Chapter 30
Mack tuned out the rest of the announcement over the PA and leaned against the side of the RV, trying to stanch her tears before going inside.
She was happy for Leo. He deserved nothing less than the success he was having this year.
She wanted the best for him. But she couldn’t stop wanting success for herself, too.
Tomorrow, he would compete for the pole position while Mack would be back in Haubstadt sorting through whatever paperwork mess Wes had left for her.
She took several deep breaths, not wanting Wes and Shaw to see the depth of her heartbreak. She was in no mood for people, but the RV was her ride home.
Home. If only she could muster up some excitement over that word.
Mack pulled her phone out of her bra, hoping her sister had at least texted. No messages from Laurie, but one terrifying email from Kelley. She scanned it quickly, then read it again and again, the words calling back her depleted adrenaline.
She’d been terrified ever since that day DCS had showed up at her home that this moment would come.
She was going to lose Shaw.
She dropped her phone and put her head between her legs as her endocrine system pushed sweat through every pore in her body. She could smell her own fear. A strange, loud wail came out of her body and she shoved her fist in her mouth to stop it.
She couldn’t do this right now. Kelley and his email could wait until she was home, where she could think and breathe and figure her shit out.
Indianapolis had been a worthless interlude, and now she needed to go home and face her life, her real life, head-on.
Still in her sweaty coveralls and driving boots, standing in the itchy grass outside her father’s RV, she couldn’t think.
She yanked open the door and stomped up the steps. “Let’s go. Now.”
Wes and Shaw sat at the dining table playing War. Mack swore it was the same banged-up deck of cards she and Laurie played with as kids, with the two mismatched cards they’d stolen from a mechanic in Illinois. Her breath stuttered at the sight of her daughter.
“Mama!” Shaw flung herself into Mack’s arms before she’d finished stepping up into the vehicle, and Mack pulled her in tightly, even when the contact jarred her hurt hand.
How could she keep her daughter safe if she was an ocean away?
Shaw pointed to her hand of cards. “I’m winning,” she announced proudly.
“Of course you are,” Mack said, refusing to let go of Shaw’s light and warmth. How could she live without this?
Billie poked her head out of the bedroom as Mack finally released Shaw.
Of all the shit today, Billie’s current outfit might be the biggest shocker and that was really saying something considering she’d recently face-planted into a concrete wall at two hundred miles per hour.
Billie wore a knee-length satin nightgown, cheetah print with hot-pink lace trim, under a long black cardigan.
Fuchsia fuzzy slippers swallowed her feet and her hair was still perfectly curled in an intricate updo.
The corners of her eyes crinkled when Mack’s eyes finally traveled back up to Billie’s face.
“Best part of RV life is that you can drive in your jammies! Now sit down and I’ll get you over to Laurie’s.
I bet you want a shower something fierce. ”
“I want to go home,” Mack said again, her voice cracking on the final word. She opened the refrigerator, then closed it. “To Haubstadt. Now.”
Billie shot a look at Wes and something passed between them that made Mack feel sick. She could not deal with their lovey-dovey shit right now.
“Why don’t you sit down for a minute, hon. I got a natural electrolyte drink for you to try. Do you want orange or passion fruit?”
She did not want to be coddled or comforted or taken care of, she did not need the mother-she’d-never-had act, and she sure as shit did not want a gross hippie drink.
All she wanted was a ride home. Mack thumped her good hand on the refrigerator door, trying but unable to contain the emotional hodgepodge burning through her insides.
“I don’t want your fucking drink, I want to go home,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Swear jar!” Shaw said with all the seriousness of a child hearing curse words.
Wes laid down his cards and flicked another look at Billie.
“Shaw, honey,” Billie said. “Pawpaw’s a sore loser. How ’bout some TV time in Pawpaw and Billie’s room? There’s that new mermaid movie.”
Cards scattered as her daughter happily skipped to the back bedroom, Billie following behind her.
Mack fought the urge to make Shaw return just so she could see her and know that she was, for now, still here.
She sat down gingerly in the warm spot left by her daughter and tried not to cry as she unzipped her coveralls, tied the sleeves around her waist, and peeled off her undershirt.
She’d left her gear bag in her rush to escape the garage, and she mourned the loss of the blue helmet Janet had made for her, even though it would have joined her old helmet on the shelf to gather dust.
“You feeling okay? Sure you didn’t get your bell rung?” Wes asked, studying her closely.
“Fine.” In the silence of Shaw’s departure, Mack realized the RV was too empty. “Where’s Laurie? And Kelley?”
Wes sneered. “Who knows where Fuck Face went. He took off not long after your wreck. Didn’t even say goodbye to Shaw.
” How very like Kelley to forget his actual daughter in his rush to sue her for custody.
She bit down on her lip to keep another one of those pitiful wails from coming out.
She didn’t want to talk to Wes about Kelley; saying it out loud would make it real.
“Your sister had an emergency at work or something.”
There was no reason for Laurie to have stayed, except Mack wished she had.
They’d spent enough time together in the past few weeks for Mack to remember the way her smart, sharp, big sister used to help her laugh the pain away.
Maybe Laurie was looking forward to having her apartment back to herself, was excited to be away from the drama Mack dragged along with her wherever she went.
She couldn’t think in this HomeGoods on wheels. Suddenly she wanted the familiar comfort of the dingy little house in Haubstadt.
She looked up to see Billie reentering the living space. “Can we go now?” Her voice was raspy and hollow. “I need . . . I want to go home.”
“Sure,” Billie said, sharing another one of those pointed looks with Wes. “We’ll get you to Laurie’s, hon.”
“Not Laurie’s. Home. Haubstadt.”
Billie widened her eyes and pursed her lips at Wes in the universal gesture for say something or I will say it.
Mack wished she had the energy to say something snarky, but her mind was on Shaw, lying in bed and watching a movie about mermaids.
Would Kelley even know that she hated her hair in a ponytail?
Or that she only ate yogurt if it was layered just so with cereal?
That she still needed to hold someone’s hand to fall asleep?
Would she be sad and scared in Spain? Would she forget Mack? Would she be safe?
Mack could still see the sores of her diaper rash, the sickening way her little arm had dangled from the socket. The way the DCS woman had looked at her with revulsion, convinced poor, young, uneducated Mack had hurt her child.
Wes cleared his throat and shifted nervously in his seat, pulling Mack back to the present. Billie perched on the edge of the recliner across from the dining bench. “Okay, sit down. Oh right, you are. Shit. Okay. Well, um, okay, I gotta tell you something.”
She knew that tone in Wes’s voice. It was his this is going to be bad news voice. He used that tone when Laurie refused to come home for her first college break, and when he learned he needed a third corrective surgery on his left knee.
“We, um, well, we can’t take you home to Haubstadt ’cause I’m selling the house.”
A second passed, then another, then another before the words registered.
Mack was right back in the car smacking the wall head-on.
She had to be, because this feeling was equally abrupt.
Her mind froze, unable to process basics.
Her eyes couldn’t register Billie reaching over to squeeze Wes’s hand, or Wes’s worried expression.
She didn’t hear the tinny sound of Shaw’s movie from the back of the vehicle or feel the air-conditioning blasting from the vent over her head.
She was distilled down to her elements—the sound of her own breath sawing in her ears, her skin dotted with goose bumps, her eyes clouded with brimming tears.
“You’re what?”
“Me and Billie are gonna live in the RV. Now that you’re here in Indianapolis, ain’t no point keeping the house.”
The words slowly leached into her mind until their full impact assaulted her. The frozenness in her body boiled over, rupturing with unbearable heat.
“I’m here in Indianapolis now?” Billie flinched at the volume of her voice, and Mack delighted in the pain she’d caused.
She gestured out the window in the direction of the track.
“Did you not see what happened? I just wrecked myself out of Indianapolis! I had one chance and I blew it to pieces. I never had a reason to stay, Dad.”
Wes waved his good hand carelessly. “Accidents happen. You’ll get another shot at Indy, and you’ve got Laurie here now—”