CHAPTER SIXTEEN #2
"I'm going to call you," she says through the door. "Turn your phone on."
She walks away. I hear her footsteps recede. I turn my phone on. It buzzes immediately with notifications — missed calls, texts from Phaedra, a message from Sorrel Khatri requesting comment, two messages from Bisi.
Tala's voicemail arrives.
I play it.
"Nerys. I know it's not true. I know who you are.
I've been beside you for six weeks and I've watched you give me information and let me make every decision and never once — not once — did you try to control my choices.
You gave me reads. I chose the shots. That's what happened.
That's what always happened. Please let me in. "
Her voice is steady and clear and she sounds like a woman who believes absolutely in what she's saying.
I play the voicemail again.
And again.
Three times. Her voice in my ear. I know who you are.
I don't call back.
Not because she's wrong. Because conviction is a feeling, and feelings are subject to revision.
She believes in me now — right now, in this room, in this moment, with the adrenaline of the round still in her blood and the heat of our relationship still in her body.
She believes in me because I am present and immediate and the evidence of my integrity is her own experience.
But she will walk back into the world, and the world will surround her with people who believe the documents. Sponsors who control her income. Media who control her narrative. Tournament officials who control her access. Her mother, who already questioned the dependence.
And Tala — for all her growth, for all the discipline she's learned, for all the mornings she's woken in my arms and played the best golf of her career — Tala has never been tested by a situation where trusting me costs her something real. Where defending me means losing something she needs.
I set the phone on the nightstand. I lie on the bed in the dark room. My hands shake against the duvet.
I think about Saskia's words: Make sure whoever she is has a deeper reserve than mine.
I think about Keoni's words: She loves the idea of someone standing beside her more than she loves the practice of letting someone stay.
I think about Tala's voice on the recording: I know who you are.
I want to believe her. The wanting is physical — a pressure in my chest, an ache in my throat, the specific gravity of a woman who has been alone for a very long time and has finally found someone who sees her and is now watching that someone walk into a storm that may change what she sees.
I do not call back.
·
The morning brings clarity of the administrative variety.
Phaedra calls at seven. The tour investigation is formal but procedural — they are required to review the documents, interview both parties, and determine whether any rules of competition were violated.
The process takes two to four weeks. During this period, I am not suspended, but Phaedra recommends I voluntarily step away from the bag for the final round to avoid the appearance of defiance.
I agree. The decision is not difficult. Carrying the bag today would place Tala under media scrutiny that would compromise her ability to compete. My professional obligation — the obligation that preceded the relationship and will outlast it if necessary — is to protect her game.
I text Tala at seven fifteen.
I'm stepping away from the bag for the final round. This is not a withdrawal. This is professional judgment. Bisi will arrange an interim caddie. Play the strategy we built. You know the course. You know the reads. You don't need me beside you to play the golf you've been playing.
Her response is immediate.
I don't care about the article. I know the truth.
I type: The truth requires process. Let the process work. Play golf.
Three dots. She's typing. The dots appear and disappear. Appear again. Disappear.
Finally: I'll play. But this isn't over.
I set the phone down.
Bisi calls at eight. She's direct and professional and carries the particular exhaustion of a woman who has been managing crisis communications since five in the morning.
"Two sponsors are demanding a public statement from Tala distancing herself from the allegations. Luminos and the new watch campaign. They want language that demonstrates she takes the investigation seriously and is not preemptively defending the accused party."
"Accused party."
"Their language. Not mine."
"What does Tala want to say?"
"Tala wants to hold a press conference and tell every camera in the building that the documents are forged and you've never manipulated her and anyone who believes otherwise can go to hell. I've talked her down from that. We're working on approved language."
"What language?"
Bisi reads me the statement. I listen.
At two in the afternoon, between the twelfth and thirteenth holes of the final round, a reporter from the Golf Channel reads Tala's public statement during the broadcast.
"Tala Sarmiento has released a statement regarding the strategy-document allegations. The statement reads: I support a thorough investigation and have full confidence in the process. I am focused on competing at the highest level and will cooperate fully with tour officials."
I hear it on the television in my hotel room. I'm watching the broadcast because I cannot stop myself from watching Tala play, even now, even from behind a locked door, even with my name scrolling across the bottom of the screen alongside the word scandal.
She's playing well. The interim caddie is a veteran named Marcus who worked with Tala for two events earlier in the year.
He's competent. He's not me. But Tala is following the strategy — the strategy I wrote, in the notebook that someone photographed and altered — and she's making correct decisions on every hole.
She doesn't need me beside the bag.
That should be a comfort. It is not.
I support a thorough investigation and have full confidence in the process.
Full confidence in the process.
Not in me.
In the process.
The careful, lawyer-approved, sponsor-safe language of a woman who has been advised to protect her commercial relationships during a period of uncertainty.
The language of someone who is choosing the center of the green because the aggressive shot — defending me publicly, naming the forgery, risking the sponsors — is a forty-percent play that her advisors have recommended against.
I understand the calculation. I understand that Bisi is doing her job. I understand that Tala is in the middle of a major championship and that a press statement released during the final round is not the appropriate venue for an emotional defense of a woman she's sleeping with.
I understand all of this.
And what I hear is: I will support you when it is safe to support you. When the process has determined the truth. When the risk of defending you no longer exceeds the risk of remaining neutral.
I hear conditional trust.
I hear the thing Keoni warned me about — the version of Tala who believes in people only when believing is costless.
I turn off the television. I sit in the dark.
My hands are shaking. My phone is ringing. I don't answer.
The process will determine the truth. The investigation will clear me.
The fabricated documents will be identified and the person who altered them will be found and my integrity will be restored through official channels and legal mechanisms and the careful, methodical operation of systems designed to establish facts.
And Tala Sarmiento will support the process.
Not me.
The process.
I press my palms flat against my thighs. I count the seconds between breaths. I sit in a hotel room at Pebble Beach while the woman I love plays the final round of a major using the strategy I built, and I wait for the process to tell her what she should already know.
The room is quiet.
My hands shake.
Nobody comes.