Hailey looked at her uncle, face benumbed, and nodded. A stuttering nod, like a record skipping.
“Yes, Mrs. Knox,” Hailey said, nodding and nodding. “I was wrong. I was wrong about everything. I behaved wrongly and I believed false things.”
There was a mysterious interlude, the passing around of footed glasses, the pouring of Tina’s ambered sun tea, the entrance of Nadia and Nastia, Tina’s snapping terriers, nipping and licking at Katie’s feet.
Katie felt confused, light-headed in a way she couldn’t recall since she was a child when the dentist put that glorious sucking mask over her face, what he used to call “happy hour.”
Now, the talk was of the warming weather, the ragweed, the problems with their new deck, wood already splitting in the vertical posts, and did they need to sue the contractor. It was always something with these contractors, the workers they hired.
Somewhere, in all of it, Hailey disappeared into the kitchen, for napkins, for sugar, and never returned.
“Where did she go?” Katie asked, head jerking backward.
The temporary looseness in Teddy’s bisque-colored jowls tightened and he leaned toward her again, setting his glass on the table.
“Katie, don’t you worry about Hailey. She had her come-to-Jesus moment locked in that unholy facility. That is over. And I get why Eric wouldn’t come with you today. But maybe you can talk to him. About his plans for Devon, and BelStars.”
Tina sprang forward, past Teddy’s block this time.
“John Ehlers is a fraud!” she shouted. “He’s tried to poach from us before. He’s tried many times. The stories I could tell you about him. About how he’s boarding one of his gymnasts. A sixteen-year-old. He says it’s all proper, but she’s posting pictures of herself on his water bed—”
Teddy’s hand landed firmly on Tina’s linen-shod knee and her mouth shut again.
He looked at Katie, those misty eyes he used to such strong effect during his pre-meet speeches.
“Katie, gymnasts—all gymnasts but especially the exceptional ones—thrive on routine, on fair winds and following seas. And I can’t apologize enough for our role in disrupting those waters for Devon. But we want things to go back.” His eyes glowing wetly, Katie feeling her chest swelling out of habit. “We want to return to those bright days when all our hearts and minds were directed toward Elite Qualifiers. We want what you want: for Devon to realize her deepest promise, at last.”
On his feet now, lifting Katie to her feet too, holding her hands in his, between his.
“With your say-so, we start over, now. We refocus all our efforts. Forget all this confusion, leave it in the darkness. Remove any obstacles from our champion’s way. Return to our path, the one we mapped out together, all those years ago, all of us together, right here in this house, at that table in there.”
Katie looked through the arched entry into the dining room. She could see it. Eric and herself leaning forward nervously, watching Teddy with his Sharpie, his flow chart. Deciding Devon’s future.
She felt something turn inside her. A phantom kick to the ribs.
At that moment, a sharp thwack vibrated from the ceiling. And something else, almost like an animal scratching a carpet on the floor above them.
“You say the word, and the minute you leave,” Teddy said, as if he hadn’t noticed. Could he really not notice? “Bang goes the starter pistol. We are back.”
Tina was on her feet now too, her hand on Katie’s shoulder, the hard pebble of her engagement ring pressed there, talking loudly into Katie’s ear, loudly over the thudding of a door over and over again upstairs.
“Practice at two forty-five sharp, as ever,” Tina said. “Devon back where she belongs.”
Upstairs, a brief lull came, before the ceiling itself seemed to shake from a fathoms-deep, from-the-bellows sobbing.
“And I promise you this,” Teddy intoned, moving closer to her, all their bodies nearly touching, as if in prayer. “I will devote every fiber of my being, every cell in this aging body, every drop of my heart’s blood to making Devon a Senior Elite in one month’s time. She will have it. I leave it in your hands.”
What could she say? What else could she possibly say?
This is how it is, Katie thought, sitting in the parked car, not ready to turn the key. Our shared effort, the things we all do to keep following that Sharpied arrow.
It made her think of something from months and months back. She’d come upon Eric and Teddy in the living room, watching footage from Devon’s failed bid for Junior Elite two years ago. Their faces lit by the screen, Eric’s hand on the remote, pausing on every frame of the vault. Hurtling down the runway, round-off, feet slapping board, rocketing backward, hands hitting table, body rising, left arm down, right elbow lifted, and then twisting, arms close to chest, spinning madly like a lathe.