** You can find my novels online at Amazon. I write under the penname MOLLY TAGGART. Current titles include Roots that Clutch, Off Target, and Out of Rhythm, but there are more to come. I hope you will try one! **

Chapter 1: The Visitor

"Gracie, honey, I've got to put you down to be able to open the door." Coach Taylor bent over and forced his daughter to slide out of his arms. He dropped the Hello Kitty backpack he'd slung around his shoulder and the duffle bag he'd been holding in his free hand and fished for his keys in the pocket of his shorts. He could feel the pain in his back from trying to hold her and all that stuff. He didn't understand why Grace had suddenly insisted on being carried to and from the car, but he hadn't fought it like he should have. He supposed she was regressing now that she was about to start Kindergarten in two weeks. She probably just needed a little extra daddy affection. And that wasn't so bad, was it?

He opened the door and ushered his daughter and all their gear inside, leaving the bags on the marble floor of the high-ceilinged foyer. It paid to be Dean of Admissions. The Taylors still had a four-bedroom house, but now two of those bedrooms had their own private baths, and that didn't even count the other full bath upstairs or the half bath downstairs. Eric and Tami each had their own walk-in closet in the master bedroom, and the master bath had a soaking tub with jets. Eric had almost had a heart attack when Tami had suggested buying the place, but Braemore had given them a "housing allowance," and her salary, coupled with his own, did put them firmly in a new class. It had taken him a year even to begin to feel at home here, but if they wanted Gracie to be zoned for a good school, then this was the place to live. Eric just prayed neither of them lost a job (it could always happen, and God knew it had before).

He took off his green Pioneer cap – summer training was underway – and tossed it onto an end table in the living room. He ran a hand through his hair and headed for the kitchen. "I gotta get dinner started. Your mom'll be home before long. Why don't you play in the living room for a bit? No TV until after dinner."

"Awwww….dad!"

"Mamma's orders," Eric said as he vanished into the kitchen. He tossed his keys on the black and white granite countertop and opened the stainless steel fridge to make sure Tami had taken out the chicken to thaw the night before. The he started back to the bedroom to change. Maybe he wasn't "east coast people," but he'd quickly gotten used to watching football on the wall-mounted, large-screen, plasma television he was now passing in the living room.

Once he was out of the khakis and polo that had been muddied at practice when his quarterback stumbled out of bounds and took him down on the field, Eric returned to the kitchen to start cooking. Philadelphia had afternoon practices and even afternoon games (no more Friday night lights), and he was home earlier than Tami most days. After a little prodding from his wife, he'd picked up the slack and become a pretty good cook.

He'd just put the chicken in the oven when he heard a knock at the front door. He peered out the peephole of the front door to see a woman with a young boy who appeared to be about a year younger than Gracie, though that was just a guess. The woman looked vaguely familiar, but he couldn't quite place her. Maybe she was one of his player's moms, probably Jose's? No…he'd met Jose's mom at the barbecue. That wasn't her.

He opened the door and asked, "Can I help you?"

"Is Matt here?" the woman asked.

"Matt? Matt Saracen?"

"Yes."

"No. He doesn't live here. He lives in New York." The couple had made the move to the Big Apple to further Matt's art career. Because Julie had become a writer, New York was a good choice for her as well.

"This was the address on file for him."

"Well…he and my daughter used this as their forwarding address for a bit when they were in the process of moving from Chicago. Matt's my son-in-law. Can I help you with something?"

He glanced down at the boy, who was less tan than his mother, but whose cool blue eyes still made an unexpected contrast with his muted brown skin. Then Coach Taylor looked back up at the woman. "Hey…" he drew. "Hey…I know you. You're that woman…you used to help Matt out with his grandmother? I met you once."

"Carlotta," she answered.

"Carlotta," he repeated. He looked back at the boy and into those blue eyes. In his head, he was doing the math, trying to figure out how many years ago Carlotta had lived with Matt and his grandmother, and also trying to remember if he and Julie were dating at the time or if that was when Julie had broken up with him. "Damn," he said. "Well damn! Oh hell!"

Carlotta covered her son's ears and said. "Your language, sir."

"Sorry. Sorry. But…hell…that's Matt's boy, ain't it?"

[***]

Tami noticed that Eric wasn't being particularly responsive while she talked about her day. He was staring off over her shoulder. They sat at the kitchen table, and in the living room the TV murmured where Gracie lay on the brown leather couch, half asleep. Eric hadn't touched his beer.

"What's wrong, hon?"

"We need to talk."

Tami frowned. It wasn't often she heard those words from Eric. "Just let me put Gracie to bed first," she said. She was gone for thirty minutes because, with Gracie Belle, the bedtime routine was always complex. When she emerged into the living room, Eric had drained his beer and had two glasses of wine set out on the glass-topped coffee table. She plucked up hers and sat down on the cushion next to him, turning to face him and tucking one leg up under herself.

"How would you react," he began deliberately, "what would it do to our marriage if you were suddenly to find out that back when we were dating – well, while we were broken up - I had gotten a girl pregnant, that I'd fathered a child, and that I didn't know about it until the mother just suddenly showed up with him years later."

Tami slammed her wine glass down on the coffee table and stared at him with wide eyes. "What? Eric, what did you do! We were only broken up for two weeks! Two weeks! A measly two weeks and you immediately run out and - "

"No! No! No! " he protested, waving his free hand. "This is a hypothetical. This is purely a hypothetical."

"A hypothetical? Why are you giving me this hypothetical all of the sudden?"

Eric sighed and ran a hand through his hair. He rubbed his head anxiously and then let his hand fall to his side. "I had a visitor today."

"A hypothetical visitor?"

"No, not a hypothetical visitor. A real visitor. Carlotta."

Tami shook her head, not recognizing the name.

"That woman who used to be the live-in help for Matt's grandma?"

"Okay." Where was he going with this?

"Well, she was looking for Matt. He and Jules had put this down as their address for a while, you know, so she got it from the internet or something and just showed up on the doorstep. Just showed up with the kid. Years later. Thought that would be a good way to break the news, I guess, just blindside him with it."

"Eric, what are you talking about?"

"The kid. It's Matt's kid. He's the father."

"What?"

"She said he was, and the kid looked just like him. He was the right age."

Tami was shaking her head. "Matt was a boy when she was living with them. He and Julie hadn't even...and she was…how old was she?"

"She couldn't be that much older than him, six years maybe..."

"That's a lot when you're a teenager!"

"Yeah. I know. But Julie was broken up with him, I think, if I'm remembering right. At least I don't think he was cheating on her. I mean, it was still an idiot move - "

"Clearly! Did he even use protection?"

"I didn't exactly ask her that, Tami."

Eric wasn't saying anything more; he was just letting her process the information. "Do you think Julie knows?" she asked finally.

"Matt doesn't even know. I gave her Matt's phone number. I didn't know what else to do. I told her he was married, has his own kid - well, another kid - asked her to go about telling him the right way, try not to just show up on their door step and shove the kid in Julie's – "

"- No, I mean, do you think Julie knows he had sex with her?"

Eric shrugged.

"Because if he told her about that before they were married, this is going to be very upsetting, of course, but it won't be…you know…quite as big a shock. But if she doesn't even know that…I'd be really upset, if I was her, if I found out my husband had sex with some girl while we were broken up and never even bothered to tell me about it."

She noticed that Eric was now looking away from her, his jaw clenched. He had that expression, that expression that said, I better keep my mouth closed or I'm going to get into some serious trouble here. I better watch my step with Tami.

"Oh, Lord, Eric," she moaned. "You had sex with someone while we were broken up."

"No! It didn't go that far."

"And you never told me! I was crying my eyes out, babe. I was crying my eyes out every night of those two weeks and you just had no problem at all moving on, did you? No problem at all."

"May I remind you that you broke up with me? I didn't break up with you."

"I know. I know. That was a mistake on my part."

"Biggest mistake of your life."

This lightened the mood a little and Tami laughed. "Seriously, hon," she said, "I always kind of hoped you were just longing for me the whole time, and all the while you just didn't care? Just moved on?"

"You know that's not true. I was in love with you, Tami. It was a rebound thing. I was at some party. I got drunk…I was a little upset. My girlfriend - who I was madly in love with by the way - had just broken up with me for no damn reason at all. And I went to this party to blow off some steam, and this girl asked me to walk her home, and she invited me in..."

"You had a one night stand?"

Eric had always been happily monogamous. He'd had one long-term girlfriend before Tami. They'd never explicitly discussed Tami's sexual history, however. It had been an unspoken understanding that she regretted her past, that she had turned a new leaf, and that Eric was not to prod into the dirt that rested beneath it. He knew about Mo, of course, but he'd never asked about anyone before Mo, not when they became unexpected friends in high school, not when they were dating in college, not after they had gotten married. Tami, however, thought she knew all about Eric. She knew he had never been interested in having casual sex. What had he called it that first year of college? What was the word he had used? "Rude." Until now, Tami had always assumed that she had been Eric's second and last.

"No," Eric answered. "I just told you we didn't have sex. It didn't go that far. And it's not as if I didn't call her the next day and ask to take her out. We went on a real date."

"But when I asked to get back together you just dropped her like a hot potato?"

"Of course I did. I wasn't going to choose some rebound girl over you."

"Yeah, but I'm sure she had feelings too - "

"Damn, Tami, are you serious? Are you really going to do this? Are you really going to criticize me for something that happened over twenty years ago when I was at my wit's end?"

"I'm being unreasonable, aren't I?"

"Yeeeahhh." The word came out as a nervous laugh.

"I know I am." She reclaimed her wine from the coffee table. She took a sip. "Sorry, sugar. I'm just peeved you never told me. But you know, for Julie, Matt was her first, and that was only a few years ago, so if she didn't know he'd been with Carlotta first…that's a totally different situation." She ran a finger up the stem of the wine glass. "Should we tell Julie about this kid before Carlotta does?" she asked. "I mean, I know it's best coming from Matt, but if it ends up coming from Carlotta..."

"I think we should stay out of it," Eric answered. "Just stay out of it unless and until she comes to us."

Tami nodded.

Eric said, "I hope this doesn't…screw them up. It's hard enough, having a kid right after you get married…starting off like that."

Tami reached over and grabbed his hand. "Hey, they're going to be okay. They'll survive this."

Eric sighed and slid closer.

"Thank God we've got each other," she said.

"Mmmhmmm," he echoed, resting his head against hers, closing his eyes, and holding tight.