“I’m seeing someone.”
“Who’s saying I was asking you on a date? Just a friendly cup of coffee between old friends.” Not taking no for an answer, Tillerman dropped his business card into Julia’s open purse. “You’ve got my number now. See you around, Julia.”
“No, you won’t,” Julia said. But Tillerman had already gone.
* * *
The Wayne County parks-and-rec gym in the Bricktown District, where Logan was playing his game, was located across the street from the Saints Peter and Paul Church, the oldest existing church in Detroit.
Julia didn’t consider herself religious. Not by a long shot. The last time she had prayed was when she was seven. Julia had sat alone in the police interview room the night Ben was taken, her mother having been hauled off to the drunk tank to sober up. In that moment, Julia had prayed with all her might, figuring her sheer desperation would surely get God’s attention. But God never answered, so Julia had simply stopped praying.
An old Chrysler sputtered to a stop across the street, further connecting a stark memory of her past, as if the old junker had appeared on purpose, the universe putting it in her path as a painful reminder.
During his short nine years, Ben had always tried to make everything right for Julia when nothing was. Julia looked on at the old Chrysler and its occupants getting out, a mother and a baby, likely heading into the church in hopes of getting money, food, or a voucher for a safe place to sleep for the night.
Julia looked through the scene across the street and instead saw her brother Ben, huddled next to her in the backseat of their father’s run-down Chrysler that had become their temporary home. Ben tried as hard as he could to make the desperate situation seem okay and told her a bedtime story about a magical wizard named Mr. Moto.
“Will you tell me that story every night?” Julia asked, and snuggled up against Ben to try and get warm.
“Sure. Get some sleep. I’ll stay up for a while to make sure everything is all right,” Ben said. “We’re going to get out of this. I promise.”
Helen’s Volvo was already parked in the lot and Julia hurried to catch up. Her arrival clocked in ten minutes before the game’s onset, but the gym was already packed with parents who had spilled over from the stands onto the sidelines.
Julia spotted Logan on the periphery of a group of a dozen boys on the far end of the basketball court, his dark, shiny hair standing out against his new team’s red jersey. Logan dribbled the basketball, keeping his distance from the other boys, who were huddled together in a tight pack, talking and practicing shots from the foul line.
Most of the other boys’ attempts were complete air balls, nowhere near reaching the net. Julia felt a swell of pride, knowing her Logan, who practiced shooting hoops in their backyard every day after school, could make the shot from the free throw line, no problem.
A skinny bald man with a beard, who wore a red team jersey, put his arm around Logan’s shoulder and walked him over to the other boys. The man, who Julia figured for the coach, then moved Logan to the head of the line for his turn.
“You can do it, baby,” Julia said under her breath, recognizing Logan’s nerves thinly disguised underneath his attempt at a cool demeanor.
A mother always knew her son.
Logan bent his knees, the ball resting on his fingertips. He then extended his right arm and released, just as Julia had watched him do hundreds of times before when he shot around in their backyard. Julia’s smile spread across her face as she watched the slow backspin of the ball and its perfect arc as it came down and swooshed through the net.
“Way to go, Logan!” Julia yelled as loud as she could, and let out a piercing whistle through her front teeth, getting more attention from the curious mothers and other strangers in the stand than her son, who looked back at Julia and gave her a shy wave before he rejoined his teammates.
Julia turned back to the stands and spotted Helen and Will approaching in her direction. Her younger son then broke from Helen and came barreling toward her, causing Julia to almost lose her footing when Will grabbed her in one of his fierce little-boy hugs.
“Did you see that? The boy is a protégé,” Helen said of Logan. “How was your first day back at work?”
“Good, but I missed everyone,” Julia said. She lifted Will up in her arms and gave him a kiss on his forehead. “How was preschool?”
“Lennox has bugs in his hair,” Will answered.
“Ooh. Head lice,” Julia said.
“I checked Will already. He’s fine. But he’s getting a cold. The preschool called and I picked him up early. We were just waiting for you to get here. I’m going to take him home to rest and I’ll make dinner so it will be ready when you and Logan get in.”
“Why didn’t you call me about Will? I would’ve left work.”
“That’s exactly why I didn’t call. It was your first day back. The boy doesn’t have a fever, just a runny nose. He will live,” Helen said. “Logan needs you here. He pretended to have a stomachache on the way over.”
“He’s nervous,” Julia said, and pressed her wrist against the side of Will’s forehead to see if he felt warm. “He doesn’t feel hot. Are you okay, sweetheart?”
Will sniffled and rested his head against Julia’s shoulder. “Too loud here. I want to go home.”
“I’ll take Will home. Can you stay for Logan’s game?” Julia asked.
“No. I go home with the boy,” Helen said, and pulled Will from Julia’s arms. “Your Logan, he needs you. I can manage a child with a runny nose.”
“Bye-bye, Mamma. It’s okay,” Will said as if sensing her guilt.
Julia watched the two leave, feeling torn as she tried keeping all the balls she was juggling in the air from falling.
The loud grating sound of the buzzer announcing the start of the game blasted overhead and Julia eyed the stands, finding a coveted vacant seat in the third row, next to a group of women Julia estimated were about her age.
Julia navigated her way through the throng of spectators until she reached a woman with long blond hair and a full face of carefully applied makeup. The blonde was sitting next to the empty spot. The woman was well dressed in a pair of black designer jeans, a loose jade-colored silk shirt, and a pair of killer black high heels, which seemed insane to Julia to wear to a kids’ basketball game.
“Is anyone sitting here?” Julia asked.
The woman gave Julia a quick up-and-down glance, clearly sizing Julia up as the potentially unwanted new competition. The woman then barely nodded her consent and began to reach inside her extra-large Michael Kors purse that contained a small terrier dog inside.
“Tell you what, never mind,” Julia said, not wanting to deal with the drama. “I’d rather stand and be closer to the action.”
“No, please join us,” said a dark-haired woman, who gave Julia a welcoming smile. She was sitting next to the blonde who thought it was somehow chic to have a live animal in her pocketbook, stealing Paris Hilton’s eye-rolling trend from nearly twenty years earlier. “I’m Charlotte. Charlotte Fisher. I think our kids are on the same team. My son is Steven. He’s the kid with the crazy mop of curly hair.”
“I’m Julia Gooden, and this place is packed. Is it always like this? My son Logan’s old team, we’d be lucky to get the first three rows filled during a game.”
“Parents here take the games pretty seriously,” Charlotte said.
“Does your son go to Pierson Academy or Avalon Elementary? Everyone here, their kids pretty much go to one or the other,” Charlotte said.
“Neither yet,” Julia answered. “But Logan will likely be going to Avalon. We’re thinking of moving to the area soon. I’m a big fan of public schools, so we didn’t look at Pierson.”
The blonde with the dog turned and gave Julia a disapproving glance. “Pierson is the best private school in Wayne County. They have a higher rate of Ivy League college acceptances than any other school, private or public, in the state.”
&
nbsp; “I toured Avalon and I really liked it,” Julia said. “The principal was fantastic. He grew up in the Brewster Projects with an incarcerated dad and single mom and managed to graduate from Harvard. I’m guessing he didn’t attend Pierson, and he did pretty well for himself.”
Julia ignored the chilly stare from the blonde and jumped to her feet as Logan stole the ball from a player on the opposing team and dribbled it down the court toward his team’s basket, nailing a two-point layup.
Julia let out another whistle and clapped her hands, causing Logan to look up to the stands and give her a small smile.
The boys ran back down the court, and Julia watched as a serious-looking boy on Logan’s team threw an elbow into the stomach of another kid on the rival team who had the ball.
“Foul!” the referee called.
The blonde got to her feet in her staggering high heels and cupped her hands around her mouth. “That’s a stupid call! Are you blind, or what?”
“I’m taking it that’s your son who the ref just called a foul on,” Julia said. “He threw an elbow to the other kid.”
“No, he didn’t. That referee is a low-class moron. The other boy tripped and Jared ran into him. It wasn’t a foul.”
“Look, it’s just a game. The kids are having fun. And I’m betting that ref you just yelled at is probably barely earning enough to cover the cost of gas to get here for working the game,” Julia said.
“Your son is the dark-haired boy?” the blonde asked coolly.
“Right. Logan.”
“Who does he train with?” she asked.
“This is Sophiah, by the way,” Charlotte said, introducing her blond friend, who hadn’t bothered to do so herself yet.
“There’s a silent h at the end of my name,” Sophiah answered. “I added the h myself a few years ago. I always tell my son that it’s okay to be different. Different is special.”
Julia held her tongue from telling the woman she probably should tell her son it isn’t so special to elbow a kid in the stomach on the basketball court. Julia knew she needed to play nice for Logan, even if it was killing her not to speak her mind.
“You didn’t answer my question. Who is your son’s basketball trainer?” Sophiah asked. “Another mom has a retired point guard from the 1998 Pistons training her son. It costs her two hundred dollars per half hour, but I’m telling you, it’s worth it. Look at Ethan’s technique.”
“Two hundred dollars to train a kid for junior rec league? That’s crazy,” Julia said. “My son doesn’t train with anyone. He just shoots around in our backyard after school.”
“Jared doesn’t have time to ‘just shoot around’ after school,” the blonde answered. “His schedule is full. Mandarin lessons Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and then he goes straight to basketball training before he comes here. Tuesdays and Thursdays are his light days. He’s only got lacrosse and violin after school, so he gets home by seven. It’s really not a lot, because his weekends are free now, since he doesn’t have to study for Pierson’s gifted-and-talented program anymore.”
Julia looked away from Sophiah’s giant, gloating grin before she said something she regretted or flat-out slugged her.
“I’m not trying to brag, but Jared’s English teacher told me he got one of the highest scores on the GATE test in the school’s history. I asked that they test Jared’s IQ to see if he’s a genius. Gifted and talented is one thing. Genius is different. Genius is special.”
“How old is your son?” Julia asked.
“He’s nine. He’ll be ten next month,” the blonde answered.
“You’re putting some seriously high expectation on your son, and he’s just a child. People can parent the way they want, but it’s good to let a child just be a kid sometimes,” Julia said. “If there’s that much pressure early on, it can screw kids up when they get older. Rebellion, drugs, eating disorders, you can fill in the blanks.”
“I guess it’s a good thing your son isn’t trying to get into Pierson then. They expect discipline and training from their students.”
Julia felt like she was in a sequel to the movie Mean Girls, this one entitled Mean Girls 2: All Grown-Up and Still Bitchy, when she caught an aroma of something powerful coming from the blonde’s purse.
“You may want to check that. I think your dog may be the one who needs the discipline and training,” Julia said.
“Oh, shit,” the blonde said as she inspected her bag with her furry accessory inside and picked her way out of the stands in her skyscraper-high heels.
“You were amazing,” Charlotte said with a laugh. “Most people don’t stand up to her. She’s a little, what should I say, high-maintenance? I guess that’s the best way to describe her.”
“I think you’re being way too generous,” Julia answered. “I could come up with a few other words for her.”
“You’re blunt. I like that. Are you a lawyer? You strike me as the type who doesn’t mind confrontation.”
“No, I’m a newspaper reporter. I cover the crime beat in Detroit.”
“No kidding? No wonder you wouldn’t take Sophiah’s shit. You being new in town, why don’t you join us for a girls’ night out? We’re going to the Sugar House in Cork-town tomorrow night. It’s always packed and there are plenty of single guys. I don’t see a ring, so I’m guessing you’re not married.”
“No, but I’m seeing someone.”
“Come with us anyway. We always go dancing afterward,” Charlotte said.
“Dancing?” Julia asked, trying to go back to the recesses of her memory to the last time she went to a nightclub, but she came up empty. “Thanks, but that’s not my style. When I’m not working, I’m home with my kids.”
“Then you definitely need to join us. What do you do for fun? You can’t be all work and then in mommy mode. Every woman needs some ‘me’ time.”
“I run. Every morning.”
“I’m a runner, too. If you won’t do a girls’ night out, how about we go running together? I’m free this Friday, if you can make it. Let’s plan on setting up a play date with our kids, too. That way, your son will have a friend before he starts school.”
“That’s really nice of you. I’ll take you up on both offers. I’m guessing your son doesn’t go to Pierson Academy then?” Julia asked.
“That pretentious place? Not a chance.”
“I knew I liked you.”
Julia gave Charlotte her contact information and then watched as the blonde, Sophiah with a silent h at the end of her name, returned empty-handed, having likely dumped her soiled purse and her dog accessory in her car, Julia figured.
Sophiah nabbed a vacant seat in the front row and called out to her boy, “Come on, Jared. You need to hustle!”
Jared spun his head in the direction of his mother’s voice just as he attempted to jump and snag a rebound.
Julia winced as the boy, distracted by his mother, came down at an awkward angle and crumpled down on the gym floor when he landed.
“That doesn’t look good,” Charlotte said.
“Time-out!” the coach from Logan’s team called, and the gym filled with the sound of a referee’s shrill whistle.
When the boy didn’t get up, Julia’s motherly instincts kicked in. She made her way down from the bleachers until she reached the gym floor, where the coach for Logan’s team crouched down by his injured player. The coach looked uncomfortable to Julia, as if he didn’t quite know what to do, and continued to pat Jared on the back, like that would somehow help.
“Mind if I take a look?” the referee, who blew the whistle, asked Logan’s coach.
The referee was about her age, Julia estimated, and he had the name Jeremiah Landry sewn into a label on his Wayne County Parks and Recreation shirt.
“My ankle hurts really bad!” Jared cried.
“You’re okay, Jared. Walk it off, buddy,” Sophiah said. Instead of getting up to check on her son, she remained seated in the stands. “There’s just two minutes left on the c
lock. Hey, ref, make him go back in the game. He’s fine.”
Landry ignored the blonde’s directive and bent down next to the boy. “You’re going to be okay, son. Can you move your foot for me?”
“I can move it, but it doesn’t feel good. I don’t want to play anymore.”
“You don’t have to,” Landry said. He gently gripped the boy’s ankle between his two hands and made small, circular movements with the child’s foot and then nodded to the coach. “There’s an ice pack in the gym office. I don’t think anything’s broken, but he could have a sprain. For now, he needs to ice it. My recommendation is for you to stay off it for now, Jared, and have your mom take you to the doctor tomorrow to get it checked. You’re going to be okay, I promise. You’ll be back playing before you know it.”
“He can play,” Sophiah said. “You can do it, baby.”
“You’re going to be good as new,” Jeremiah said, continuing to keep his focus on the hurt player instead of his mom, but Julia noticed the ref raised his voice so the mother would be sure to hear his advice. “But if you play on a sprain or another injury, your ankle might not heal right. The play-offs are coming up, and if your team makes it, I know you wouldn’t want to miss the big game. You take care of yourself first and don’t worry about sitting out this time.”
The mention of “the play-offs” made Sophiah’s eyes burn bright.
“Come on, Jared. It’s okay. Your team is going to need you when it counts,” Sophiah said, and patted the empty seat next to her.
“Don’t put any weight on your foot. I’m going to get you to your mom,” Landry said. He pulled the boy up carefully, looped one of Jared’s arms around his waist, and nodded for the coach to do the same on the other side.
When Jared was safely eased to his seat in the front row, Landry gave the boy a fist pound. “We’ll get you iced up, and that ankle’s going to start to feel better. I promise,” Landry said, and jogged back to center court.
Julia began to return to her seat, but changed her route when her cell phone rang and Navarro’s number came up.
“Hold on one second,” Julia said to Navarro as she picked up. She beat a quick path out of the gym and found a corner in the hallway of the building far enough away from the din of the crowd.
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