Chapter 9
I could easily have known all about Ben Ressler’s football career. Probably I should have known. It wasn’t like you never got any American football news over in Europe. People knew about the Super Bowl. About Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift.
But you had to look for it. You had to follow it; it wasn’t just served to you on the front pages, or the headlines in your news feed. You had to hunt down those articles and click on them and read them.
And I hadn’t done that. Had never once clicked on an article about American football. Had closed my ears to any football conversation that arose at the next table in a café or at a cocktail party, to any NFL news that might drift from a stray television.
I remember how my breath stopped in my chest. How I stared at that word RESSLER for what seemed like minutes, when of course it was only a second or two. Then the man turned, and I thought, Oh God, it’s him.
But it wasn’t Ben. It was some American college kid with a thin face and mild eyes, who said, in a voice that seemed flatter and lazier than most American voices, Oh shit, I’m sorry. I mean, fuck. What’s French for sorry?
“Je suis desolée,” I told him. I am desolate.
The kid grinned. “Days-oh-lay, mademoiselle.”
I continued on my way. I remember thinking it was just a stupid coincidence—that there were, of course, other Resslers out there in the world. Other Resslers who played American football.
There was no need to go on the internet and find out.
No need to open up my laptop and enter Ben Ressler NFL in the search field.
As I do now, back home in the quiet cool of my father’s study, fingers trembling.
—
Half an hour later, I raise my head to stare across the meadow that separates my house from Summerly.
The fog has lifted and the early-autumn sun coaxes from the earth a warm, grassy smell that drifts through the open window.
On Saturday, Ben finished mowing the entire field; on Sunday, he hauled the cylinders of baled hay to the edge of the road, where some farmer would pick them up for winter fodder.
Ben Ressler, who one year ago spent his Sundays under the minute gaze of high-definition television cameras. Of news articles and press conferences and hero worship.
One of the greatest ever to play the game. On his way to the Hall of Fame, people said.
Hits that could stop cold the burliest fullback, the nimblest receiver. Shocking tackles, one after another, that make you gasp in wonder that anyone could form his body into such a perfect, ruthless juggernaut.
This is the real Ben, the Ben the world knows. Not the Ben I remember from the summer after I turned eighteen—player of theoretical football on a field far away.
This is the Ben who plays real football.
This Ben puts on his armor and enters a stadium that heaves with the reckless energy of tens of thousands of people.
He stalks over a field of torn grass and finds his place a yard or two behind his teammates, behind the men who bow in a ragged line to the ball, the ball, the sacred brown football, while the snow swirls around them.
For an instant, the camera finds his face inside its cage. A calm rage lies on his skin. His pale eyes gather every movement around him.
Then another camera, from a distance. Thick warrior shoulders, compact belly. Barbarian muscle knots his forearms. White tape binds his fingers. His hands flex. His muscles coil. He springs.
Like a tiger he sprints for his prey. He launches his massive body into the air.
You glimpse another man in a blue jersey, stretching high in search of the ball, the sacred brown football that cuts the nearby air, and then this man is obscured by the splendid arc of Ben’s body that smashes into the tender joining of the other man’s left shoulder and breastbone.
The man flips backward into the grass beneath him.
Ben springs to his feet and walks away from his kill. A savage joy shimmers from his skin. The men in white jerseys converge on him—they slap his back, his helmet, his shoulders. They beat their approval into his body.
This is what Ben does. The brutality of Ben.
A knock cracks the front door. As if I have summoned him.
I stare across the shorn meadow grass. I think of Ben’s face, his giant hands. His fingers on my skin. The fragility of my own body alongside his.
This urge pulses through me—to crawl under the desk, crawl into a closet and hide from what I’ve just seen. This violence beyond my comprehension.
The dead man lying on the shorn grass of another field.
Only last January. Not nine months ago, Ben did this.
Lucy? You there?
My name floats through the window glass. Ben’s voice.
A bark punctures my trance. The wide-open bark of an ecstatic dog, wriggling himself to death with joy.
I close my laptop and rise from the chair.
Coming, I call.
—
The shoulders seem broader than before, under the soft plaid shirt. The head higher above me. I don’t quite meet his eyes. Those menacing, metallic eyes behind the bars of his helmet—no. I don’t want to look in his face and see those eyes.
“Hey,” he says. “Sorry to bother you.”
“Not at all. What’s up?”
Chief forces himself through the door I’ve cracked open, slithers between my legs, and runs barking around the parlor. Looking for Punkin, probably.
“Whoa.” Ben lifts his fingers and whistles. Chief gallops back. “Everything okay? I just came by to see if Elise wanted to take him for a walk. He’s been kind of pining for her.”
I stare at Ben’s neck. The Adam’s apple that rises and falls like a fist.
“Elise is at school right now,” I tell him.
He smacks his forehead. “Oh, right. Monday. Forgot all about that.”
Chief runs down the porch steps and dives into what used to be the lawn. Sniffs around the grass like it holds the key to the universe.
Ben’s expression falls into bemusement. “Hey. Luce. Are we good?”
“What? No. Nothing. Sorry. Just lost in thought. Going through my dad’s papers and stuff. It’s a bummer.”
“Sorry about that. If there’s anything I can do to help.”
“Nope. I’m good. Thanks.”
He turns his head. Looks across the meadow, where Chief cuts zoomies through the mown grass. “Hey. I’ll be putting the burlap on the boxwoods next week. Happy to cover yours while I’m at it.”
“I have boxwoods?”
He smiles and points his head to the driveway. “Right over there. Kind of raggedy. I could give them a trim for you.”
“That’s—that’s nice of you.”
“If you’re looking to put the house on the market, it’s not a bad idea.”
“How did you know I—oh. Right. Sedge.”
I stare at the porch floorboards, cracked with old paint.
“Lucy,” he says, “what did I do?”
I stare at the collar of his shirt. “Nothing. It’s fine. It’s just—”
Ben waits for me to finish. Patience settled in his pores. Hands nestled in his pockets. I think of the white tape on his fingers that day. The day he killed that man. What was it for?
I move forward a few inches and lean my shoulder against the doorjamb. Cross my arms over my middle.
“I don’t know if you heard,” I say, “but my partner? Arnaud? He didn’t just die. He was killed. Murdered. Late one night. On a sidewalk in Paris. Someone stabbed him to death.”
“I heard,” Ben says quietly. “That must have been terrible for you.”
“It was. It was terrible for him. To be attacked like that. Someone wanting to hurt you. Then you lie on the ground while your life drains away. And you close your eyes for the last time and you never see the sun again. And somebody did that to you. Took away the sun.”
The maple next to the porch has started to turn. One patch is forwarder than the rest—a pungent orange against the blue sky, tipped with green. From the branches comes the trrrwhit, trrwhoo of some melancholy songbird, lamenting the coming of winter and the long journey south.
“Yeah,” says Ben. “I see what you mean.”
“And I remember, you know, when the policemen knocked on the door. And it was after midnight. He had gone to some dinner, his university friends. He was on his way home, about halfway back to us. They said he had a lot to drink. So maybe he was a little out of it. And somebody attacked him out of nowhere. Nobody saw it happen. And it was a little while before someone found him and realized he wasn’t some regular drunk guy lying on the sidewalk.
So they called the police and the police came and there was nothing they could do because Arnaud was dead.
He was already dead. A robbery, they first thought.
But his wallet was still there, his phone.
So he wasn’t robbed. Just somebody wanted to kill someone and he killed Arnaud.
But at least the police were able to figure out who he was and they came to the apartment and woke me up and gave me the news.
And I remember thinking, this is impossible.
Who would kill somebody for no reason? I remember thinking that I had never considered this, that we all have the power to kill somebody.
Any one of us could end the whole entire life of another person, all his years on earth.
And this person actually did it. Killed Arnaud.
All the years we were supposed to have with him, Punkin and me, all the memories we were supposed to make together, all the things he should have done with her, and one single person could just take them all. ”
“I’m so sorry. Lucy. I’m so sorry.”
I turn my palms upward and stare at the pattern of lines and calluses. “I mean, how could somebody do that?”
“I wish I had an answer for you, Luce. I wish I could bring him back for you. The thing is, I can’t. Nobody can. When a thing is done, it’s done. All we have left is to find a way to go on. To live with what we’ve done. To make amends, if we can.”
I let my hands fall to my sides and look up at last. Into his face. His eyes that were so steely underneath his mask and are now so soft. Dove gray. Blue from which all the fancy color has been drained away, leaving this plain honest gentle monochrome.
How I used to love those eyes.
Chief comes bounding back to the porch. His tongue lolls out about half a foot, a maniac canine grin. He looks up at Ben in a way that reminds me of Sedge, watching Audrey walk back into the kitchen.
Ben leans down to caress his ears. “All right, then,” he says. “I guess I’ll see you around.”
He turns to walk down the steps. Chief sends me a brief, apologetic glance and darts after him.
My phone vibrates in my back pocket. I draw it out.
Incoming call. Winthrop Island School.
Shit, I think.
I swipe right. Heart pounding. “Hello? This is Lucy Cooper.”
“Ms. Cooper. Tom Ferguson here. Principal Ferguson?”
“Oh, yes. Of course. Is everything okay?”
There is a brief pause, a shuffling-of-papers pause. A gathering-of-thoughts-and-words pause. A noise, unless I’m imagining things, of a siren in the sound background of Principal Ferguson’s immediate surroundings.
“Yes. Well,” he says, in an apologetic voice. “Ms. Cooper, I’m afraid we’re going to need you to come down to the school. Right away. Miss Ferguson is about to have her baby in the nurse’s office.”