*
She drove through the summer night to the basketball court. Jamie wasn’t there. No surprise. From snippets of conversation she overheard earlier in the night, his family had organized an after-banquet reception at their house. She parked her car, slipped off her heels, and scrabbled for the basketball that was always rolling around in the backseat. Dribbling slowly, she walked to the center of the court and looked up the Hill, where Jamie’s house clung to the edge. Maybe it was her imagination, but she could hear laughter and music over the crickets and the thump of someone’s bass music from deeper into the East Side.
With the basketball balanced against her hip, she looked around the court. For more than half her life, the basketball court had defined her, given her the scaffolding to create a life for herself. A future. When she moved back to Lancaster, she thought it was time to put her playing days behind her so she could teach a new generation of young women about the game, and life.
Was she wrong?
There was only one way to find out.
Ball in hand, she took off running across the court, into the crabgrass on the other side, then onto the sidewalk leading to the stairs up the Hill. Her dress flashed a deep, secret pink in the enormous, overgrown rhododendrons lining the stairs. Leaves brushed her bare arms, raising goose bumps, but she didn’t stop to think, just kept going, taking the stairs two at a time, her feet thumping against the wooden boards as she climbed higher and higher. Gasping, she stumbled out onto a wooden path between two privacy fences, then emerged into the street. Cars lined the cul-de-sac and the road leading into the neighborhood ranging down the gently sloping west side of the Hill.
The neighborhood no longer looked imposing, secretive, closed-off. Charlie mentally added running those stairs to her training plan for the girls. The rigor of climbing the stairs, then running down the Hill would build leg muscles to last a forty-eight-minute game, and break down any mental barriers between the East Side and the Hill.
After she caught her breath, she tucked the ball between her wrist and hip, walked along the sidewalk to Jamie’s front door and rang the bell. Ian opened the door, wearing his suit pants and white shirt, his tie loosened, a beer in one hand. His eyes widened ever so slightly. “Charlie,” he said.
She could hear conversation and laughter, music playing in the background. For a moment the stranger-in-a-strange-land sensation swamped her. She wished she’d thought to put her shoes back on. “Hi, Ian.”
“Come on in.” He stepped back and gestured into the house.
“I just want to talk to Jamie,” she said, shaking her head.
“Look, Stannard, help me out here. My mother will hand me my ass if I leave a guest on the front porch,” he said.
She stepped into the foyer, trying not to gawk.
“About what you saw at the Met,” he started.
“I didn’t see anything,” she said firmly.
“It’s not personal. I can’t say anything more than that, but believe me when I say I’ve got nothing going with Eve.”
She put “not personal” together with “can’t say anything more” and came up with Ian’s job. “I know Eve, so I have no trouble believing that,” she said, and got a huffed laugh from Ian.
“Who is it?”
“Hi, Mayor Hawthorn.” She couldn’t stop her spine from straightening or her dirty bare feet from curling away from the carpet covering the foyer’s marble tile as Jamie and Ian’s father stepped into the hallway.
“Coach Stannard,” he said. “Great job with the girls this season.”
“Thank you, sir. They worked really hard.”
“Good coaches inspire that,” he said. “Come in. We’ve got a few friends over, some of the booster club members.”
“I can’t stay,” she said. “I just wanted to see if Jamie—…”
“You wanted to see if Jamie could come out and play?” Ian interrupted, amusement dancing in his eyes.
Clinging to what remained of her dignity, she shot him a glare. “Would you get him for me, please?”
“Jamie!” Ian bellowed. “It’s for you!”
“Oh my God,” Charlie said under her breath.
No answer. She doubted Jamie could hear Ian over the music and laughter, but she wasn’t going to wait anymore. Without asking Ian for permission, she squared up her shoulders and walked down the hall, toward that noise and laughter.