Chapter 19
Gabe
The last time I was on this field, the stands felt like they reached to the sky. Down on the field, I felt like a god. Center’s never been a glamorous position, but Coach Gregorson said I was going places. Didn’t have a football scholarship, but none of us did in this little backwoods corner of Minnesota on the North Shore of Lake Superior, practically Canada. When I told Gregorson I’d gotten on the team at Iowa State as a walk-on, he said that was it, everyone would see how amazing I was, how much I deserved it. And then every year when the mini-camps came and went, fewer and fewer people thought I had a chance, but Coach was always there cheering me on, telling me I was so close.
I was.
And now I’m back on this field that’s absolutely the tiniest fucking thing ever, its scoreboard still a wall of lightbulbs, its announcers’ deck not even roofed, just six flights of bleachers and then a platform for a local sports reporter to man, and I’m over the moon at the opportunity I’ve been given to present a plaque to Coach Gregorson honoring his years of hard work and congratulate him on retirement.
I was a god here twelve years ago. The way the crowd cheers for me at halftime, a sea of not just the local colors of purple and white but also a ton of Jugs ruby and saffron brought out when the clock ran down, makes me realize I’m a god again.
“And it’s all because of you, Coach!” I yell, and everyone cheers even more loudly. “You’re an absolute legend. To Coach Gregorson!”
Gregorson is ancient, at least seventy. The last decade has not been kind to him. The team is down by twenty points at the half. They won’t win their own Homecoming. A shame. But the Homecoming King gives Gregorson his crown, the Queen gives him her roses, and the feeble old man looks every bit as proud as he did the day I let him know I’d been recruited.
“You ready to settle down, old man?” I laugh, clapping him on the shoulder, the gesture broad but the touch light.
He beams up at me, and I can’t help wondering if I’ve gotten taller, if he’s gotten shorter, or if he was just larger than life in my mind until my own world became larger than life. “I got seven grandkids now,” he says proudly. “That’s one of ‘em right there.” He points to a kid on the sideline, smaller than Merrick or even Lin, but he’s offensive line, holding his own. I’m literally twice his size. “Gonna have great-grandkids soon. Definitely seems about time to settle down. Maybe you should think about doing the same,” he adds with a wink.
I lean over to him to conspiratorially whisper, “You know, I’ve got someone in mind to do the settling down with.”
I didn’t think Gregorson could have been happier than he was a moment ago, but he lets out a whoop, claps me on the back hard enough I jolt, and says, “It’s about time, boy!”
“Dana Cambridge says Maycee Luzonn overheard Devyn Brown talking to Kayla Duncroft, and she said her little brother heard you tell Coach Gregorson you have a girlfriend.”
I grew up with three sisters. One older, two younger. So I don’t have issues working through what’s spewed out of Leah’s mouth the moment I walk into the kitchen of my childhood home. But it does take me a minute to orient myself to the fact that she’s not a baby anymore and at 22, she could be off and married and pregnant like Abby was two years ago. Instead, she chose to skip out on college, pull espresso shots at the local coffee shop down the street, and figure herself out. And since she is the baby, my parents agreed to it far more readily than they did when Phoebe attempted it, a constant bone of contention at holidays, but Ma swears Leah’s paying rent.
I have my doubts, but Phoebe got the last laugh there. She’s recently divorced, ‘transitioning’ to single life in her childhood bedroom, and currently sprawled across the velvet rose-print sofa in the living room while Dad Netflix-surfs in his old chocolate-brown recliner and nurses a beer. At the stove, Ma is stirring a vat of chili.
But then Leah makes that comment, and two of three heads spin to me, like women possessed.
Dad belches, which might actually be his acknowledgment of what she said. I’m not saying he’s inattentive at all, but he’s always been a pro at letting Ma and the girls lead the fact-finding mission while he quietly absorbs and processes.
Phoebe scrambles to her feet, nearly six feet herself and still like a newborn fawn on her gangly legs despite being two years my senior. “You didn’t tell us you had a girlfriend!” she shouts too loudly for the four yards of open air between us.
Ma, barely five feet, her hair a salt-and-pepper she has no interest in coloring, the red-headed stepchild despite being Ma and genetically brunette in a sea of blond and ginger giants, dumps a giant ladle of chili into one of the Thanksgiving serving bowls and thrusts it and a sleeve of saltines at me. “When are we going to meet her?”
Soon, definitely. I know I can’t expect pregnancy to just happen, it might never happen, but I have a good feeling. And as soon as Joss is expecting, Ma will literally drive half a day from Duluth to Wilmington to meet her if I don’t bring her out. But I’m not going to say all that — I don’t want the bowl of chili thrown at me — so I’m about to play it off like it’s no big deal.
And then Big-Mouth Leah tacks on, “Ryder Duncroft told Kayla Gabe told Coach he was ‘settling down’.” She even throws air quotes on it.
Oh shit.
I take the chili that yes, I very much want, as Ma lets out a shriek. Phoebe snorts and says, “You have the most sedentary life of any football player in the history of football players. You settled down years ago.”
Ma swats her with a kitchen towel. “Oh hush you. My boy’s in love!”
Phoebe and Leah both give me a horrified look that I throw back at Ma. “Jesus, slow down.”
That earns me a swat from the towel, and I lumber over to the kitchen table to shrink away from her as well as any of us can. I crunch up half the sleeve of saltines and dump them into the bowl, which is enough to keep her from terrorizing me further. Physically, at least. In Ma’s eyes, I’ll always be her growing boy. Since I’ve tracked my weight basically my entire life, I know that’s not entirely false.
“Well, tell us about her,” Phoebe says, crossing her arms over her chest like she’s planning on destroying Joss. Understandable, after that high school girlfriend I carried through college until I found out she was sleeping with pretty much everyone on both my high school and college teams, apart from Blaise.
“Is she pretty?” Ma asks. “I bet she’s pretty.”
“She is very pretty,” I confirm, considering and then deciding against announcing that she has pageant sashes to attest to how pretty she is. I don’t want them to get the wrong idea about her, and Leah in particular has had some stellar rants about the blatant misogyny of beauty pageants.
“Is she tall?”
“Taller than you.” I nod to Phoebe. “Not so tall as you.”
This earns no points from her. “Hot and average height isn’t a personality. Sounds like one of the pro athlete chasers. The . . . bunnies, or whatever they’re called.”
I swallow a big spoonful of chili — the best chili, oh my god, the harassment is so worth it for Ma’s chili — and wipe a dribble out of my beard. “No one’s chasing me, Phoebe. Fuck.”
Ma spins her towel so she doesn’t forget to swat me for cursing once I’m done eating.
“You’re just too dumb to see those bimbos throwing themselves at you, you stupid shit,” Leah mutters. Does she get a swat or a threatening glare? Of course not. “What’s she do? She got a job?”
“What the—of course she has a job! She has her own business!”
“Doing what?” Leah and Phoebe ask in surround sound.
“She’s an influencer,” I say, and at the rolls of their eyes, I add, “Quilting. She does quilting tutorials. She’s very successful. Don’t look at me like that.” I point to Ma. “You don’t look at me like that, either.”
While my sisters remain skeptical, Ma’s eyes have gone watery, her lip trembling, her hands balled up at her chin. “Just like your great-gran.”
“Great-gran was a bank teller,” Phoebe says.
Leah adds, “It was a hobby for her,” as her fingers fly over the keyboard of her laptop.
Ma ignores them. “I can’t wait to show her great-gran’s old quilts. Do you think she’ll want them?”
“You saved them?” we all yell, even Dad. Those things are fucking cursed, swear to god.
Phoebe gets the swat on that one. She blocks it deftly. “She got a name? Can we prove her existence? ‘Cause it’s starting to sound like you’re making her up to keep Ma from setting you up with one of her friends’ daughters while you’re in town.”
“Drat, I gotta call Patty and tell her lunch tomorrow isn’t happening now.” Ma scurries off into the living room to find her phone.
I should thank Phoebe for shutting that nonsense down, but I refuse. Thanking my sister is akin to showing weakness. Instead, I cop a further attitude. “What kind of question is that? Of course she’s real and has a name and everybody has known we’ve been dating for over a month now, but it’s good to see my own family doesn’t pay attention to my life.”
Yes, I’m thankful they’re not following gossip rags. Again, can’t show weakness.
To that end, Phoebe says, “Nobody gives a shit about your life. Everyone’s probably worried that quilt lady is going to end up with your stupid gassy ass. Why do you smell like that?”
Basically, she just told me she loves me. It’s sweet.
“I smell great.” I accidentally dribble more chili, so I have to wipe that out of my beard, too. “I’m totally famous now, and everyone loves me. You’re jealous because your—”
“Gabriel Michael Josiah Shaunessy, don’t you dare say it!” Ma shrieks from the living room.
“I was just going to say her ass is where her face should be, you banshee!” I shout right back.
“Oh, I thought you were going to say something about her div—never mind.”
And now I’m mad Ma thought I’d go there. That jackass cheated on Phoebe with a girl a decade younger than him and then claimed it was because Phoebe wasn’t as hot as she used to be. Like 31 is absolutely ancient. Only I’m allowed to make jokes like that, and only because there are only two years between us. And the fact that Phoebe’s ex slept with a chick Leah graduated high school with is gross, but Phoebe’s definitely taken it to mean she’s ugly now.
She’s ugly. She’s my sister. She’s ugly. And my buddies are not allowed to disagree with that statement to my face, but behind my back? They always have and still do.
“Want me to drive over to his place and punch him in the balls?” I offer so she knows I love her.
“No, it’s fine.” She flops down in the seat next to me and snatches my bowl of chili away. Ten gallons of it on the stove, but she takes mine, and I let her. “Ma’s been setting me up with her friends’ sons, and it’s not been—”
“Did she kill her husband?” Leah suddenly gasps.
My attention snaps to her, confused.
“I should’ve killed him,” Phoebe mutters around a mouthful of chili and then wipes her chin off.
“Jocelyn Edgars, right? Owner of the Quilted Flower? Oh, she is pretty.”
“Joss Page,” I spit out instantly even though I already know she used to go by Jocelyn Edgars. Leah may not have gone to college, but she’s the smartest one out of all of us. I shouldn’t be shocked that she figured it out while Phoebe and I bickered. “And no, she didn’t kill her husband.”
“Well, what is all this? Did they murder someone together or—?”
“Fuuuuuuuuck.” I scrub my face. Murder? It’s like a floodgate has opened. I know too much to keep stuffing it away, like that damn nursery door.
I feel the chili rising back up in my throat at the thought of that door. Has Joss already had a baby? Where’s that baby now?
“Oooh, no,” Leah mumbles to herself, the initial look of disgust fading into something far more distressed. “Do you . . . do you know about this? About her husband?”
I shake my head miserably. “I knew there was something bad, but that she wasn’t involved, and I decided I didn’t want to know. She’s a good woman. I know she doesn’t deserve everything that’s gotten thrown at her.”
Leah gives me a pained but sympathetic smile. “None of this says she isn’t a good person, but this is bad. Her husband was a pediatric oral surgeon, did you know that, at least?”
I close my eyes, feeling reassured by what Leah’s said while simultaneously sicker about what he did for a living. He worked with children, and there’s murder involved.
“You need to know this.” Her hand lands on mine, and if there’s one thing we all know about Leah, she doesn’t like touching or being touched. The fact that she’s done this to comfort me is my worst nightmare. “He raped his patients. Looks like at least four of them. Teenage girls. One of them died during the assault.”