This dude was probably a murderer, Mack reasoned. The voice had assured him that this person had causedunimaginable suffering, so what did that mean? Was he a Mafia don, a child molester, a wife-beater? He could be any of those things or all of them, Mack felt in that moment.
The guy didn’t run like someone who expected to die, either. He ran with the sureness of a person who wasn’t thinking about stopping with every step, a style Mack envied. The man had a skullcap on, and woolly mittens that made Mack think of a child. If this selfish, murderous, perverted man-child noticed the Cherokee parked there—if it gave him a moment’s pause to see a strange car out here in this deserted spot—he did not let on, and he didn’t deviate from the route Mack had been assured that he would take: he jogged straight down the middle of the road, and then—just as the pounding in Mack’s head began to whisperNow!Now!Now!—the man turned off to the left, into the woods.
Mack let him go, but he did not drive away. The man was coming back this way too—the voice on the phone had told him so.
Mack would wait.
53.
Hailey
Mabel and Gigi’s fight over the Jiggly Pet ended as soon as they came into the kitchen and caught Hailey staring into space. At least there was that to be grateful for.
“Why are you crying, Mommy?” Gigi said, and this was the first Hailey knew of it. But yes, when she brushed her cheek, her hand came away wet.
It was surprising how much worse these two little faces could make her feel. If only the girls could have stayed in bed until Mack got back, until Hailey wasn’t the only grown-up in the room. Should she tell them about their grandmother? She hadn’t even told Mack.
It was eight thirty. He had been gone for almost three hours.
“Where’s Daddy?” Mabel asked, and what could Hailey say?
She had turned to open the cereal cupboard when Gulliver snapped to attention, head toward the front window.
“He’s here now,” Hailey said over the barking, and she had possibly never been so relieved. The four of them went toward the front hall, Gulliver leading the charge, as if Mack had been away for a very long time. From the big window they watched the Cherokee’s wheels spin as he turned into the driveway—or tried to: the snow had come down too fast even for all-wheel drive, and Magpie Lane had not been plowed yet. Hailey could hear the jeep’s engine revving like crazy, and it occurred to her that if the tires suddenly found traction, Mack might end up flooring it right into the house. Had he thought about this? Through the snow, Hailey could only make out the rough shape of him behind the wheel. He tried to reverse and pull forward again, but the front tires found the same track as before and spun out.
Mack kept trying, back and forth, snow and ice chips flying out from beneath his wheels. When Hailey opened the front door—she had to tell him to stop before he ended up in the living room—she could smell burning rubber. As she pulled on her boots, Mack flung open the car door and almost fell over as he stepped out. He let out something like a growl as he kicked at the snow packed in around the front tire, grunting and shouting. His movements were jerky, and he was more than loud enough for the neighbors to hear.
Gulliver shot past her, and Hailey’s eyes followed the tip of his tail as he snaked through the deep snow toward the car. As she lurched after him, she saw that the front of the Cherokee was covered in salt particles. They stuck to the edges of the windscreen, and the front grill and bumper. Beneath them, on the side of the car closest to her, the metal had...buckled. The hood wasn’t closed right, which gave Hailey an unwanted peek at the car’s innards. The left front headlight was cracked.
Mack had hit something.
Hailey took a wobbly step back from the car. Gulliver was heading straight for the road, but she couldn’t seem to make her legs work well enough to follow him.
Mack was sliding his way toward the back bumper. He almost went over, one knee hit the ground, but he righted himself, and then he shouted at her: “Get in and steer. I’ll push.” He gestured madly at the open garage, and then started pushing on the rear bumper.
“Now, Hailey,” Mack yelled. “Please!” He was covered in sweat, steam rising from his damp clothes, and she could see the whites of his eyes.
When Hailey didn’t move, Mack stopped pushing on the Cherokee.
“Please,” he said again. His glasses were cracked, his sweatpants soaked to the knees. Hailey could see his bare hands trembling.
He had done it.
All feeling drained from Hailey’s body. What was most conspicuously missing was disbelief, and that was because she had always known what was there in Mack. Beneath the grinning accidental golf champion, under the bespeckled academic with his silly, boyish drug habit and his talent for building Playmobil, was something primal and very, very angry. The river of misfortune that had run through his life, all the way back through his splintered family, had finally breached its dam. How could she be surprised that he had snapped—again. And yet...
Instinct was trying to take over, and Hailey’s was to get as far away from Mack as possible. To run into the house, slam and bolt the door. Or to run, like Gulliver, as far and as fast down the street as her legs could carry her. But then her gaze found Gigi, just stepping out into the snow, and Mabel, still in the front window.
She squeezed her eyes shut and made the decision to give herself—and Mack—more time. She stepped through the snow to the garage and came out with the snow shovel, and a small spade that Mabel used to take to the sandbox in Lakewood Park. She thrust the small one at Mack and began hacking away at the snow around the left front tire with the wide lip of the big one. Mack followed her lead and started on the back wheels. As they worked, Hailey focused on not looking up at the dented bumper.
It did not take much clearing; a few minutes, and the tires found the traction they needed. Mack didn’t even have to push as Hailey steered into the garage, narrowly missing Gulliver, who had also opted not to run. Hailey didn’t even think to be careful of him getting under the car. She was too focused on her hands on the steering wheel, her fresh fingerprints on the leather.
As Mack closed the garage door, she turned off the ignition and sat, frozen and numb, in the driver’s seat.
54.
There is an argument, to be sure, for leaving these sorts of things to the professionals, to the type of individual who can switch off any thoughts and feelings of his own and just get the job done. There have been studies—actual, academic studies—that conclude that even seasoned hit men make mistakes when they get too emotional. So you’d infer that, for a successful hit, one would want a cold, hard machine.
Far be it from me to argue with an academic, but I think youwantthat emotion. You just have to make sure that it’s channeled properly, and most people, I find, are pretty focused about staying alive and out of prison.
