Chapter 46 Mason - Reputation
MASON Reputation
I had spent so much time thinking coaching was kind of a simple profession. You get to hang out with kids. You get the summers off and a long break at Christmas. Spring break. Fall break. Work that I could leave at work.
I mean, sure. Kids were hormonal and dramatic and complicated.
And then there were the school politics, people who were mad I got to coach without teaching, people who were jealous of my office.
(Let’s be real: My office was super shitty.) People who thought I should have to take extra lunchroom duty.
None of that really bothered me. But this current challenge? Definitely not one I had expected.
Daisy had the day off, so she and Maisy had stopped by to bring sandwiches and eat lunch with me.
I still hadn’t told her about Chapel Hill.
I had tried, in my defense. But every time, something had come up that had stopped me.
Sure, I could have just blurted it out, but this needed to be a conversation.
There were things to solve here. This wasn’t just news I wanted to share.
It was a life plan I wanted to try to curate—if she was willing, which I knew she might not be.
“So are you not a big egg salad person?” Daisy asked. “Because I know some people hate the smell.”
I looked down at my sandwich, which I hadn’t eaten much of.
“No, I love egg salad. I’m just kind of distracted.
” Every time I was away from Daisy, I felt that intense guilt that I needed to tell Drew the truth.
But then, I would see her and Maisy, and I felt this potentially very selfish feeling that Maisy was best off with Daisy.
And, well, hopefully, maybe, me. But I felt like I was playing God, and I was self-aware enough to know that I was really not qualified for that.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“I do, actually,” I said.
“If this is about Maisy—”
“It’s not,” I said, cutting her off. I had promised her I wouldn’t say anything to Drew, and I wasn’t sure I could keep that promise.
There was a part of me that knew that this news would devastate Drew and change his entire life.
I wanted to protect him from that in some ways.
But, in others, we all had to be responsible for our actions and decisions.
Not for the first time, I wished I could talk this over with my mom.
She had this way of clarifying things for me.
But I had the feeling my mom was the keeper of enough people’s secrets.
I had planned what I would say to Daisy pretty thoroughly. “I want to say first off that I mean for this to be a conversation. This isn’t me just telling you something.”
She squinted at me. “Okay.”
But before I could continue, a voice I recognized called “Coach!” from around the corner, and it was one of those moments when I wished I had a remote control, where I could hit pause and not have Daisy have to face who was coming through the door: Julie.
In full-on, perky mom mode. “I just wanted to talk about organizing the snack sign-up for—” She saw Daisy, and Daisy saw her. And it was awkward.
But bless Daisy, she just said, “Hi, Julie.”
“Daisy!” Julie gasped. “Gosh, I’m so glad to see you.”
She looked like she meant it. Daisy looked kind of…
like she had Vaseline on her teeth that was making her keep her mouth open, but the disgusting taste was informing her facial features.
It occurred to me that I hadn’t really been there for Daisy through this like I should have.
I’d had so much going on myself. “I think a snack sign-up would be great, Julie. Thanks,” I said, trying to get her out of here and putting this awkward exchange to an end.
She gave me a thumbs-up and turned like her hair was on fire.
“Well, that went well,” Daisy said under her breath.
Nope. I couldn’t get distracted. “So, Daisy, what I wanted to talk about—” As I started to explain, Sarah ran through the door in her cheerleading oufit, out of breath, saying, “Coach!”
She looked at me and then noticed Daisy and Maisy. She smiled at them like this was ordinary. “Oh, hi!”
“Hi!” Daisy said brightly. That must have taken a lot of composure.
“Um, Coach, Emily sent me in here—”
“Nope,” I said.
She laughed. “You don’t even know what I’m going to ask!”
I studied this girl who had given birth behind a dumpster, could have died from an infection, who was currently occupying the same space as her baby. She was either a sociopath or she was hiding her pain so deep down that it was going to haunt her for life. My money was on option B.
Drew appeared in the doorway now too, and when he saw Sarah, he beamed. Then he saw Daisy and Maisy, and I felt like I needed some air. “Oh my gosh!” he said. “Sarah! This is the baby I saved.”
He flexed, she giggled, and I had to open my window. Daisy had turned a shade of gray.
“I was just here to tell Coach that Emily was thinking that since the cheerleaders had been such a hit at the games, maybe we could do a quick dance on the field at a time-out or two?”
“No!” I answered immediately, wanting her out of there.
“Oh yes!” Daisy said at the exact same time.
I looked at her like she was a traitor. “What?” she said. “I’m sorry. I love the cheerleaders. Baseball is kind of—”
“Oh, Daisy, choose your words carefully,” Drew interrupted. “You are on hallowed ground.”
We all laughed.
“Baseball is, um, fantastic,” Daisy said. “But the cheerleaders add such pizzazz.”
“Please, Coach,” Sarah said.
“Please, Mason,” Daisy said.
I threw my hands up. “Ladies of incredible baseball knowledge. Our time-outs don’t work like they do in football and basketball, so that isn’t going to work.”
“Well, you know,” Sarah said, making a running motion with her fingers. “When you guys, like, trade sides or whatever.”
Drew and I rolled our eyes at each other. But they were both so earnest. I looked at Drew. “A little help here?”
He put his hands up. “Don’t look at me.” He slid his arm around Sarah’s waist. “I’d do anything she wanted.”
My stomach turned. How could she be okay with this kid having no idea? How could Sarah be okay with it? I felt horrible.
Officer Foster, our school’s resource officer, rapped lightly at the open door of my small office. “It’s getting really crowded in here, Officer. But how can I help you?”
He looked a little sick.
“Well, uh, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but they need Sarah down at the station for questioning.”
“What?” Sarah and Drew said at the same time. Daisy and I shared a look. Officer Foster seemed relaxed, but it wasn’t lost on me that he was blocking that door.
He looked from Daisy to Maisy to me to Drew to Sarah and shook his head. Yeah. It didn’t look great. “Sweetheart,” he said gently. “Maybe we should talk alone.”
“Absolutely not,” Drew said, walking toward him. “What are you doing, dude?”
Officer Foster looked at Sarah. “Okay, well, if that’s how it’s going to be. Sarah, we have had a few tips that give us reason to believe that the abandoned baby is yours, and I’m going to need to take you down to the station for questioning.”
“No,” I said. “Not without her parents.”
“Do not call my parents!” Sarah cried.
“This is ridiculous,” Drew said. “Look, Foster, this is probably just some jealous cheerleader looking to cause trouble. You know that.”
I stood up. “So, why would you need to take Sarah in?” I was stalling, giving myself time to think.
“Well, child abandonment, reckless endangerment of an infant—”
“But what if she didn’t abandon the child?” I interrupted, my mouth working faster than my brain.
Daisy stood up now. “Look, Officer, whoever’s baby this is, she is fine. She is thriving. This is a happy ending here.”
“The father safe surrendered the baby to the hospital,” Sarah blurted out, locking eyes with Daisy.
Drew turned to look at me, and his face was very pale. He looked at Sarah. “But that was me.”
Foster studied my face. “Yes,” I agreed. “The father safe surrendered the baby. So, no crime here.”
The officer raised his eyebrows. “So then why didn’t you say that at the hospital when you first talked to Officer Mendoza?”
Shit. I cleared my throat. But then I just told the truth.
“Foster, I didn’t know it yet then.” I paused and flicked my eyes to Drew and Sarah.
“There’s a lot of trauma we’re trying to work through here,” I said quietly.
“But you don’t need to take in the mother, because the father was there and took the baby to the hospital. ”
I looked sternly at Drew, who said, “Yes. I’m very sorry. But I wanted to do the right thing, and I thought that was the right thing.”
Well played, Drew. Well played.
Officer Foster nodded. “You were right. That was the right thing. Under North Carolina state law, if the baby was safe surrendered to the hospital, there’s no crime here.”
Foster pursed his lips.
“All right, then. But, kids, you need to talk this through. You need to make sure giving up this baby is what you want. The clock is ticking down at DSS, and I’d suggest you let your parents know so that they can decide if they want to raise their granddaughter.
Otherwise, she’s going to end up being adopted. ”
“I’ll help them with everything!” Daisy said. “I’m a nurse.”
He furrowed his brow, shook his head, and said, “I’d never have guessed in a million years…” Then he left the room.
Everyone was still for a full five seconds until Drew turned to Sarah and then to me and said, “What the hell was that? I don’t need the entire town thinking this is my baby!”
Sarah burst into tears. “But it is your baby,” she wailed. Then she ran off down the hall. Drew, stunned silent, didn’t follow her.
He turned back to me. “Can someone explain to me what is going on?”
I looked at Daisy, but she was staring at me in stony silence.
“The hospital,” Drew said, rubbing his hair. “Sarah had a baby.”
I wasn’t sure he had put all the pieces together one hundred percent correctly, but I let him walk out of the office to process this.
Daisy said, not an ounce of warmth in her voice, “I asked you for one thing. One thing.”
Now I was the one mystified. “Are you serious, Daisy? That wasn’t my fault! Sarah started it. I was just trying to protect them!”
“Well, what about me? What about Maisy? Did you not need to protect us? Because you sure as hell didn’t.”
She stood up, and I was honestly in shock. “Daisy, you can’t seriously be mad at me. You would have just let them take Sarah in for questioning when we could get them off that easily?”
“Well, they did a bad thing,” Daisy hissed. “Maybe they deserve to be punished.” Her voice broke as she said, “And now Maisy is going to end up with God only knows who, and I will never see her again!”
I tried to pull her close to me, but she stopped me. “No. Just no. I need to go try to clean up your mess.”
I was dumbfounded by her reaction. Lying about Maisy’s parentage was never going to be a long-term solution. You couldn’t keep secrets like that, and especially not in a town as small as Cape Carolina. “Daisy,” I said. “Let’s talk about this.”
“No!” she said. “You know what? Everyone was right about you. I was crazy to let myself fall for someone with your reputation. Do not call me ever again.”
Her words cut deep. I sank into my chair as she stormed out of my office.
I had let myself believe I was getting a fresh start and, in one fell swoop, I had lost my girlfriend, the baby I had saved, and my star pitcher.
And, if he was as furious with me as he had a right to be, I’d probably lose my job offer too.
Maybe even my job here at the high school for lying about all of this.
I never should have let Daisy sway me. I should have told the truth from the beginning.
It was out there now. And I mused that the truth was supposed to set you free, yet here I was.
Moments ago, I’d had everything I had ever wanted.
And it had taken only a few minutes for it to all go up in flames, in a spectacular blaze of glory.
Maybe some people weren’t meant to be happy, to get what they wanted. Maybe I was one of those people.