Mack home, adopted Laurie, and went from a rowdy bachelor to the parent of two young girls overnight.
From the start, Laurie was physically the odd person out, tall and warm-toned and beautiful even as a child, where Mack and Wes were short and solid with wild tangles of wavy hair.
It wasn’t until she was older, and Laurie was long gone, that Mack realized Laurie probably never heard these comments as compliments, only speculation on their parentage.
“God, this is awkward,” Laurie said with a tense laugh. “At least get out of the entryway. Are you sure you don’t want a drink?”
Without waiting for an answer, Laurie went to the kitchen and began reaching for glasses.
Mack perched on a clear stool at the white marble island.
Her sister placed a glass of ice water in front of Mack and then poured herself a large glass of red wine.
A tender pain of familiarity tugged at her belly that Laurie remembered Mack never drank wine.
Then again, she was the only witness to thirteen-year-old Mack’s disastrous Boone’s Farm incident.
The room was so austere that sounds echoed off the marble, and they both jumped when Mack cleared her throat. “Um . . . thank you. I couldn’t have done this without you . . .” Mack gestured vaguely in Laurie’s direction instead of finishing with I can’t believe you said yes.
Laurie took a gulp of her wine before clinking the glass down on the counter. “Geezus, Mack. What were you going to do, come to Indianapolis and not stay with me?”
A thousand different defenses bloomed at Mack’s lips but she chose the most honest one. “I didn’t know if you’d want me in your space.”
“I have never not wanted you in my space.” Laurie huffed out a breath and swiped her hand across the counter, searching for imaginary crumbs. “But I couldn’t stay in that place.”
Mack frowned. They’d mostly lived in a pull-behind trailer attached to the same old Bronco Mack drove today, and the sisters only had each other for company while Wes chased checkered flags across the country.
He’d give Laurie a ten-dollar bill and instructions to stay away from strangers, and they’d stuff their bellies full of hot dogs and soda and somehow not get abducted.
Laurie made it clear she hated the dirty, noisy tracks but never left Mack’s side, always there to fix whatever trouble Mack got herself into.
They came home to the house in Haubstadt and attended school just enough for the girls not to get sent to the county truancy office.
They’d been happy, Mack thought. She was fourteen when she’d made the podium in Kansas and come home to find Laurie clutching a giant envelope and crying; she’d been accepted to Georgetown.
Neither Mack nor Wes had any idea Laurie had such ambitions.
She left that summer for college, then stayed gone for the last sixteen years.
“Uh, am I keeping you from anything? You don’t have to babysit me. I need to get to bed anyway. Early morning tomorrow.”
Laurie twisted her wineglass on the counter. Her short fingernails were perfectly shellacked with neutral polish. She shrugged. “Not really. I’m working on a brief for a senior partner. I should let an associate do it but these recent grads are worthless. I can finish it later.”
Her sister had always been smarter than most of the adults they knew. Mack was grateful that racing came to her easily because school had not only been difficult, it had been downright embarrassing next to Laurie’s straight A’s. “I don’t even know what you do, to be honest.”
Laurie leaned forward to rest her forearms on the counter, still twisting the wineglass between her fingers. “I’m in mergers and acquisitions. Basically, I help corporations make money and avoid taxes. A keeper of capitalism.”
She’d always assumed Laurie loved her job—she used work as her excuse to avoid coming home—but her sister didn’t sound very enthusiastic. “But you like being a lawyer?”
Laurie sighed. “Firm culture is extremely competitive and the majority of my clients are spoiled megalomaniacs. Mostly white boomer dudes who’ve never been told no and still struggle to take a woman’s brain seriously.
It’s intellectually stimulating work but .
. .” She shrugged and the silence stretched between them.
“But the money is good.” Mack nodded toward the expensive stainless steel appliances. Laurie glanced around as if she’d just noticed them herself.
“It would be even better if I didn’t have so many student loans, but it’s nothing to sneeze at.
They call them golden handcuffs for a reason.
” Mack’s brows rose in surprise. She never once thought about how her sister paid for college and law school, but of course she’d had to take out loans.
It wasn’t like Wes had any money saved for education.
For the first time since Laurie had left, Mack felt sympathy for her, and a little guilt.
She’d had to make it on her own without any support, unlike Mack, who’d always had Wes by her side.
As if Laurie had heard her thoughts, she drained her wineglass and asked, “How’s Dad? ”
“Good. Hasn’t had a seizure in a few months.”
Laurie waggled her fingers in a tell me more motion, and irritation killed Mack’s moment of empathy. If Laurie wanted to know about their dad, she could call him herself.
“He’s still with Billie?” Laurie prompted. “She seems sweet. Texts me pictures of Wes and Shaw.”
Mack pulled a face.
“You don’t like her because . . . ?”
It was annoying how well her sister could read her, especially because Mack didn’t know a damn thing about Laurie anymore.
She hated that Laurie could turn her into a petulant younger sister in less than ten minutes.
“Her perfume is aggressively floral. She makes something called ‘maca powder pancakes’ that taste like sawdust. She owns an alarming number of robes with feathers. Obnoxiously cheerful. So not Dad’s type. ”
“His usual type is there for one night only.”
Mack huffed but couldn’t find the right words. She didn’t know how to say that with Billie always around, Mack felt lonelier than ever in her own house. So she went for common ground.
“Yeah, well, you’re not there to see them drool over each other. Dad practically pants when she’s around.”
“Ugh. Wes is pathetic around women.”
They shared a smile, and then an awkward silence filled the kitchen, neither of them good at pointless chitchat.
In the quiet, Mack thought about Shaw. It had been unnervingly simple to scrape together a plan for the next few weeks.
Mack may not buy into Billie’s long-term commitment, but even she could admit that her daughter would be safe and well cared for, and Shaw seemed more excited to ride to school in Billie’s convertible than sad about her mother’s departure.
Mack spent two days prepaying bills, making event schedules and extra keys, and reminding her dad where they stored spare parts.
In the end, the ease with which she left her life behind scared her.
“How are you feeling about it?” Laurie asked after she’d washed, dried, and put away both of their glasses.
Still thinking about her daughter, Mack said, “Leaving home was hard. I can’t believe I left Shaw. And Dad. And if—”
“Shaw and Dad will be fine,” Laurie interrupted. “It’s about time you got out of Haubstadt anyway.”
Mack rolled her eyes. Laurie was such a snob, always making snide comments about Mack’s small-town life. Just because she hadn’t run off to a big city didn’t mean her life wasn’t real.
“How would you know anything about what my dad and daughter need?” Mack snapped.
Laurie’s olive cheeks flushed, and she straightened the already perfect alignment of dish soap, hand soap, and scrub brush by the sink.
Instantly, Mack felt guilty. Hadn’t she spent her whole life convincing Laurie that Wes was their dad?
That DNA didn’t matter; it mattered who had raised them?
Her sister could be an elitist but Mack truly believed Laurie was her full sister in every sense of the word.
So why did Laurie always bring out the worst in her?
“I’m sorry—”
“Well, you’re here now so best to focus on that,” Laurie said, her face implacable. “What’s the plan for tomorrow?” Behind her, the fading afternoon light flooded the kitchen and reflected off the shiny surfaces.
Ashamed, Mack let Laurie make the pivot.
“Tomorrow I go to the shop and get fitted for a seat, learn the basics of the car controls, and meet the team. Friday, I try out the car at the Speedway. If it goes well, I can do my rookie test the same day. If I pass . . .” She trailed off, not willing to let herself imagine the moment when she received a special license to qualify and run the Indy 500.
“A week of learning the car on a simulator and trying to find a sponsor, then four days of practice before qualification starts.”
The achievement of a lifetime, all boiled down to a handful of days in the car.
Laurie reached out and squeezed Mack’s hand. She was embarrassed by how much she wanted the physical contact to continue. Other than a hug from Shaw, Mack couldn’t remember the last time anyone touched her. She’d grown used to being lonely but her body had not.
Mack’s inner child wanted to keep hold of Laurie’s hand and confess the cluster of emotions bouncing through her mind: nervousness, impostor syndrome, hope. But it was the last one that terrified Adult Mack.
Her own yearning was shameful. The minute Janet put that crisp card in her hand, Mack’s own hands throbbed with desire for a tight steering wheel and a twin turbo V-6 at her back.
She shouldn’t want that. She should care about what she was doing to her daughter, her father, her family business.
She wasn’t only nervous about learning the car and making the race—she was terrified she’d fall in love with it and forget the little girl who waited at home for her, forget the father who’d given her everything.
She was scared shitless by how very much she wanted the Indy 500, afraid of what she’d do once she got a taste of the life she’d missed out on.
She was afraid she’d want to stay.
Years ago, she might have told Laurie all those things, but now she pulled back her hand.