“No, actually,” Trudi said cheerfully. “He was pretty upset with me for bringing you up. He says a lot of the same things you do. But I can see how great you guys would be together.”
Madeline rolled her eyes. She hadn’t even thought of Stephen in the last couple of weeks. She rarely thought of anything or anyone other than Luke. Of course she hadn’t heard anything from him, and she wasn’t na?ve enough to have expected that she would. The only thing she knew of him until recently was the one phone conversation she’d had with Libby since leaving Colorado. Before Madeline had departed Homecoming Ranch and Colorado, Libby had reluctantly accepted her apology, and Madeline suspected she had only because Madeline was leaving. When Madeline called a week or so ago, Libby mentioned, in the course of her spirited description of the wedding that would take place at the ranch next month, that Luke had been out to add some showers to the bunkhouse.
“Oh,” Madeline said, trying to sound as casual as she could. “He’s been home?”
“I think he moved home,” Libby said.
“Moved home? Are you sure?”
“Yeah, that’s what I understood,” Libby said.
What about his houses? What about all that he’d hoped to accomplish with them, his dreams? “Well… how was he?” Madeline asked.
“He looked great!” Libby had said.
Fantastic. Luke was great while Madeline was splintering apart a little more every day, a little piece of this and that falling away from her.
She couldn’t seem to shake the blues. She couldn’t seem to find her happiness in Orlando, and she was beginning to wonder if she’d ever had it. Now that she had been out of her bubble, as Trudi would say, Madeline could see just how much she’d isolated herself from the world. The only friend she had was Trudi. She had no real life—she moved between work and late hours, and her mother’s house, and back to her condo with her streaming movies.
Soccer was Madeline’s only solace, and while she was excited to see the girls again, Teresa gave her the news that funding to Camp Haven had been cut, and the soccer league would be folded into the city park and recreation program.
“What does that mean?” Madeline asked as she handed out CapriSuns to the girls.
“It means that there is going to be one soccer league. A smaller one. And about twice as many volunteer coaches.”
Madeline understood her. There would be less opportunity for girls to find soccer as an escape from their lives, and less opportunity for her to coach these girls. It felt like the final slash of the knife. Madeline looked up through the haze of heat and humidity on that sweltering afternoon and longed for mountains and crisp air. She missed having a purpose that was shared with others. Even if the other was Libby, a sister who could scarcely tolerate her.
Madeline could scarcely tolerate herself.
She’d done a lot of thinking about her three weeks in Colorado, and she would give everything she had for the opportunity to do it all again.
It wasn’t as if her homecoming to Orlando was appreciated, either. When she’d arrived from Colorado, Madeline had gone straight to her mother’s house to check on her. She found her mother in a caftan, smoking a cigarette. The place was littered with beer cans, and some man was sleeping in the back room.
“Who’s that?” Madeline whispered.
Her mother glanced to the back room. “Ron,” she said. “An old friend. So? What’d you find out about that back child support?” she asked. “I’ve got some things I’d like to fix up around here.”
Madeline had looked at her mother—really looked at her. “It’s going to be tied up in court for a long time.”
Her mother took a drag of smoke from her cigarette and blew it at the ceiling, then shrugged. “Stupid bastard,” she said.
Madeline had left her mother’s house, resigned that she’d lost the best thing that had ever happened to her, and for what? For a job selling ugly houses? For a mother who cared more about child support for a thirty-year-old daughter? Yeah, this was the life.
But then, out of the blue, she got a text from Leo. He said he had a new texting machine, and that Libby had given him Madeline’s number. He asked if she followed the Florida Marlin baseball team.
No.
The next day, she got another text from Leo asking if she had ever heard of Javon Walker, who once played for the Florida Marlins.
No.
Look him up.
That night, Madeline looked up Javon Walker. He was a talented athlete, she guessed, because he had played for the Florida Marlins before turning to professional football and playing for the Denver Broncos, among others. She texted Leo back. Looked him up.
Leo fired back almost instantly. He thought he knew where he belonged, where his talents fit in best. Turns out, he was wrong. His talents fit a whole other game better. So he CHANGED GAMES. If he’d stayed with baseball he would have fallen into obscurity and would probably be shooting crack in some back alley by now. Get it?
No.
You will.
Madeline shook her head.