chapter five

Fifteen minutes later she was on the road again. She turned on the radio and listened to the carefree voice of Tom Petty singing ‘Runnin’ Down a Dream’. She glanced at her guitar on the seat next to her and wondered if she’d be able to get any gigs wherever she ended up. She had the money she’d saved up but knew it wouldn’t last forever without anything coming in.
She had gotten the acoustic from a friend four years ago. Since she couldn’t afford lessons she had taught herself to play and had a strangely beautiful style that was all her own. She was able to put all the emotions she was feeling into a piece and it always seemed to have an effect on the people she played for. She used to lift an occasional book to learn the basic chords, but stopped after a close call since she couldn’t afford to get arrested. Never had she performed in public before but she had played in front of a few friends and was, perhaps peculiarly, lacking any nervousness. She had also written enough songs to last a lifetime so there was no problem there either. It’s not that Grace was in much of a hurry to share her personal words with complete strangers, but she knew that it was necessary if it could bring in enough cash to keep her afloat. She couldn’t have any real publicity, of course, and didn’t exactly crave attention anyway, but she knew she couldn’t have survived the past without her music and she wasn’t about to try to live without it into the future either.
She finally forced herself to think about less safe subjects and turned her mind to the pig back at the motel. For the first time she wondered if him mentioning her brother was really a coincidence. It didn’t seem likely that he would have recognized her or that he’d have known William at all but even if he had, wouldn’t he have somehow heard about his ‘disappearance’ after this long if they were such ‘close friends’? The more she thought about it the angrier she became at herself for not realizing it earlier. What a sly bastard! Sure, it just so happened that a close friend of her brother’s, who hadn’t heard anything about him in years, had met and recognized his little sister while he checked out a disturbance, one which had occurred hours earlier, at a motel she had conveniently stayed at that morning. He was most definitely working for Bradley. But why had he risked giving himself away by mentioning William? He had temporarily clouded her judgment with the mention of him, but he wouldn’t have needed to if he hadn’t brought it up in the first place. Maybe he was just making sure she was the one he was looking for, which she had made easy for him to determine with her obvious desperation. But Grace doubted it; Richard was too thorough not to have given him a photo, or at least a good description of her. She finally assumed he had just underestimated her, presumed she wouldn’t be able to figure it out, and that he could mess with her a bit without any real danger to himself. She was sure her dear Uncle Richard would have been quite eager to disparage and vilify her to any and all willing to listen. After all, she had been the one to convince him of her recreancy. And now she had the advantage again.
For the next hour or so Grace checked for a tail every two seconds before she began to feel comfortable enough to pull over and study her map. She had driven approximately thirteen hours and had gotten six hundred and fifty miles away from Bradley’s house back in Santa Monica. She knew she would have gotten farther if she hadn’t taken the back-roads but it was a necessary evil if she didn’t want to risk being seen by one of his many puppets. She was in New Mexico at a small town about fifteen miles west of Albuquerque. She decided to go southeast instead of the originally planned east to throw off Richard, who would be expecting her to advance in the fairly straight line she had been driving in so far. She figured she’d kick back in Artesia for a few days, sorta ‘disappear’ for a while, and then go north or northeast from there.
Grace immediately changed course towards her new destination. The clock on the dashboard said it was 2:45 so she thought she’d be able to get there a little before 8:00. The radio was playing ‘Paradise City’ by Guns and Roses so she turned it up even as her mind wandered to the past.

“It’ll only be for the weekend. We’ll be back before you know it,” Grace’s father explained to William and her. Her parents needshoot, well, thrida to meet with a potential client of the small publishing company they owned together. “Your Uncle Richard will stay here with you two until we get back.”
“You mean the police officer! Cool! Maybe he’ll let us ride in his car to go catch criminals!” exclaimed William. He had gone from miserable to ecstatic in a matter of seconds. It was actually a quite remarkable transformation.
Grace’s mother chuckled and told him, “I don’t think that’s going to be happening anytime soon. It’s too dangerous. But maybe he’ll let you see it when he’s not on duty.”
“Ah Mom, you never let me do anything fun,” he complained, once again miserable.
“What about my birthday?” Grace asked. “Will you be back on time? I’ll never turn eleven again so you have to be here!”
Her mother assured her, “Don’t worry Gracie-baby, we’re taking the early morning flight just so we can be back before you even say good morning to the sun. We couldn’t possibly miss the birthday of God’s Grace, now isn’t that right?”
She giggled at her mother’s pet name for her. “Alright then, just checking. Daddy, how many seconds will you be gone, exactly,” Grace asked; her young mind forever curious.
“Lets see,” her father pondered, “We’ll be gone sixty hours, so that’s 3,600 minutes,” by this time Grace and William’s chins were on the floor, “Alright, so that’s 216,000 seconds, exactly.”
Grace ran to her mother and cried, “That must be forever! I’ll never see you again! Please don’t leave us.”
Her parents explained to her that that was not as much time as it seemed, that only one day is the same as 86,400 seconds, and the next morning they got on the 8:00 a.m. flight from Los Angeles to Miami. Grace was right about one thing, though, she never saw her parents again.

She smiled severely when she remembered the ridiculousness of what her mother used to call her. God’s Grace. Yeah right, she thought caustically. She gave up the whole notion of a god long ago and her life has been better for it. When she stopped waiting around for some Supreme Being to come rescue her from her life she was finally able to do it herself. However, she would have held her parents in only the brightest of lights even if they had worshipped mutilated cows or weather balloons. They were the reason she was able to pull herself free of Bradley and nothing else mattered.
Five hours after she left the motel near Albuquerque, Grace pulled into another one in Artesia. She walked to the office and got a room under the moniker Adel Craiger, which conveniently had all of the necessary credentials. The woman at the front desk told her that they had one room left but it had twin beds. She took it regardless since it was cheap and she didn’t really feel like searching for another motel. Back in the parking lot she noticed that the only other car there was a little Toyota.
Since it was only ten to eight she decided to see if she could get a job playing at a bar or something during the short time she would reside here. She climbed back into William’s truck and drove off, not aware of the cerulean eyes that were adhered to her.

After Ben Curtis had hung up with Richard Bradley, the chief of police down in Santa Monica, for the second time, he once again had a vile taste in his mouth. He didn’t know why the chief had told him to mention her brother, but he assumed it would, at most, make her feel guilty about leaving him behind or something. But when he had seen the look on Grace Delacroix’s face he had actually wanted to sob like a child. She looked so lost and desperate. All the time he had talked to her before then she had had almost no expression, or at most a bored one. So when he had seen her face so full of emotion, so naked at the mention of a single name, it was like a blow to the abs.
He knew he couldn’t just forget about her like her uncle had recommend. Not only because he saw her when she was most vulnerable, but also because of her sheer beauty. That’s why her response to her brother’s name had had such an effect on him, it was like seeing anguish on the face of an angel; it just didn’t belong there. He had had an intense, if absurd, urge to protect her, if only so he would never have to endure that haunted look in her eyes again.
He chuckled at himself for being so asinine. He didn’t even know the girl, which is exactly what she is too, just a girl. A mere sixteen years old, although seventeen in less than a month, even if she did look (and act) older. But even as he was belittling himself, he got into his car and headed in the direction she had gone.
When he saw her truck by the side of the road and her with her head in her hands, her whole body racking with her tears, he had to force himself to keep going. He could tell that she was the sort of person who never would have allowed herself to show weakness in front of others so for her sake he couldn’t let himself stop.
If he were going to follow her he would have to get himself into a less conspicuous car than his black and white. He drove the next couple miles on the narrow, two-lane road to the police station and switched to his small, silver Toyota Corolla. He didn’t pull out, though, but stayed in the parking lot waiting for her to pass. When she did he waited almost a full minute before going after her. He stayed far enough back to not be noticed but close enough to keep her in view whenever there was a chance she could get onto another road, knowing every turn-off by heart having lived near here all his life.
After almost an hour she pulled over for a moment and then suddenly changed her direction southward. Ben knew he should report to the chief, whom he suspected would be searching east, but for reasons consciously unbeknownst to him he held off. After what felt like forever Grace finally pulled over at a gas station, passing her he drove to the next rest stop. He paid the guy at the counter to tell him whether or not he sees a truck pass while he went to the restroom and then loaded up on snacks and drinks for the unknown distance ahead.

Grace found a coffee joint on a tiny corner at the edge of Artesia called Chaos Café and stopped, parked, and went inside. When she crossed the threshold she felt a surge of warmth spread throughout her body: the lovely little shop had been decorated to look homey and it reminded her of her own house before her parents had died. It had two beige-colored armchairs and a couch to match, with chocolate wallpaper, dim lighting and a faint scent of flavored coffees and biscotti mixed with a flowery fragrance of the various arrangements on the center of each table. There were several couples, friends and solos lounging among the tables and furniture listening to the current act, which was a young man that appeared to be an early college student and was reading a poem she didn’t recognize.
She walked to the counter and asked the man there who she should talk to about performing. When he pointed out the manager, a tall, tan woman in her early twenties, sitting in the back corner talking to a waitress Grace thanked him and walked over to her. She patiently waited, out of earshot, to be acknowledged. The two women finished their conversation quickly and Valerie, the manager according to her nametag, turned her attention to Grace and asked in a child-like voice:
“May I help you?”
“Hi. My name’s Adel Craiger,” she started, “I’m wondering if you have any room for me to play my guitar sometime tonight or tomorrow.”
Although no one would have been able to tell just by looking at her, Grace was rather taken back when the woman actually squealed in delight.
“You must be kidding,” She continued when she saw that Grace was serious, “How perfect, it must be fate or something. Do you believe in fate? Hey it sounds like I’m trying to pick you up! But don’t worry, I’m not attempting to get into your pants.” She laughed at her own joke as if it were the most brilliant words ever to be uttered. “You see our main band just split and I had no idea what I was going to do. Then all of the sudden you were there, WHAM,” Grace almost jumped, “and if you’re any good then I owe you big.”
She wasn’t exactly used to such chirpy people but she was definitely thrilled about getting to go on tonight so she dealt.
“I’ll do alright,” she told Valerie.
“Oh sorry, I’m so rude! My name’s Valerie. Thanks so much for doing this. Since it’s such short notice we can pay you twenty-five dollars an hour for two hours instead of just twenty, which is how much the other band was going to get before they flaked on us, but we can’t really go higher than that. I hope it’s enough,” she kept going before Grace could answer. “I’ll need to hear you before you go on, of course, but I’m sure you’re just perfect for the job. Not even fate could be that fucked up, huh?”
Grace laughed softly but only because Valerie couldn’t be more wrong.