Chapter 62 Hailey
Hailey
There was so much to think about.
None of it felt real; the stakes were too high.
The practicalities: Cash. Documents. (Thank God for Pammy and Eddie’s anniversary in Cancun; the girls would never have had passports otherwise.)
Gulliver: His liquid eyes followed their every move, as if he knew they were deciding his fate.
Could they take him? Would the airlines allow it, with no more than his piecemeal vet records and leftover tranquilizers?
Would wherever they were going let him in?
All they could do was try it; they could not risk a Google search.
What to pack: one suitcase each, clothes for warm weather. This was easy to decide, because they had a cover story to buy themselves some time: The Evans family were officially off to Florida to make arrangements for Mack’s mother.
Hailey tested this first on Colin from the bank. He seemed all right with pushing the meeting back; if he was about to sic the feds on Mack and Hailey, he didn’t let on. (But then he wouldn’t, would he?)
Her parents were harder. Hailey pretended the tears on the phone were for poor Leonora, that her desperate I love you so much to Pam and Eddie was because, in the face of death, she now appreciated her own wonderful parents.
(And she did, so much that she thought it might kill her.
But the thought of their safety, and the possibility of them having to watch their daughter’s life be destroyed in front of their eyes, made her ruthless.)
Mack and Hailey spread the story far and wide: messages to the firm, to Tech, to school and day care. Hailey even tipped off the Bratenahl grapevine, so that if the police came knocking, the neighbors would know exactly where to point them.
She stood at Betsy Wakefield’s door, house key in hand. A babysitter answered; Hailey could hear cartoons and smell Kraft macaroni and cheese. It felt impossible that for other people, this was just a normal day.
“She’ll be back in a few hours,” the twentysomething sitter told Hailey when she asked for Betsy. “Maybe come again?”
“Well, you see we’re off to Florida in a few minutes,” Hailey said, and she felt a boost when one of Betsy’s daughters appeared—a child was even more likely to pass on the story. “My mother-in-law died. Just this morning.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” said the babysitter, as the Wakefield kid edged around her to get a look at Hailey.
“Thank you, yes. She’d been sick a long time.
And, well, our trip is obviously last-minute, and I just wanted to leave a key for Betsy.
Just in case anything goes wrong with the house while we are in Florida.
Maybe she could check on it for us if we have to stay down there for longer than expected?
We have to arrange the funeral and go through my mother-in-law’s things .
. . It could take a long time.” While she spoke, Hailey kept an eye on Betsy’s daughter.
She was listening, taking it all in. This was good.
The sitter was hesitant, unsure as to whether she could agree to this on Betsy’s behalf, but finally she nodded and reached out for the house key Hailey was holding.
It hurt to let go of it.
“I’ll make sure Mrs. Wakefield gets this,” the babysitter said, closing her palm around all of Hailey’s hopes and dreams. “She’ll be back soon. She’s just at an appointment.”
“She’s at the dentist,” Betsy’s daughter chimed in. “She’s always at the dentist.”
Hailey wasn’t listening, though; her eyes were on Mack, who had begun loading suitcases into the Cherokee.
“Tell your mom I said we’ll get together when I get back,” she told the little girl, and she was already halfway down the Wakefields’ front path when she finished her sentence: “Tell her we’ll go for coffee. ”