Eyes twitching and nostrils flared, Gwen tried to talk shop, but no one would join her. (Katie herself had not said one word to her since their conversation at Weaver’s Wagon. They glided past each other with the hooded eyes of those who’d shared a mortifying one-night stand.)
Finally, Gwen surrendered to the group, the gym-parent equivalent of a key party, returning from her kitchen brandishing a bottle of tequila in the shape of a skull, looking like she wanted to throw back the bottle and swallow the worm whole.
Who’s feeling dangerous? she asked, in her tall boots, the kind you might ride in. They made her look tall and frightening. Where’s the crop? Jim Chu had laughed, and kept laughing even as his smile fell, Gwen’s gaze on him.
The boots were magnificent, and worn, and when she walked in them, she looked taller, stronger, younger. Prettier.
A picture came into Katie’s head, Gwen at fifteen or sixteen, smart cap and flowing hair, arms latched onto a sleek mare, hands following the bit. Body radiating. Cheeks flushed. Her face the face of someone lost in a dream. Daddy, watch me. Watch me win.
“Eric,” Kirsten shouted, waving across the room, “the tequila yearns for you.”
The only remaining outlier, Eric had yet to join them in their revels, sitting in the far corner nursing a beer, rubbing his face, eyes bloodshot, brow graven.
(Katie, he’d said to her just three weeks ago when she’d first let him back into the house, though not into her bed, if Devon gets this… But he never could finish the thought. One of a thousand half conversations, neither of them able to finish one.)
“Eric, it’s your turn,” Becca Plonski demanded, lifting the shot glass, wiggling in her seat.
Eric walked over, took a swig from the tequila, grinned boyishly, faking it, faking it, faking it, that sun-burnished face, and how he could make his eyes dance, who could do that, make their eyes dance?
Eric could.
A few more swigs, and he began talking freely, buoyantly, about Coach T.’s near laryngitis, about how Bobby V. accidentally ordered the team towels from a massage-parlor supplier, about anything at all. Everything he said made everyone laugh and slap knees. Becca Plonski even reached out to touch his arm, as if to say, Oh, stop, Eric, but don’t ever stop.
Slipping off into the hallway, Katie spotted Lacey, that sex-doll face of hers, peeking through the rails of the staircase, watching them all, the manic chatter and gamesmanship, the way adults, parents, could talk forever and forever and without ceasing about nothing they cared about just to stop the worries churning in their hot brains.
(The next day, Lacey would fall during one of her qualifier routines, her heels catching one of the uneven bars and her body folding in upon itself. Everyone would watch her crumpled on the floor, face blue, Coach T. crying out. One fractured vertebra, another dislocated, and this would be the last time she’d ever compete. But none of them knew it now, except maybe Lacey.)
“Katie!” Molly said, finding her in the hallway, grabbing her by the arm. “I’m so happy for Devon. For what’s going to happen tomorrow. Her life will change forever. All of yours will. I always wanted to do it like you did.”
Molly was nearly crying, holding Katie’s hands, swinging them.
“How did I do it?” Katie said. “What did I do?”
What did I do.
Around ten, Katie found Eric in the kitchen, talking on the phone, asking Drew about something he was watching on television, a show about a woman who’d died of yellow fever and whose body had turned into soap.
As he talked (“She was wearing kneesocks? For real, buddy?”), his face relaxed for the first time in months. It reminded her of some things, and erased other things.
Watching him, she knew she would let him back in their bed later that night. She knew she would press against his back, burying her face in his thick hair, listening to his heart beat.
What would he be thinking, though, when he slipped under the covers?
Would he be thinking of what his daughter had done? What he’d done to conceal it? Katie could think of little else.
Or might he be thinking of how she’d trapped him seventeen years ago, turned his youthful fling with a concessions girl into marriage, family, mortgage, second mortgage, days sardined with school, practice drop-off, dry cleaner, grocery store, practice pickup, homework, overturned fishbowl, torn cereal boxes oozing flakes and Os on the top of the refrigerator, booster e-mails, dinner, laundry, collapse?
Maybe he’d be thinking he’d found a way to happiness, even if he hadn’t expected it. The life they’d created, or built—from their wayward romance or from the bloody back lawn where Devon was, in some ways, born—was far greater than the both of them. It was a beautiful, an extraordinary thing.
But, deep down, Katie knew Eric wouldn’t be thinking any of this.