During spring break, Eric drove to TMU to meet his future teammates and do a little informal training with his soon-to-be coaches, while Tami drove to Dallas to visit and explore the two colleges that had accepted her, with the map Eric had drawn to his big sister's apartment resting on the dashboard.

She left bright and early Saturday morning and arrived in the mid-afternoon. Kathleen must have been watching for her out her apartment window, because as soon as Tami was standing outside the three-story apartment complex, scanning the façade for numbers, Eric's big sister emerged on her balcony and hollered, "Tami Hayes?"

Tami looked up and nodded.

"Come on up!"

Tami had seen Kathleen's early childhood photos, where the girl was blonde, but she had expected her to be a brunette by now, and she had also anticipated that she would have grown tall like her brother. Yet Kathleen was a 5'4", curvy young woman with golden blonde hair and green eyes, and Tami was suddenly reminded that Mr. Taylor was not Kathleen's biological father.

Eric's big sister settled her into the guest bedroom and then took her on a driving tour around the city, pointing out where JFK was shot, and telling her of other less morbid highlights. Then she took her out to dinner at an Indian restaurant. Tami had never eaten Indian food in her life.

When she tried to put in money for her share of the bill, Kathleen insisted on paying. "You're a high school student," she said. "I'm an actuary. Let me."

Tami wondered what actuaries made, but she wasn't even sure what they did. "What's your job like?"

"I crunch a lot of numbers. I analyze risk for companies. It's not exciting, but it pays well, and I love math. I majored in it. But it's weird sometimes, because I'm the only girl in the office."

That evening, Tami met Kathleen's fiancé Ian, a studious looking twenty-three year old with large-rimmed glasses, a slightly plump figure, but an attractive face. He was polite and friendly to her, but he soon retreated to their bedroom to study.

"He has law school finals coming up in a month," Kathleen explained. "He attends full-time. I guess you could say I'm working on my putting-hubby-through degree. Well, he's not quite my hubby yet. We get married in July."

"Where does he go to law school?"

"A&M has an extension in Dallas." Kathleen was drinking wine, and she offered Tami some. "You're 18, right?" There was talk of raising the state drinking age to 21 next year, to ensure the federal government didn't cut off highway funding, but for now it was still 18.

"Yes, but I've never had wine," Tami said. "I've only had beer, and I don't like it all that much."

"I'll start you on something sweet then. I'll open the Moscato my boss gave me for my one-year work anniversary."

Tami did like it.

"Eventually, you'll move up to the drier whites," Kathleen assured her. "And you won't be able to stand that stuff anymore. I can't. You can have the whole bottle."

Tami laughed. "I'd be under that coffee table if I had it all."

They talked for a while, sipping and laughing. Eric's big sister was very outgoing. She volunteered to take Tami around both school campuses on Sunday and said she would even introduce her to a friend she had who attended grad school at UT-Dallas. "I like you better than Eric's last girlfriend," she told Tami. "I only met her twice. She was okay, but Eric needs a lot of sunshine in his life. You're like a barrel full of sunshine."

Tami didn't know if it was the wine or Kathleen's comment that made her so giggly. It was probably the wine, though, that made her so forward in her following question: "Are y'all planning on kids?"

"We'll probably start trying in four years. By then Ian will have at least two years of work under his belt, and I'll be about six years into my career. Then it will be his turn to provide, and I'll quit and stay home with the kids."

"You don't want to keep working?" Tami asked, a little surprised, since Kathleen seemed to have such a good job.

"I loved having my mother home with me," she said, "once she got married and was able to be home. I don't know if Eric told you, but my mom was a single mother for a short while."

"He did. Do y'all have a good relationship?" Tami asked. "You and your…Mr. Taylor?"

"My father. I call him my father, not my stepfather. He's the man who raised me, after all, since I was very little. I've never known any other father. And, to answer your question…Not exactly. He can be critical and demanding and a little controlling, as I'm sure you've seen with Eric."

Tami nodded. She took another sip of her wine.

"But I don't resent him the way Eric does. And I don't know if that's because I've gotten some distance and experience, or if it's because the father-son dynamic is so different from the father-daughter one."

"Was he as hard on you as he is on Eric?"

"I think he's been a bit harder on Eric, partly because Eric is a boy, and partly because Eric is biologically his, although, in general, he never treated me as if I was anything but his own daughter." She sighed. "He's not an easy man to live with, my father. But he was at least there. At every birthday, every music recital, every graduation. Even though he was demanding when I was growing up, and his expectations were really high, at least he had expectations for me. When the school shook their head at the silly blonde girl who wanted to skip ahead a year in math, my father marched right in there and demanded they put me in the next level. He expected us to excel at whatever we were good at, expected too much, maybe, but at least he recognized what we were good at. For me it was math and music, and for Eric, football."

"Your mom said they barely dated before they got married."

"Yeah, I know. Sounds crazy, right?"

"A little," Tami admitted.

"But at least they knew each other, I guess. Before the modern age, people had arranged marriages for centuries. In other parts of the world, a lot of people still do. They work as well as romantic marriages, I suppose. I mean. What's the divorce rate now?"

Tami shook her head. "Too high," she said. "I couldn't marry without love, though."

"They love each other," Kathleen said. "As much as my father is capable of loving anyone, he loves her. And my mom…well, there's a fine line between love and gratitude with her, I think. I know Eric has…issues…with our father. I have them too, but…not like that. I just don't have any anger towards him. He annoys me often, but I'm not angry. And I appreciate what he's helped to make possible for me."

"Of course, you don't have to live with him anymore," Tami observed.

"True enough," Kathleen agreed. "And maybe when Eric gets a little distance, he'll be able to forgive our father some things. Me, I've had girlfriends who were abused by their fathers. Girlfriends who were abandoned by them. Hell, I was abandoned by my biological father. So I think I've always figured…it could be worse."

"I'm kind of surprised Mr. Taylor wasn't bothered by the fact that your mom was a single mother," Tami said. Yes, the wine had loosened her tongue.

"I think he was more bothered by the husband who took off. My father is all about doing the right thing. Almost to excess. And I think maybe he saw marrying my mother as doing the right thing. Not that he wasn't attracted to her, but he thought a child shouldn't be without two parents. Did Eric tell you about our dad's upbringing?"

Tami nodded.

"I think he wanted to be the complete opposite of his stepfather. He thinks a real man should have a family and provide for a family. So here was his opportunity to do that." Kathleen pointed to Tami's empty glass. "More?"

"I better not," Tami said. "I like it too much."

Kathleen poured her a glass anyway. What could Tami do but drink it?

They talked late into the night. Kathleen told her stories of Eric as a boy, of how she had dressed him in a pink tutu when he was two, and their father had walked in on the scene and glowered.

"Eric's got a gruff exterior," Kathleen said, "but he has a golden heart. He was such a sweet boy when he was little. So affectionate. Sensitive, too. I mean, not in a cry baby way, but he hated to see me or my mom upset. I think our dad squelched some of that part of his personality, trying to toughen him up."

"I can see it, though," Tami said. "He's real sweet to me."

"He better be." Kathleen then told her how very shy Eric was at twelve and thirteen, and how she was afraid he'd never get a girlfriend. "He's become a lot more self-confident," Kathleen said. "His first girlfriend probably helped him with that. Is Eric your first serious boyfriend?"

Tami told her about Mo and the cheating.

"That must have really shook your confidence," she said sympathetically. "I hope it didn't make you inclined to be suspicious. Because that's never good for a relationship. You have to have trust. Trust is the most important thing in a relationship."

"My dad says communication is the most important."

"Your dad talks to you about relationships?" Kathleen asked with surprise.

"Well…he's a pastor, and a counselor."

"My father's relationship advice consisted of three words, when I was fifteen: Don't get pregnant."

Tami took a sip of wine. "Did he have a list of rules for you like he did for Eric?"

"Oh, yeah, honor roll only. And he had to have an after school job of at least fourteen hours a week. And on and on." Tami shook her head. Kathleen laughed. "He's really bent out of shape about the fact that I'm supporting Ian right now. He thinks a man should always be working. But I told him – we're taking turns."

Tami wondered if she would be comfortable being the sole breadwinner in a relationship, and she realized she probably wouldn't She felt a little ashamed of her traditionalism. But then she prided herself on her egalitarianism on another front - she was going to work too. Tami wouldn't be staying at home like her own mother had. She would take off a maximum of eight weeks after each child. There's was no way she'd spend her days cleaning house and going to book clubs and PTA meetings and doing Eric's laundry. "I want it to be 50/50, straight down the line, for me," Tami told her. "Whenever I get married. We'll each do half of the house work, and we'll both work full-time."

Tami didn't understand why Kathleen was suddenly laughing so hard. "What's so funny?"

"Oh, Tami," Kathleen said, recovering herself and stifling her last chuckle. "Nothing is ever 50/50. And sooner or later, your careers are probably going to move in different directions, and one or the other of you is going to have to take a backseat, at least for a while."

"What do you mean?"

"Well say you get your dream job in Seattle, and he gets his dream job in San Antonio. How's that going to work? One of you is giving up the dream job and taking a consolation prize. I think the best you can do is take turns. Unless you do like my mom did and just follow your husband everywhere, and it's always his turn."

A fffft! of disdain escaped Tami's lips. "I'm not moving all over the place for my husband's job like that," Tami said. "That's for sure."

"Well, it wasn't exactly like that," Kathleen told her. "I'm probably not giving a fair representation of how that worked for my mom and dad. When he had a new opportunity, it wasn't like he didn't run it by her first. And she's worked in the bar business on and off herself over the years. They probably made the decisions together."

Mr. Taylor didn't strike her as someone who consulted his wife for her opinion, but as her father had pointed out, he was selling a successful bar to move to Dallas for her. "How do you feel about your parents moving to Dallas?"

"It'll be good to have my mom nearby, and my father…we're going to butt heads, for sure, but then we get to go home to our separate places. And if we're all still in Dallas when Ian and I have kids, it'll be good to have grandparents in the area. It'll help. I wish I'd had grandparents growing up."

Tami looked into her wine glass. The yellow-white sea swirled, and she wondered how strong her father's heart was, if he would live to carry his grandchildren on his shoulders.