Dad’s rental was an unremarkable brick ranch in a gated golf course development five minutes away from the university. Michael pulled into the sloped driveway and jumped out. The scent of charcoaled meat wafted on the breeze. If there wasn’t some sort of vegetarian entree with my name on it, me and my crap attitude were walking home.
Dad opened the door and held out his good arm. “Hey!” I guess it was an open invitation to step into his embrace.
Michael and Cole moved hesitantly into Dad’s hug.
“Missed you guys.” Dad’s eyes met mine, assessing the situation. “Harper, you look great, sweetie.”
I traced a figure eight on the driveway with my toe. “Thanks.”
My dad’s left arm hung at an L in his sling, and his face still looked like he’d cleaned the asphalt with his forehead. There were a few scrapes that would probably leave permanent scars. Forever reminders of bad memories. I knew about those.
“Come on back. Got the grill going on the deck.”
Like dutiful children, we followed Dad through the house. The living room was cozy with a matching nail-trimmed leather couch and love seat. A large flat-screen hung over the oak mantel like prized art. The small dining room we passed contained a circular glass table and four black Parsons chairs. The kitchen, a room my dad barely knew how to use, gleamed with stainless steel and granite, and a smaller table and chairs were nestled in a corner breakfast nook.
“You’ve really gotten comfortable here,” I said, noticing the geometric art on the kitchen’s gray walls.
Dad put his hand in his back pocket and looked around with a bland smile. “It came this way. Fully furnished.”
I nodded. “How convenient.”
The part of my heart that was as charred as the coals in his grill had hoped to find him in a sparse, empty home. Sleeping on an air mattress, eating ramen and Lucky Charms every night as he cried over his pitiful missteps.
The kitchen opened up to a large deck that overlooked his emerald green yard. From the deck you could see the ninth hole, and a man hefting a bag of clubs waved in our direction.
“Let me check these burgers. Harper, you want cheese on your veggie burger, right? Pepper jack?”
“Cheddar.” I didn’t want cheddar. I wanted to be difficult. Just to say, Do you really know me, Dad?
“I’m sorry I missed the halftime show.” The grill hissed as Dad flipped a hamburger patty. “Your mom sent me video though. You were incredible. I’m so proud.”
I zipped up my hot pink hoodie and rubbed my arms against the evening chill. “Thank you.”
“I texted you last night. Even left a voicemail. Did you get that?”
“I’m not sure,” I lied.
“Well.” Dad watched me through the smoke, his eyes searching, studying. Perhaps looking for a way in. “I asked if you were up for breakfast at the Main Street Grill next Saturday. Just the two of us, like old times.”
Once a month, Dad took me to the diner at a ridiculously early hour before he headed to the stadium. He always let me get a double helping of their magical hash browns, and I always gave him the bacon that had no business touching my plate.
“I’m pretty busy,” I said.
I was spared inventing more creative excuses when Cole broke into a story about setting a new time for the half mile in track practice. Then Michael one-upped it with some story about how he’d basically saved the world with his latest three-point shot technique, and I just tried to not stick my head in the bag of chips on the table.
The three of them were so alike. All tall, slender, a natural muscular tone. Hair that belonged in a shampoo commercial, noses that were slightly too angular. And athletic. It was a bond that I didn’t share with the DNA-connected O’Malleys. I never would.
In the early years I had tried so hard to fit into this family, desperate for them to like me. On my tenth birthday, I asked for a book on football and stayed up all night devouring the pages. I cried when I finished the last chapter because I knew that by the book’s end, I still didn’t like the game. Still loved fantasy novels, puppies, and music more.
In seventh grade, I ran track, always coming in last despite my coach’s yelling and my parents’ sideline cheering. I prayed to grow taller, funnier, cooler. But I guess God was too busy throwing Amazing Dust on my family and tossing me the Nerd Juice boxes.
We ate outside against a backdrop of stilted conversation, the distant whack of a golf ball, and the occasional buzzing insect. A fire pit crackled and glowed near the table, but I couldn’t seem to get warm.
Dad chewed his last bite of hamburger as he dipped two of his famous homemade fries into a swirl of ketchup. “Kids, I know this has been hard. Confusing.”
So much for small talk.
“I’ve said it before, but I wanted to tell you again how sorry I am for what I’ve put you through. I love your mother. I love the three of you.”
“So you and Mom aren’t gonna get a divorce?” Cole asked, mustard hiding in the corner of his upper lip. “You’re coming back, aren’t you, Dad?”
Dad rewrapped a damp napkin around his sweating tea glass. “Your mom and I have lots of talking to do.”
“What about Thanksgiving?” Cole sniffed. “You’ll be back by then, right?”
“I’m not sure, buddy,” Dad said. “I’m going to stay here for a while.”
“People are pretty mad,” Michael said. I knew my older brother was torn up too. But he never let us see how deep the pain drilled down.
“They are very mad,” Dad said. “They have every reason to be. Fracturing the team like this affects people’s jobs, my coaching staff’s families, recruiting options, and money for the university.”
“And scholarships,” I said. “Like Ridley Estes’s. He had his whole future planned out, and now they’ve gone back on your verbal offer.”
Dad leaned back and pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s a mess.”
Spilled grape juice on the carpet? A mess. Spaghetti sauce on your T-shirt? Mess. But Ridley losing his chance to play on a full ride at the best university in the South? Life altering.
“Isn’t there something you can do?” I threw my napkin onto my plate. “Can’t you talk to someone?”
“There was a scout from Tennessee Tech at the game just last night,” Michael said. “Ridley has recruiters swooping around him like vultures. He’ll land somewhere.”
“How can you be sure?” I asked.
“Last year he caught seventy-eight passes for 1,703 yards,” Dad said. “This year he’s primed to top that. He’s a hot commodity. Or would be if he’d keep his nose clean.”
I swallowed a cold fry. “It’s a shame when a guy’s personal life gets in the way.”
We stayed through Dad’s love offering of s’mores over his fire pit. I’d hoped to leave early, but Dad had made a career in strategy, and he knew I couldn’t resist chocolate and the gooey goodness of melted marshmallow. Finally, after I inhaled three of those and sat through the boys challenging Dad to a few rounds of Horse in the driveway in the glow of headlights, it was time to go.
“You guys drive carefully.” Dad watched each of us buckle up. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
I gave him a stiff hug before shutting myself in the back.
“Dang it,” I said as Michael started the car. “Forgot my phone.” And I needed it for all those boys who weren’t calling me. “Will you go get it, Cole?”
“Nope.”
I mumbled some of Ridley’s Spanish curses the whole way to the door. This weekend would be the end of me.
“Forget something?” Dad stood in the doorway as I came back in. Like he’d been watching us go.
“Phone.” I crossed the distance to the kitchen in a speed that should’ve gotten me some points for athleticism, then retrieved the device from the granite bar.
When I sailed back to the living room, Dad has planted himself right in my path, his good arm settled on his hip. “Hold up there, sis.”
“Found it.” I held my phone out and barely slowed.
“Harper, stop.”
Spine rigid, I halted. Stared at the pewter veins running amuck in the white tile.
“Becky Dallas’s parole hearing is next month,” he said. “Because of publicity, my current attorney advised me not to go to the hearing,” Dad said. “I’m only telling you because I was worried you’d hear it from your mom first or—”
“So you’re not going? I guess you need to lay low and—”
“Of course I’m going.” Dad walked to me, his head tilted as if he couldn’t believe he’d heard me correctly. “I could be in the midst of my own court battle, but I’d still get to that parole hearing. We could live across the country, and I’d still be in that courtroom to remind that judge of what happened to my daughter.”
I swallowed against the lump in my throat and nodded. “Thank you.”
“I hate that I’ve hurt you so much that you doubt me. Doubt my commitment to you.”
Hurt seemed too small a word. “What about Mom?”
“That’s a given I’ve hurt her. And I’m dealing with that, but I’m talking about you. You won’t answer my texts, you refuse my calls.”
“I’m really busy right now. It’s marching season, I have tutoring, the animal rescue is—”
“You’re avoiding me.”
A pain flickered behind my temples, the intensity building with every second I was in this house, this conversation. But Dad’s lack of honesty had hurt me, and it was pathetic to offer him lies in return. So I told the truth. “Yes, I’m avoiding you. I’d asked for space.”
“I’m your father.”
Those words ricocheted in the room and pinged off my heart. “You said that same thing to me the day you and Mom adopted me.” I sniffed and blinked. “This family . . . you’ve been my world. My safe place. For the first time in my life, I was safe. And the whole time, I kept waiting for the bottom to drop out. It was too good to be true. I knew it was too perfect.”
“No matter what happens, I’m your father. This family is still your safe place. You’re ours, Harper. How many times did we have to tell you that those first few years? No one can take you away from us.”
All these years I’d been a tightrope walker, and somehow with Dad’s affair, my net was gone. “You can’t promise me you and Mom are going to work it out, can you?”
He ran a hand over his stubbly face. “No. But—”
I shook my head, the angry thoughts rattling from side to side. “I hate that you’ve done this.” I swiped at my nose with the back of my hand. “Why did you have to mess this up? Were we not enough?” And then the question that had lurked in the dark recesses of my mind from the day I was born. “Was I not enough?”
“Good gosh, Harper. Don’t say that. We worked so hard—you worked so hard—to find your place with us. No matter what I’ve done, how can you doubt how much we love you? You’re a permanent part of this family, and nothing will ever change that.”
“Why are there pictures of you on the internet with that Josie person?”
The vein near Dad’s ear twitched. The one that popped whenever Michael came in two hours after curfew or I bought too many books on his credit card. “Maybe they’re old. She was my employee, so there are probably lots of photos out there that include the two of us.”
“You’re wearing your sling, and your face looks like it went through a meat grinder. They’re not old.”
He suddenly looked like he was regretting initiating our little heart-to-heart. “It’s not what it seems.”
“It seems like you’ve recently seen your girlfriend. Want to tell me again how sorry you are for what you’ve done to Mom and your kids?”
“I don’t expect you to understand.”
“But I do understand. And that’s the most frightening part. I think I see the situation perfectly clear, Dad.”
“Josie needed someone to pick her up from the hospital. She had no one. She’s lost a fiancé, her parents are zero help, and her friends have left her high and dry. I got her into this mess, the least I could do was—”
“Call her a taxi? Ask one of the other coaches to give her a ride?”
“I’m telling you, no matter what you see in those photos, Josie and I are through.”
“You used to be my hero.” I sidestepped my father and reached for the door.
“And now?” came my dad’s voice. “Now who am I?”
“The man who chose his girlfriend over his family.” I turned and looked at my father. “Someone whose words I don’t believe.”
Chapter Fourteen
Sunday morning’s rainstorm woke me up at four thirty. Menacing shadows lunged and loomed on the walls, and I pulled the covers over my head to block out the noise.
I was right back in that dingy duplex on Mockingbird Street. Seven years old, and the tornado sirens wailing their call to all of Templeton, Mississippi, to take shelter. My shoebox-sized bedroom was on the second floor, and even at that young age, I knew from drills at school that I was supposed to get to the ground level.
But I couldn’t.
My mother had gone out for the night, and I didn’t have to try the door to know it was locked. They often say the tornado comes in the quiet, but outside the wind howled, the thunder crashed, and rain fell like metal pellets. I prayed for God to save me. Protect my mom. Make the tornado go away. For somebody to come and rescue me.
But no one ever came.
The tornado hit the edge of town, ripping into homes with a brutal savagery that tore into roofs, walls, and lives.
And it stopped two miles from my house, deciding it was bored with Templeton and had chewed and spit out all it desired.
Storms still kept me awake. On thunder-filled nights, the O’Malleys used to find me in the floor of their bedroom with my pillow, teddy bear, and blanket. My counselor once told me eventually storms would no longer bring me terror. And one day I’d see it as a beautiful musical score by nature. I think that woman drank a lot.
Now, after perusing the internet for more photos of Dad and finding nothing new, my phone told me it was only five a.m., but I slipped out of bed, dressed, and made my way downstairs. My earbuds in, I listened to some classic One Direction while unloading the dishwasher and whipping up cinnamon rolls for breakfast.
Hours later, the storm grew lazy. As it wound down to a sprinkle, my family and I stepped out of the car and onto the sidewalk leading to the doors of the Maple Grove Community Church for the first time since the scandal. Church had been new to me when I came to live with the O’Malleys. Previously Sundays had been dedicated to doing my bio-mom’s laundry and staying out of her way. By about my fifth visit to the O’Malleys’ church, I knew something had a hold of me. I think God speaks to us all differently, and I heard him first in the music. The church choir had been something straight out of a Tyler Perry movie, full of gospel and soul and movement, with a full band backing them up. A powerful current had climbed up my arm and traveled the expanse of my skin, and I’d lifted my hands to heaven as if I was trying to catch the music notes in the air. I knew I’d met God that day. He’d been in the atmosphere, in the vibrato of the soloist’s voice, and in the tripping, bluesy call of the piano keys. Church quickly became a safe harbor. But since Dad’s event, it was like God was calling my phone, and I was letting it go straight to voice mail. I just wasn’t interested.
“I think that sun’s going to pop out yet,” Mom said, adjusting Cole’s shirt collar as we walked.
“Mrs. O’Malley! Mrs. O’Malley!”
We all turned toward the man hopping out of a Ford sedan.
“Keep walking, kids.” Mom’s heels clipped against the pavement. “Heads up and keep moving.”
“Do you know him?” Cole asked.
“Mrs. O’Malley!” The man caught up to us, his large belly quivering with his hustle. “Can you confirm that the university is going to fire Coach O’Malley?”
Mom said nothing, and
her hand at my back pushed me forward.
“Do you have any comment about the recent photos of your husband with his former employee, Josie Blevins?”
At that Mom stopped. She spun around on the reporter so fast, he tottered backward, and for one hopeful second, I thought he might hit the sidewalk.
Mom poked her finger right in his bloated face. “Since you know who I am, let me remind you who these three individuals are—they’re my children. And they shouldn’t have to be subjected to someone so low as to make catcalls ten feet away from the Lord’s house.” She stepped so close she was surely breathing his same air. “This is sacred ground you’re standing on, and I don’t mean because we’re at church. I mean because I’m standing on this ground. And who am I? I’m a mother. And these are my children. And if you get near them again, I will go full-on Mama Bear, throw down my handbag, and rip out your throat until it comes out your big mouth. Are we clear?”
Wide-eyed, the man nodded.
“Oh, I don’t think I heard you.” Mom reached for her purse strap.
“Yes, ma’am! Yes, Mrs. O’Malley.”
“Good.” She exhaled loudly and found a cool smile. “You have a blessed day now. Come on, kids.”
As the man scurried away, Mom did a 180-degree glare around the parking lot, circling like a vengeful satellite in case any other reporters had the same idea.
“Whoa,” Cole said as we continued our trek to the sanctuary. “I thought we weren’t supposed to talk to those guys.”
“I’ve been wanting to do that for years.” Mom waved to a friend across the lawn. “Felt kinda good.”
“So can we yell at reporters too?” Michael asked.
Mom opened the big glass door. “Not on your life.”
Cole escaped downstairs to youth, but Mom, Michael, and I walked into the sanctuary amid curious stares and whispers behind hands. My mom was brave to return here. Twice she’d been out in the last week, and some Eagle-worshipping redneck had set her straight on what kind of life-ruining joke of a coach she’d married. The odds of us moving were greater than the odds of a zit on picture day.
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