Chapter 14
Allison
I’m thinking of Trinity Casto and Luke’s case while I finish cooking dinner.
I dollop avocado oil on the aluminum foil.
Sprinkle parmesan cheese, then oregano, into the spots of oil.
Slice pieces of raw broccoli into halves and smash them down into the oil and seasonings, using a mason jar.
Drizzle more avocado oil on top of the broccoli, reapply the parm and oregano, and slide the sheet of broccoli into the oven.
I’ll bake them to a crisp, so they will taste more like parmesan chips than anything else.
It’s the only way I’ve ever been able to get Luke, who’s coming for dinner tonight, to eat vegetables.
I hear Finley in the mudroom adjoining the garage, dropping his gym bag and kicking off his shoes, before he trudges up the stairs. When he walks into the kitchen, he is freshly showered, wearing a long-sleeved running shirt and athletic pants.
“Smells good,” he says lightly, like we’re still us. “Haven’t seen you go all out like this in a while.” His words hang there, casual but too aware. He’s trying to read me, his tone careful, eyes soft.
When Gray was still living here, I hustled home every night to make a home-cooked meal.
Once he was off to college, I kept the tradition alive for my husband.
But after that night I saw him enter our condo with his mistress, freezing as I stared across Lake Shore Drive with a pair of binoculars, I finally came to my senses.
I’ve missed dinner every night since, using work as an excuse. Cold cuts and frozen dinners for Fin.
“It’s for Luke,” I say, sharper than I intend.
He pauses, leans against the counter. “Ah. Right. The superstar’s gracing us.”
Finley hasn’t handled Luke’s success as a coach any better than he’s handled mine as a lawyer.
It was hard enough for his ego, after he lost his sales job during the pandemic, watching my career take off, my salary jumping exponentially.
But Luke returning home eight years ago and turning Grace Consolidated High School into a perennial baseball champion, and then doing much the same with Mortimer College, only rubbed salt in the wound.
I can still see the two of them—Luke and Finley—as teenagers, bursting through our front door after school, buzzing with whatever joke or disaster the day had handed them.
They moved as a unit back then, loud and inseparable, the kind of best friends who didn’t seem to notice anyone else existed.
Except Finley always noticed me. Or at least it felt like he did, and that was enough to keep my stomach in a constant state of somersaults.
Fin was like a third child, a fixture in our house.
My mother lit up around him. All he had to do was pop into the kitchen doorway and say something like Mrs. Rankin, tell me you saved some of that banana bread.
I’d sit at the kitchen table doing homework, pretending I wasn’t listening, pretending I wasn’t waiting to be acknowledged.
Finley would do something that completely short-circuited me—like flick a finger against my notebook and say, Hey, Ally, you get smarter every time I see you.
He’d say it casually, teasingly, but my face burned for hours.
The best memories are the tiny ones: the two of them sprawled on our living room carpet, controllers in hand, arguing about cheat codes; Finley propped against the couch, hair falling into his eyes, glancing at me as if checking I was still in his orbit.
Luke’s laugh—sharp and boyish—and Finley’s—warm and unguarded—filling every corner of our house.
They were competitive, no doubt. And as Luke started to separate himself from the pack with his accomplishments on the pitching mound, their relationship seemed to strain.
Especially after Luke, at age fourteen, landed on the cover of Baseball Today as part of its “Top 15 Under 15,” naming him as the third best baseball prospect in the nation who was not yet in high school and the top pitcher.
But only a few weeks later came Luke’s bike accident with the drunk driver, ending any notion of baseball stardom. Luke was just one of the guys again.
I’d be willing to bet that, if Finley and I hadn’t married, the two of them would’ve lost touch after high school, as so many friends do.
Their differences, which were easily concealed when they were young, seem so stark now.
Luke is a bundle of energy, usually positive, occasionally not, but always moving forward, never sitting still—while Finley looks more and more like someone stuck in the mud.
“Luke’s had a rough couple of days, don’t you think?” I say, wiping my hands, turning to dice tomatoes for a salad. “Maybe we could dispense with the ‘superstar’ commentary?”
Finley chuckles, but it’s tight. “He’ll land on his feet. He always does.”
“Easy for you to say. You haven’t been charged with a felony.
” I remove the chuck roast from the oven and check it.
I went with a simple preparation, sea salt and black pepper, dropping chopped carrots and onions and some thyme inside the pot.
Luke will eat the carrots if they’re cooked and flavored with broth.
“All I meant was, he’s got you for a lawyer. There’s nobody better.”
No, that wasn’t what you meant, but nice recovery, Fin.
“Something wrong?” he asks.
“Yes, something’s wrong. My brother is in danger of losing everything he’s worked for.”
He opens the fridge and removes a bottle of white wine. “And you’re a hundred percent sure he’s innocent?”
I look up from the chopping board, still holding the knife. “What?” I hiss.
“I’m just sayin’, just sayin’—he doesn’t make a lot of money. A little—”
“Since when has money mattered to Luke? This last summer, after what he accomplished at Mortimer, he had five different offers from Division 1 schools that would’ve tripled his salary, and he turned them all—”
“Oh, I know. Believe me, I know. We only talked about it every night for months.”
Instead of my anger boiling over, I simply deflate from exhaustion. I just need to hold out until the congressman’s trial ends. I’ll keep doing what I’m doing, tonight being an exception: work until bedtime, then come home and crawl into bed after Fin’s asleep.
He pours himself a glass of wine. “Actually, I’m surprised he didn’t take one of those job offers last summer,” he says. “I thought that was his thing, fixing up a terrible program and then moving on to the next reclamation project like a roaming messiah.”
I admit, I thought Luke would take one of those job offers, too, and for the very reason Finley gave.
Once Mortimer reached the World Series last year, I figured Luke would consider his work done and move on to another struggling program.
But then I remembered, they only reached the World Series; they didn’t win it.
Luke would want to bring home the crown before departing.
My phone buzzes. A FaceTime call from Grayson. “Hey, squirt!”
“Hi, Mom.”
Something bright and warm flares in my chest. That single word reminds me, no matter how much else I’ve broken or fumbled, that I got this one thing right. Grayson is the greatest thing I ever made, the one joy that never slips from my hands.
“Luke isn’t here yet,” I say. “Dad’s right here.”
“Hey, buddy!” Fin calls out.
“Hi, Dad. So…how’s Luke doing? This whole thing is nuts.”
“He’s holding up okay. We’ll figure it out. It was obviously a misunderstanding.”
“I mean, if they knew Luke…they’d never think he could do this.”
Finley winces; yet another source of jealousy, insecurity—Luke’s relationship with Gray.
When Luke moved back to Grace Park to coach the high school team, Grayson gravitated toward his uncle, his spirit, his charisma, his competitiveness.
Gray’s sport in high school was football, not baseball, but the whole jock thing was close enough.
The bond they formed was not lost on Finley, who felt pushed out.
Well, I’m done worrying about Fin. Our life together will soon end.
But Gray? I carry that weight in my chest, heavy as stone.
Every time I look at my boy, on the cusp of adulthood but still so young, it presses harder.
I feel the guilt creep in with his every smile, his underlying sense of comfort and safety, his foundational assumption that his family is steady and whole.
I can’t bear to imagine the fissures across his life, the hurt in his eyes, when I finally break the news to him about his father and me.
It will be me pulling the trigger, stripping away the certainty that my son should have been able to assume was forever.
Is that how Gray will see it? Will he see me as the person who shattered his world?