Chapter Ten

The wooden basement stairs creaked as Julie made her way down. She set a glass of sweet sun tea on the ping pong table. Dad had apparently dusted the old relic off once Gracie turned six. She looked at the table a little sadly, remembering the times she'd talked to her father over it, when the future was still a blank slate, and the most important man her life seemed to love her unconditionally.

She leaned back against the table as she watched Gracie do another pull-up on the home gym Dad had set up. She wasn't sure if this basement was supposed to be Dad's man cave or Gracie's playroom – it seemed to have plenty of signs of both. "Thirsty?" she asked.

Gracie swung back and dropped on her feet on the unfinished floor. "Thanks," she said, almost suspiciously. As she came over and grabbed the glass, her cell phone, which she'd left face-up on the table, rang. The name Matthew Saracen flashed on the screen. Julie looked at the cell phone and looked at Gracie. "He calls to talk to Jackson," Gracie explained.

Julie grabbed the ringing phone. Gracie took the glass of tea and clamored up the stairs.

"Hey, Matt," Julie answered. "We need to talk."

There was silence.

"I'm so sorry about what happened. We need to get in counseling and work through this."

"What happened? Like it just happened?"

A surge of defensiveness swelled up instinctively within her. She swallowed it down. "I'm sorry for what I did."

"When are you coming back to Savanah?"

"You miss me?" she asked hopefully.

"I miss my son. I want to see my son."

She couldn't suppress her instinctive self-defense mechanism now. "Why? You saw so little of him when we were there. You were always working."

"That's not fair! I took him fishing every Saturday. I picked him up from preschool every Friday and took him out for ice cream."

"Yeah, the two weekends a month you were home."

"You never give me credit for how much I help out! I have to earn a living, Julie. I have a career. And I'm trying to make a name for myself as an artist too. A little support would be nice!"

"A little support for me would be nice too!"

"Yeah, well the difference between you and me is that when I don't get a little support, I don't cheat on you and go make out with some woman! I stay loyal! I stick it through even if you're not perfect! I've always stuck it through."

"Always? Like when you drove off to Chicago and didn't tell me?"

"That was ten years ago! We weren't married!"

Julie choked down the tears that were starting to well up. "Matt, we need to do something. We need – "

"- Whenever I was fishing with Jackson, you told me you were going to the movies with Kim, but you were with him."

She'd admitted as much to Matt, when he'd fired question after question at her that night she'd told him she was unhappy in the marriage and feeling tempted to have an affair. How long? How often? How many e-mails? How many phone calls? How many texts? Do you love him? Where were your hands when you were kissing? Where were his hands?

"You lied to me!" He yelled through the phone. "I believed you! I believed you were where you said you were. What else have you been lying about?"

"Nothing. Nothing!"

"I have to go." His voice cracked. "I'm calling Jackson tomorrow. I only want to talk to Jackson."

[*]

Eric had been in to the office early this morning, and he was able to pop over to Benjamin Middle School to watch his daughter's practice before returning to Braemore. It was good to be the man in charge again. He worked hard, but he no longer worked inefficiently.

Eric stood at the sidelines beside Coach Morris and watched the assistant coach run the tam through some plays. Afternoon practice in late August would have been foolish in Texas. Someone would have died of heat exhaustion, but it was only 83 at the moment.

They'd made Gracie a center. "Hey, Coach," Eric said. "Don't you think she'd be better used as quarterback?"

"I need a good center," Coach Morris replied. "It's going to be a long day for my offense if I don't."

"Yeah, but, Gracie, she knows the plays like the back of her hand." He nodded down the field. "37 looks more like a running back to me. I'm puzzled as to why you have him on QB."

Coach Morris cleared his throat. "You used to coach high school, didn't you Coach Taylor?"

"Most of my career." He'd only coached college one full season, at Temple. TMU had been a partial season, and he'd just started at Braemore.

"You remember what it was like to have that one parent? You know the one who's always on the sidelines telling you how to do your job even though he isn't with the team day in and day out and doesn't know his boys like you do? That guy who becomes kind of a distraction to the team by hovering around all the time and drives you up the wall as a coach?"

"Oh, yeah," Eric muttered. At Pemberton, it had been Bobby Valentine, but nobody ever quite rivaled Joe McCoy.

Coach Morris crossed his arms over his chest, titled his head toward Eric, and raised an eyebrow.

"Oh. Ah." Eric winced. "Well…uh…I'll just be up in the bleachers over there."

"Good. They're pretty comfortable as far as bleachers go. New as of last year."

Eric made his way to the stands.