Chapter 15
Mack received the text ten minutes after she got to the garage the next morning, and she immediately headed for the pedestrian entrance of Gasoline Alley. She’d barely rounded the corner when she saw Wes, Billie, and a bouncing Shaw waving like she’d been gone for two years instead of two weeks.
“Mama! Mama!”
Mack had Shaw in her arms faster than any car she’d ever driven. Holding her daughter made the anxiety of the last few days melt away, at least for a moment. She looked Shaw over, finding her daughter both exactly the same and yet changed as time took away her childhood second by second.
“I love you, I love you, I love you,” Mack murmured into Shaw’s soft hair.
Not once since her horrible decision to let Shaw stay with Kelley had she spent a night away from her daughter, and even though Mack had craved space and time to herself, she felt like things were clicking back into place now that she held Shaw in her arms again.
Shaw grounded her without even trying, the soft embrace of her warm little body and the familiar scent of lotion and chewing gum.
“Mama! Don’t smear my face paint!” Mack pulled back enough to see Shaw’s cheeks flanked with black-and-white checkered flags.
Her blond hair was twisted in a complicated braid that circled her head, and tiny race car earrings dangled from her lobes.
Shaw preened at the attention. “Billie helped me look fancy! And she made us all outfits. Look!”
Sure enough, the three of them were all wearing royal blue T-shirts with Mack Williams #11 emblazoned in bright white font.
Wes and Shaw wore matching checkered-flag bandannas around their necks and Billie wore a checkered-flag headband.
Wes leaned heavily on his cane, tears bubbling in the creases of his eyes even as he grinned wider than Mack had seen in years.
It was a familiar smile, the one that said, that’s my girl.
She’d forgotten that he used to look at her like that night after night when she’d won under the lights, and it nearly broke her.
Mack rubbed at her mouth to hide the wobble in her lip.
These people had such faith in her and she couldn’t even find two-twenty on track.
She pulled her aviators out of her hair and plopped them over her watery eyes. If she started crying now, she might not stop until the entire month of May was over. Undeterred, Wes pulled her in for a bear hug. “You’re finally here, Spec. I knew it. I always knew it.”
The thick tenor of her own voice made her feel naked. “You look good, Daddy.”
Billie rubbed Wes’s back in circles, looking at him like he’d just come home from war. “Healthy eating and exercise are miracle drugs. We’ve been working hard to build up strength to cheer for”—she paused and directed her voice up toward the heavens—“Mack Williams, number eleven!”
Wes beamed at Billie but Mack’s cheeks flamed with mortification.
What if everyone in the garage overheard and thought she was full of herself when in reality she was so slow she would never make the field?
Her breakfast swirled in her stomach and she looked around to see if anyone was looking their way.
“Goddamn! The Indy 500. Sure wish I had a beer to celebrate.”
Her dad loved a morning beer, loved a track beer, and his true love in life was probably a beer at the track in the morning, but Mack saw no cooler in sight. “You didn’t bring any?”
Wes shook his head. “This keto diet Billie’s got me on is no carbs. ’Specially not the boozy ones.”
“Not one seizure in two weeks!” Billie beamed. “We’re finally on the right track with your diet and exercise, aren’t we, baby? No more food from a box and no more moping around the house.”
Mack flinched, thinking of her go-to meals. Boxes galore. She knew nothing about keto or supplements or any of the other crap Billie went on and on about. She swallowed and looked behind Wes. “Where’s Laurie?”
Wes waved a careless hand. “She said she’d meet us here. Something about work.”
Mack frowned. “I only gave you one parking pass.”
“Something tells me your sister don’t mind pissing away twenty dollars on parking.
” The Speedway charged a hefty fee for the grass parking lots immediately outside the track, and getting out could take hours on race day.
As kids, Laurie and Mack begged Wes to park closer to the track, but he always insisted on parking—for free—over a mile away in a residential neighborhood.
“It was twelve dollars.”
Laurie appeared from behind, seemingly materializing out of thin air, wearing a creamy pencil skirt and matching button-down. Laurie’s face was inscrutable but Wes put his free hand over his heart. Mack watched as her dad swallowed thickly and held out his arms.
“Hi.” Laurie gave her father a full up-and-down perusal before letting herself step into his embrace. To anyone else, Laurie looked cool and calm but Mack could see the faint quiver of her chin over Wes’s shoulder.
Her sister visited Haubstadt a trio of times since she left for college: once after Wes was injured and twice on Shaw’s birthday, each visit successively shorter and more tense.
Four years had passed since her father and sister had been within handshake distance.
Shaw, oblivious to the emotional soup, slammed into Laurie, heedless of her face paint and glitter rubbing all over Laurie’s clothes.
Uncaring, Laurie lifted up Shaw and held her like a baby koala.
Her sister was flaky when it came to her adult family, but she never missed a weekly FaceTime with her niece. Kids were magic like that.
“Shaw-Shaw! Who said you could grow so tall?”
“Hey there, Laurie! I’ve been dying to meet Wes’s brilliant lawyer daughter!
” Billie drawled. She pulled Laurie, who was still holding Shaw, into a perfume-laced embrace.
How very Billie to hug and coo and gush over someone she just met.
She fawned over Laurie’s sleek hair and perfect lip liner before pulling a bright blue shirt out of her giant tote bag.
“I had to guess on the size but I think it will work. I have extras in the RV if this is too big.”
Mack and Laurie spoke at the same time. “RV?”
Wes flashed a shit-eating grin at the same time Shaw began babbling.
“Pawpaw and Billie got one of those big houses on wheels! The steering wheel is bigger than a tire and Billie drove it on all the twisty roads while me and Pawpaw sat in the back and played cards. It’s got beds and a fridge and a potty and everything! ”
Wes pulled Billie into his side and she gave him a quick peck on the cheek. She was so . . . tactile. Mack wanted to wipe away the splotch of bright lipstick that clung to her dad’s scruffy cheek.
“Finally got me a good woman and an RV. Me and Billie wanna travel the country. Grand Canyon, Florida, even up where you were in Washington, DC.” He nodded at Laurie. “Got a good deal and jumped on it.”
A good deal? Mack’s mind snagged. They had no savings.
Wes’s health needs had taken most of their collective winnings, and Mack had used the last of her Eldora purse to keep the track afloat during the pandemic.
Their track was solvent, but barely. If her dad put a second mortgage on the track, they’d have to work to pay it off until Shaw was drawing social security.
“How can you run the track if you’re bouncing around the country in a motor home?
And what about your doctors’ appointments? ”
Wes waved his free hand in the air, brushing off her concerns. “Telehealth! I sure wish we’d had something like this when you girls was small. And this rig is fancy as hell. Nothing like the one we had when you girls was kids. I don’t have to sleep on the couch no more.”
He laughed it off, but Mack remembered how he’d slept on the small kitchen bench that folded into a makeshift bed so she and Laurie could share the one mattress in their small camper.
She met her sister’s eyes and knew Laurie was remembering it, too.
Mack had to physically bite her cheek to keep from asking how he could afford an RV when they were early in the dirt track season and unexpected repairs would inevitably slap them in the face.
She knew questioning her dad on finances would lead to a shouting match, and she wasn’t going to do that in Gasoline Alley.
“Mama,” Shaw tugged at her elbow. “When do we get to meet Leo Raisman? I want him to sign my model car from last year.”
A mortifying heat crept up Mack’s face and she couldn’t bring herself to look in Laurie’s direction.
Her sister set Shaw down on the ground. “Your mama needs to get back to the garage now. Practice starts in twenty minutes and she’s not even in her gear.”
At least one thing hadn’t changed in the last sixteen years: Laurie always did know how to bail Mack out of a jam.
Mack glanced over her shoulder and waved one more time as she walked away, both wanting to stay with them and wishing she were at the track alone.
As she pulled on her gear in the garage, she tried to push away all thoughts of RVs, Billie’s lipstick on her dad’s cheek, Shaw, and her father and sister side by side for the first time in years.