Chapter 4
"I'll take you out as soon as the rain stops, I promise," Kate says, leaning over Banjo, the dog who's been part of her family for six years and who's now wagging his tail desperately in front of the kitchen door that leads to the backyard.
She landed yesterday and is now at her parents' house in Melbourne, the way she always does when she comes back home.
Kate has never bought any property in Australia, despite her parents' insistence that she should have something there.
She tells herself it's because she prefers company when she arrives exhausted from traveling and tournaments, but the truth is she doesn't plan to live in her home country when she retires.
She loves Europe, where she has Irish roots because her parents are from the north side of Dublin.
They emigrated to Australia forty years ago, and both their children—Conor and Kate—were born there, but she has no intention of living in Ireland either, since if she had, she would've bought something there instead of in Madrid and Madeira.
Her first purchase was in the Azores six years ago.
A modern villa with an infinity pool where she usually spends her vacations.
She loves being there, completely disconnected from everything.
The other she bought two years ago in Madrid, in a gated community called La Finca.
An ultra-private area with extremely tight security that serves as her home base when she's in Europe playing tournaments.
Kate doesn't lie to herself—she'd wanted a house in Spain for a long time, even though she had no particular preference for any one city, and the only reason she chose Madrid was to be closer to Leire.
But it didn't do much good, because the Spanish woman is so afraid of them being found out that she's never once visited her there, nor has she ever invited the redhead to her house in La Moraleja.
"Here, this'll help you clear your head," her mother says, handing her a coffee while Kate stays by Banjo at the garden door, watching the rain hit the paving stones and slide down the leaves of the trees like she's just as desperate as he is to get outside.
"Thanks." Kate takes the mug and sets it on the marble counter so she can zip her hoodie all the way up.
The hardest part of coming home is adjusting to the change in temperature. June in Paris is warm and marks the beginning of summer, but in Melbourne it's winter—cold and rainy for half the days.
"Did you get any rest?" her mother asks.
Kate tries to hold back a yawn but doesn't manage it.
"Enough," she lies, because the nearly twenty-four hours of flying always leave her so drained that she has a hard time sleeping afterward.
She's starting to make toast when the front door opens and the dog takes off running.
Kate hears her brother Conor's voice greeting Banjo, and her face lights up.
She gets up slowly—there were several patches of turbulence on the flight that aggravated her back, and now she's afraid of any sudden movement.
"There you are." Conor walks into the kitchen in his firefighter uniform and opens his arms to wrap her up, and she—despite the pain—jumps into them.
Her brother is three years older than her and has known since he was little that he wanted to be a firefighter.
"Are you on duty?" Kate asks, smiling as she looks at him.
"Yeah, nothing exciting though. We're heading to a school to run a fire drill, and I asked Tommy to stop here for a minute so I could see you."
"Then sit down and eat something—you're way too thin," her mother orders. "And tell Tommy to come inside. I didn't raise you to leave your friends standing out on the street."
"We're in a hurry, Mom," he protests, then turns to Kate. "So, going out early in Paris, huh?" he teases. "What happened? Did the Russian's death stare freak you out?"
"Don't be an idiot," Kate says. "I hurt my back and I didn't want to push it."
Conor frowns, and their mother, who had been opening the fridge, turns toward them.
"Again?" her brother asks, worried.
"It's nothing. My physio said a few days of rest would be enough—that's why I didn't go to Germany."
Kate feels uncomfortable with herself for lying to her family.
Everyone at home knows she started having issues about a year and a half ago, but they don't know that sometimes the pain leaves her unable to breathe, that it keeps her from playing the way she should, and that it's been showing up more often than she knows is normal.
"What does Diane say about it?" her mother asks.
"Nothing, Mom. There's nothing to worry about. At my age, every athlete starts feeling pain somewhere. I'm not twenty."
"Okay." Conor hugs her again and kisses the top of her head. "Take care of yourself, and use these days to do absolutely nothing. I'll come by this weekend and stay over—we'll have time to catch up."
Kate smiles and nods. They really do know everything about each other's lives, since they usually talk for a while on video calls every three or four days, though she's never told him anything about Leire.
That afternoon—after a three-hour nap she hadn't expected when she lay down on the couch—Kate took advantage of a break in the rain to go out for a walk with Banjo.
She loves doing it whenever she can, letting the dog take the lead and throwing the ball for him in the park until he tires himself out, then sitting on a bench while he entertains himself gnawing on a stick beside her.
She talked to Leire for a while—Leire called as soon as she woke up, since the time difference is eight hours and they always make the most of the small windows they have.
She could tell Leire was worried, but when she asked, Leire insisted she was fine, so they both lied to each other, because Kate also told her she felt perfectly fine when in reality she'd winced several times bending down to pick up the ball.
She gets home and bites her lip when she sees Diane's car out front.
"Sorry, I completely forgot we were meeting," she apologizes as soon as she walks in, putting on the puppy-dog face that never fails with this woman.
Being on a forced break doesn't mean they have nothing to do—work sessions where they review Kate's matches or her opponents' are something they can do anywhere.
"I noticed," Diane murmurs from the couch, sitting next to her mother.
Kate takes off her jacket and gestures for her coach to follow her.
The family home is large, and her father converted one of the empty rooms into a study for when Kate meets with Diane for their work sessions—a space where they can stay focused and undisturbed.
It has a couch pushed against the wall facing a large screen and a work table with two chairs right by the window.
"How are you feeling?" Diane asks when she closes the door.
"Good, I slept a lot after lunch," the player answers, and turns around when her coach goes quiet.
"That's not what I asked, and you know it, Kate."
Kate swallows hard, her stomach tight with anxiety, and Diane doesn't need anything more to know she's in pain.
"Come on, sit down here," she says, pointing to the couch as she pulls up a video on the TV.
Diane picks up her notebook—filled with notes scrawled everywhere that only she can decipher—and after watching the first clip, which she's already seen several times before coming over, she walks Kate through everything she finds relevant.
"The back pain is changing the speed of your serve. You've lost power—"
"And what do you want me to do about it?" Kate cuts her off.
Diane looks at her, and the player bangs the back of her head against the couch a few times before apologizing, because she's never spoken to her like that.
"I'm sorry. This is just really getting to me."
"I know, sweetheart," Diane says, "that's why I wanted to talk to you."
"About what?" Kate turns toward her, pulling her knees up onto the couch.
"You've had a brilliant career, Kate. You won a Grand Slam at twenty-two, and you've racked up hundreds of wins and titles. You don't need to keep going."
"What?" the player asks, confused.
"I'm talking about the possibility of retiring. I know you still have the energy to keep playing, but that pain is showing up too often, and I'm scared it'll turn into a permanent injury if you don't stop in time."
Kate needs a few seconds to process what she's said as a lump settles in her throat and her whole body goes rigid.
"I'm not retiring, Diane. I won the Australian Open and made it to the semis in Paris—"
"And you lost because the pain wouldn't let you keep going," her coach reminds her.
"And that's what this break is for, isn't it? So I can recover over the next few days—"
"Listen, Kate," the woman insists, her tone growing more serious, "I'm the last person who wants you to retire.
You make me a lot of money, and because of you I get to keep doing what I've always loved.
But I love you, and what happens to you matters to me more than anything.
You're twenty-nine years old with your whole life ahead of you—"
Kate's silent tears stop Diane mid-sentence. She leans forward and runs her fingers across Kate's cheeks.
"I know this is incredibly hard to hear," she whispers. "I just want you to start thinking about it as a possibility, okay?"
Kate nods, pressing her fingers against her eyelids.
"Let's see what Dr. Faruk says when we go see him. Maybe what's happening now isn't connected to the previous injury and there's a solution," Diane says, trying to lift her spirits.
Kate leans into her when Diane wraps an arm around her, and they keep watching match clips for the rest of the afternoon—though Kate can't concentrate anymore and barely takes in any of the advice her coach gives her, because she can't think about anything other than what she's just been told.
Kate has always known she doesn't want to retire before thirty-five, but having to do it this soon was something she never counted on, and she's beginning to realize it might not be so far-fetched after all.