“Could’ve what? Killed some innocent man?” Hailey’s voice sounded calm, sure of itself. “Whoever is doing this to us is crazy. The house... Simeon’s experts think someone poured acid on the foundations of the house when we were building it.”
“What?”
“The beams have been coated in something... they thought maybe someone mad about the beach access tried to sabotage the development, they—”
“Hailey.”
“What?”
“Sabotage on the beams. Bad construction.” He didn’t wait for her to catch up. “You were right. My father. Somebody knows about my father.”
“It doesn’t matter if I’m right,” said Hailey. “The point is, this has been going on for months and months—years! Sunshine Enterprises, whoever the hell they are, aren’t going to stop. Not even if you had killed this man, which we both know you were never, ever going to do.”
She didn’t know, of course.
Hailey would never know just how close Mack had come. Mack would never describe to her how the man—the dentist—had come back from his loop through the woods, had jogged back down Danekar Drive right into the path of the Cherokee. Mack would never explain to Hailey how he had sat there seething with hatred for this guy who was the whole reason Mack had to be out there at all. Mack loathed this jogger for probably being able to affordhissoulless house, and for having a job he probably liked and a wife who could stand to be around him and maybe even a mother who could walk and talk. Also, there was someone out there who hated this guy enough to want him dead, which meant the guy must’ve been a prick of the highest order... Unless this prick wantedhimselfdead, in which case he was still a prick, and screw him, Mack would be happy to oblige. Mack’s thoughts had circled round and round, tightening around him like a noose.
How could Hailey ever understand the temptation? The twisted thrill of just being able to move this situation forward, to show Sunshine Enterprises, whoever they were, that Mack Evans was crazy too, and not to be messed with? Mack could imagine the smack of the body on the windshield, the rush of disbelief he would feel at what he’d done. Would it numb the fear that had been humming in his nervous system for so long?—that had been the exact thought in Mack’s head when he shifted the car into drive.
But then, about fifty yards in front of him, while Mack’s foot was still firmly on the brake pedal, the man had slipped on a smooth patch of ice. Not just a stumble but a big, goofy slide that sent his mittened hands flailing out, his weight shifting backward, and almost landed him on his butt. It scared the guy, and Mack could read his lips as he righted himself:Motherfucker, the man said with a puff of air.Fucking winter. Fuck!
And for some reason—he didn’t know what it was exactly—that outburst had brought Mack crashing back to reality, had saved the man’s life without his ever knowing it.
Mack would never tell Hailey any of this.
She was talking, he realized now, and had been for a while.
“And even if someonewasthere waiting, would they have just instantly murdered your mother the second you didn’t run the man over?” Mack saw her glance toward the door, to make sure the girls had gone upstairs. “In a staffed nursing home? I just don’t believe it.”
“I don’t believe any of this,” said Mack, stepping past her.
“Where are you going?”
“To get my phone. I have to call Tilda.”
“It’s here.” Hailey took Mack’s phone from her pocket. “But like I said, just keep an open mind.”
Mack stopped in the doorway, his back to her. He hadn’t heard a word she’d said.
“You weren’t listening to me at all, were you?”
“I’m sorry. I—”
She turned him gently around to face her. “I was only saying that sometimes in the middle of terrible shit happening, something else terrible happens. And even though it feels like it’s all connected, it isn’t always. Sometimes in this fucked-up universe, terrible things just happen to happen to you all at once.”
“Okay,” said Mack as he took the phone from her. He couldn’t quite bear to make eye contact. “I guess you could be right.”
But nothing would ever convince him, even when the timing didn’t line up, even when Tilda had assured him that there had been no visitors and no new staff, that everyone who had come into contact with Leonora in the days and hours before her death had been taking care of her for a long, long time, even then Mack still believed that his mother’s death was connected to Sunshine Enterprises.
This overlap had to be a man-made occurrence; the universe could never have been so cruel on its own.
59.
Hailey
She couldn’t bear to listen to Mack’s conversation with Tilda. The desperate questions, the sad pauses, the stunted language of loss—it was a pit Hailey could not afford to fall into. She was standing in the dining room window, looking out at the driveway zigzagged with tire marks, when the landline rang. The unfamiliar sound coming up through the wall made her jump; she had to sprint down to Mack’s office to find the handset.
It was Colin, from National City Bank. He wanted to talk about some unusual activity: an international wire transfer for—Colin lightly cleared his throat—ten million dollars had come through to Hailey and Mack’s checking account in the last several hours, but it had been refused clearance on anti-money-laundering regulations. Hailey heard Colin take a deep breath, and then, like he was reading from a script, he assured her that this was standard practice for such a large amount. Colin would need them to come into the branch, if that might be possible, to arrange proper documentation for this payment and the smaller payments that had already been cleared from Sunshine Enterprises. Once this had been done, he said, they could ask the sender in—he coughed—Liberia to resend the money. By the time he’d finished, Colin had lost his polish and sounded as freaked out as Hailey felt. They set up a meeting for three o’clock the following day.
