The Ground Beneath

by Stephanie Vercier

  “Yep, that’s pretty much it,” he says with a nod. “You know, there’re some experimental treatments Logan could try, and he and his mother have given me permission to talk to his doctors—even they said there’s more they can do on the less experimental side, just stuff that’s really expensive.”

  I know that Hunter had pretty much given a blank check to the hospital for Logan’s care, and I was so proud of him for it, but I worried too. If things didn’t work out the way he envisioned them for Logan, he’d be devastated.

  “How does Logan feel about undergoing all of that?” I ask. I’d seen people from our congregation back home fight illnesses, either until they beat them or eventually succumbed to them, while others decided early on they didn’t want to spend what time they had left undergoing treatments that might or might not help. I’d seen what a personal choice it was, one no more right than the other.

  Hunter grimaces. “Some days he’s all for it. Other days he says he’s ready to take a dirt nap… his words, not mine.”

  “What an unbearable choice for a fifteen-year-old to make. I’m not even sure I know what I’d do.”

  “You’d fight,” Hunter says, taking both of my hands. “I wouldn’t let you do anything but that. And I’m going to make sure Logan fights too.”

  I feel Hunter’s love like a wave, and it’s hard to imagine he went for so long without being able to share that love with anyone, not even with his family after his mother died. Now he’s showing it for me and for Logan, and I can imagine him loving my parents someday, can even see children in the far off future, and I know what an amazing father he’ll be.

  His phone rings, and I have to point it out to him—he doesn’t seem to hear it over the noise of the music in the room, or maybe he’s just lost in the moment with me.

  “I guess I should check it,” he says, pulling it from his pocket. “Logan’s mom said she’d call me to see how things were going.” But when he looks at the screen, his eyes fall. “Dad?” he says, looking at the phone as though it isn’t quite real.

  “Maybe you should get it.”

  I know what a difficult relationship he has with the man. In our bid to be as honest as we could be with one another, he told me his father pretty much disappeared into a bottle after his mother died and was then diagnosed with early-onset Parkinson’s disease not long after. While I’m lucky enough to have two parents who love me even at the worst of times, it’s as if Hunter doesn’t have a father, and his relationship with his brothers hasn’t fared much better.

  “Yeah,” he says, like he’s in a trance. “I guess I should.” He swipes at the phone and presses it to his ear. “Dad?”

  Immediately, I hear shouts from the other end. The voice is so loud that I can make out some of the shaky words and sentences.

  “You decided to shame all of us!” his father yells. “You couldn’t just leave things alone, could you? Goddamn you and your stories! Your mother is dead and you have to bring shame on her memory like this!”

  Hunter’s face is blank, and I’m not sure he’s even listening to what his father is saying. I put my hand on his arm, but he walks away from it—from me—and leaves the room, the muffled shouts of his father still heard, loud enough that, even with booming music, Logan, Grace and the rest of their friends had noticed.

  I’m concerned about Hunter and am guilty for encouraging him to answer the call, but I don’t want anything to spoil Logan’s evening. So I take in a deep breath, walk up to the kids, make a show of rolling my eyes and tell them, “It’s just one of his coaches being a jerk.”

  “More like a complete asshole,” Logan says, his eyes fiercely defending.

  “You’re probably right,” I say, making sure to keep things less than serious. “So you can go back to having fun now.”

  “Dance with us,” one of Logan’s friends says. He’s a tall, lanky kid, almost as tall as Hunter but with none of the bulk.

  “Oh, I’m too old for that,” I say, trying to laugh it off.

  Now it’s Grace’s turn to roll her eyes. “I thought we already decided you weren’t!” She takes my hands. “Come on. You’re really cool for what you’ve done for us here.”

  I haven’t danced in forever, not since my wedding. There was actually a time I used to love dancing with my friends, then saving the slow dances for Wyatt, but having so much more fun when the beat sped up and I could lose myself in the movement. While I’m really worried about Hunter and at the ready if he needs me, I feel compelled to let myself have a good time, even if it’s just for a few minutes.

  “Okay,” I say, relenting. “See if you guys can keep up!”

  They cheer me on, and pretty soon we’re all dancing to ridiculously poppy songs that I’m almost ashamed to admit I know all of the words to. The tall lanky kid is twirling me around as we do our own rendition of a swing dance, and we’re all laughing and having a blast and not caring how ridiculous any of us might look.

  It’s all sort of wonderful.

  I’m still dancing when Hunter returns. He’s back in the room, near the door, a slight smile on his face. My first instinct is to go to him and ask him how the call ended and how he’s doing, but I wave him toward me instead.

  He shakes his head, so I dance my way over to him, still not caring how silly I might look. I take both his hands and drag him toward the center of the room and say, “Five minutes, Hunter! Just five minutes.”

  There’s another shake of his head, but then a bigger smile breaks through, and Hunter starts to move. He dances about as well as you’d expect any NFL quarterback to dance, but he’s moving and smiling, and our continued laughter is glorious.

  We keep the mood for as long as Logan and his friends want to hang out, but Logan does eventually tire and admits to us that he should probably get back to his bed before he passes out.

  Before the night can fully end, Logan kisses Grace again, and she asks him if she can walk with him back to his room. He’s hesitant at first, probably doesn’t want her to associate him with a sterile hospital room, but he relents, and the smile on her face tells us how much she wants to be there for him.

  Hunter and I keep a fair distance back, even taking the next elevator up to his floor so the couple can be alone. We stand outside the door of his room when they say goodbye. When Grace comes out, she looks hopeful. “He told me I can visit him whenever I want,” she says.

  On the ride back to take everyone home, Grace admits to me she’d always had a crush on Logan, that she was devastated when he got sick. “I thought I’d never see him again, but I was kind of hoping. I mean, I turned a few guys down because I was holding out hope Logan would come back to school.”

  It’s the sweetest thing, and I tell her that. I also tell her there might be some hard days ahead, that Logan might not always be the easiest person to be around.

  “I know that,” she says. “Before you guys picked me up, my Mom sat me down and told me just that. She’s not against me seeing Logan, but she just wants me to be sure I can handle it if something really bad happens.”

  “If you ever need to talk about it, you can call me,” I tell her, making sure she has my number.

  “I will,” she promises.

  Logan’s other friends are still pumped up too when we drop them off, saying they’ll all be frequent visitors now that Logan has given them the go ahead.

  It’s only when it’s just Hunter and I left in his SUV that I finally ask about the phone call.

  “Is everything all right, with your dad?” I’m pretty sure it’s not all right, but I don’t know of a better way to broach the subject.

  Hunter sighs, his grip tightening on the wheel. “I’m not sure I can wait until Christmas to go home. My dad isn’t well, and I need to settle some things with him, for good this time.”

  “Do you want me to come?” It sounds like something he might want to do on his own, and yet I find myself hoping he’ll say yes. I want to be there for him, even if I’m at my parents’ house
while he works through whatever he needs to with his family.

  “The better question is if you want to come. I want you to—of course I do—but I’ve put you through enough, and I’m not sure I want to add my family drama to the list.”

  “I wouldn’t mind seeing my parents a little sooner too,” I say. “I’d really like to check up on my mom. I can talk to Sheila tomorrow and try to get someone to cover me.”

  “I don’t want you to mess your job up,” he says.

  “Sheila will either say yes or no. It doesn’t hurt for me to ask.”

  “Okay. I’ll talk to the team and see what I can do.” He takes one hand from the wheel and weaves it through mine. “I really appreciate this, you know?”

  “I know,” I say, gripping his hand back. “But this is what people do when they love each other. It’s not something you have to keep apologizing for.”

  He smiles then, and in that upturned grin I see that he gets it, that love means you don’t keep having to say you’re sorry.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  HUNTER

  Theresa made a public apology in early December before calling me personally to do the same, to ask for forgiveness for her role in outing my abuse. I couldn’t tell whether she was truly sorry or not, but it didn’t really matter. I forgave her anyway. It wasn’t worth holding on to whatever residual anger I had toward her.

  “Do something good with your life,” I told her before hanging up, and I hoped she would.

  Thanksgiving had come and gone before Logan’s party, a blip on the holiday radar we’d missed. Alli’s parents had wanted to spend the day on their own relaxing—decompressing is the word I think they used—and I’d been glad Keith hadn’t brought up me heading to the mountains again for a dysfunctional family Thanksgiving. I pictured sitting around the table at my dad’s, eating stuffing and mashed potatoes and waiting for the yelling match I knew would erupt. Just imagining it was enough.

  Alli and I worked over that four-day weekend and did our own version of Thanksgiving a couple weeks after. Alli encouraged me to invite Logan, his mom and his friends over to my condo for an early December feast, and that’s what I did. We invited Sheila, Josh and Mallory too, Alli making sure Scott wasn’t included with the invitation. When Mallory showed up alone, there was no mention of Scott. Made me wonder if Josh might have a shot with her, but while they talked and were friendly, there wasn’t any kind of love connection by the end of the night.

  And I wanted my friend to find someone because, for me, finding the right person forced me to change the way I thought about my life. I was still getting used to this new version of me, the guy who doesn’t live and breathe football and women and anything and everything to take his mind off of a past he once thought was best buried. I still loved football, missed the hell out of playing and trusted my newest physical therapist that I’d be able to play next season if I wanted to.

  But did I?

  Even if I hadn’t been injured, I felt like I’d let the guys down, the entire organization really. My heart and my head weren’t in it this season. I’d pretty much failed at even being present on the sidelines or giving the kind of feedback on plays they needed from me. Maybe I did the best I could for everything else going on around me, but I didn’t think my best was good enough.

  The season was almost over, and while things had looked so promising early on, it wasn’t looking good now for playoffs this year. My coach should have been pissed at me, but he kept giving me passes, told me to spend a week with “that beautiful girlfriend of yours” and that he’d see me Sunday for the next game.

  “She’s my fiancé,” I had to correct him, but I was damn thankful for the reprieve.

  Sheila was just as generous and gave Alli a full seven days away from the grind of managing careers, something she says is manageable now that Theresa’s gone.

  “Is the plan still to see your family on Wednesday?” Alli asks me from the passenger seat of my SUV as we drive over the mountain pass bright and early on Monday morning.

  Since my dad called me at Logan’s party, I’ve known it was well past time to face him and to finally deal with what hasn’t been dealt with in nearly twenty years.

  “You can sit this one out if you want,” I offer, even though I’m sure she’ll just say no. “My brothers will be all right—hopefully—but I’m sure my dad’s going to lose his shit, and you’ll get to witness a Lawrence family meltdown.”

  “Oh, I’ve prepared myself for that,” she says with confidence.

  “You sure about that? I’m expecting a reality-TV level screaming match.”

  She laughs. “I’m going in with both eyes open. Drama and all, I’d still really like to meet everyone. Billy’s girlfriend is pregnant, right?”

  “Right.” Estranged from my family, I’d nearly forgotten. “Kind of crazy that my youngest brother is going to be the first one to have a kid.”

  She’s silent for a moment before she says, “You’re not in any rush to catch up to him, are you?”

  If there are any bones of contention between Alli and myself, this might be one of them. As eager as she is to marry me, she’s not in any hurry to have kids. She wants to go back to school and build on the career she’s begun with Sheila. While I need to give her the space to do that, I can’t deny how badly I want to father a child with her.

  “Just please let’s have one before I get gray hair,” I joke, though truthfully, I don’t want to be mistaken for our kid’s grandfather when he or she graduates high school.

  “I’m sure we can meet in the middle,” she says, putting her hand on mine. “We still have to get married and figure out what really happened to your mom and your aunt all those years ago.”

  “If we ever figure that out,” I say.

  “We’re getting closer,” Alli assures me. “Don’t you think we’ve had some huge breakthroughs?”

  “Sure, but the stuff we’ve been trying to figure out with Daniella has pretty much stalled.”

  Four more people have come out to say Clyde Mitchell molested them when they were children, two men and two women, making the total six, including myself. Though these are breakthroughs in proving what a predatory bastard the man was, we’ve still come up short in being able to prove my mother and aunt’s crash was anything other than an accident. I’ve talked to the three men and the two women, offering them support but selfishly wanting information. Only one of them had my mother for a teacher, and he doesn’t remember telling her about the abuse. “He said he’d cut my sister’s throat if I told anyone,” he said over one of our phone calls.

  And I completely understood. Clyde Mitchell was able to victimize us as children by threatening the people we loved.

  “At least the SBI is involved now,” Alli says.

  The State Bureau of Investigation was called in when it was determined neither Micah nor his deputies could open a fair probe.

  “Wish they’d look into more than just the abuse angle. That agent I met with in Seattle told me point blank they’d already dismissed foul play as a possibility in the accident.”

  “It doesn’t mean it’s true,” she says. “There still might be witnesses who don’t want to talk.”

  “We’ll see,” I tell her, wanting the truth, but wishing it could all be over.

  I was grateful in a way for Theresa exposing me because it had given the men and women who were also abused the courage to come forward and for Clyde Mitchell’s name to be forever tainted for his actions. But there was also a part of me that saw this as a waste. A dead man could never actually be formally charged with a crime, so while the notoriety is allowing his abuse victims to get the help they need in dealing with their past, we’ve also had to share our stories publically, with millions of people, not all of whom could be counted on to be sympathetic. Sometimes I wish my pain could remain private, that it only had to be shared with those closest to me, only to the people who matter in my life.

  In a sort of silent agreement, we lay of
f of the heavy stuff for the rest of our drive and take in the scenery, snow clinging to trees and piled up high on the side of the highway, the sky above us a blue-gray that gets more blue the further east we get. I think about what might have happened had Alli been older when I was still living in Mountainside. Somehow I feel sure I would have picked her out in the stands, even if she was rooting for her boyfriend on the opposing team. Would I have found the courage to go up to her then, to ask her out? Or could I have trusted myself not to completely fuck things up? Maybe I needed the time, the experience of college and playing for the NFL to grow up and to banish the guy I was so convinced I needed to become.

  I steal glances at Alli as I drive, the silhouette of her face beautiful in the filtering sunlight. I have faith that this is our time, that no matter what gets torn up or uncovered in the months ahead, that we’ll get through it together.

  And that, more than anything else, makes me glad.

  I’m not overcome with the same, ominous sensation this time around when we cross the county line, driving along the road that my mom, aunt, and Wyatt and Abe were killed on. There’s plenty of bad that happened here, but I remind myself of the good. It’s the place where my mother was born, where my parents were married, where I had the best mom in the world for nine years of my life.

  “Do you remember the way?” Alli asks once we close in on Coalton.

  “I wouldn’t forget,” I say with a grin.

  “Just checking,” she says, smiling right back.

  But while I remember the way to her house, I’m kind of nervous about making a good impression on her folks. They’ve offered to let us stay with them, in Alli’s room—pretty progressive for an Episcopal priest I’d say—and while things might get tight and a little weird, I figure staying at their house is the best way to really get to know her parents.

  “We can get a hotel if it feels strange,” she says, pretty much reading my mind.

  “I’ll tough it out. They’re going to be my in-laws soon, right? I figure this might be their way of vetting me.”