Page 43 of The Cadence
“Thank you. Do you ever think that I play badly?”
I had to consider for a moment before I remembered something. “Once, in high school, you suited up when you were sick. You puked on the sidelines and that was a tough day for you. You only got three sacks.”
He smiled. “If you ever decide to start writing books, I’m going to ask you do my biography. I’ll come off as bigger than…” He stopped and looked at his phone. “This is the third time that my mother has called me in the span of ten minutes.” He glanced around the crowded room and I thought back to the last time I’d been with him and his mom had started calling. That had been seven years ago but I remembered it very well, because it had been bad.
“I’ll drive and you can talk to her,” I suggested. I had decided to get a ride to the stadium so that we would have only one car and could go home together—it was just easier on someone who might be tired, and therefore might worry. We worked our way through the players and families, out to the throng of Woodsmen fans behind the metal barricades. They yelled and clapped when they spotted Will. He signed jerseys, footballs, and a baby’s bib, and he took some pictures with them, too. Then he reachedbackwards for my hand and we went the rest of the way to the car together.
He didn’t call his mom back until we were on the stadium drive and heading toward the exit. But when he did, I heard her speaking high and fast before he even said hello. It sounded like she was hysterical—was it happening again?
“What? What?” he asked her, and then he motioned with his hand, as if he wanted me to stop the car. The traffic had thinned a lot so I pulled into one of the outer parking lots just before the stadium’s main gate.
“What?” he repeated, and it got so strangely quiet. His mother wasn’t saying anything and it didn’t seem like he was even breathing.
“Will?” I spoke softly, too.
He shook his head. “Call nine-one-one,” he said into the phone, and I heard her answer in a voice that was calmer than before. Then it got silent again.
“What’s wrong?” I asked him. “Will?”
“I’m coming home,” he said to her. “I’m coming.” She didn’t seem to respond, but he put the phone down on his lap.
“What happened?” I asked him, afraid that I knew.
But this time, it was his father. “He went to his bedroom last night and she didn’t check on him until a little while ago, when the game ended. He was cold.”
“Holy Moses. Oh, I’m so sorry!”
He was already busy. He talked to someone at the Woodsmen and also to his agent, and between those calls and typing, he asked me to take us home. I went as fast as I could, gripping the steering wheel. When we pulled into the garage, I did my best to line up this car with the other one.
Will finally put down his phone. “Would you come with me to Tennessee?”
He had sounded so unsure. “Absolutely,” I said firmly. “I definitely want to.”
“You could see Miss Mozella.”
“I’ll go to help you,” I corrected him. “I’ll pay for my ticket.” I had been saving, after all.
“I already bought it for you.”
A short while later, I was ready to drive us to the airport. It hadn’t taken me very long to pack my black dress and black shoes, but I hadn’t been sure of what else to bring. How long would we stay there? I had ended up throwing a mishmash of items into my bag before hurrying to the main house.
“Did you lock it? Did you turn on the alarm?” he asked me before we left, and I had. I also told him that I checked all the faucets and nothing was dripping at all, and then we got back on the road. The next flight to Detroit was leaving soon and I went fast again so we could make it.
He kept very, very quiet. A lot of people at the airport were watching him but they were acting extremely respectful and giving him space, and I got the feeling that they might alreadyhave heard about his father. I checked…there it was. Someone must have spotted the breaking news alert out of Chattanooga, and the Woodsmen fans were already reporting on it to each other. They were also sending their condolences and best wishes to Will, and I thought I’d share those messages with him later.
Not now, though. Unlike what had happened with my grandma, this had been out of the clear blue, and I thought that he must be reeling. When we got on the first flight, a little plane, I said how hard the shock of it must be. “You didn’t expect this, and that must be worse.”
“No, I did expect it,” he answered. “With the way he drank? If it wasn’t today, it could have been next week or it could have happened a year ago. Either he would have died from cirrhosis, a heart attack, or some other illness related to being an alcoholic. He also could have wrecked his car again and taken someone else out with him.” He paused. “It’s better this way.”
Besides a little conversation about food and our trip, we were mostly quiet. Will pulled out work related to his new company, which somehow he had thought to bring, and pressed his knuckle against his lip while he read through it and made notes. I had a book from the library but I couldn’t focus too much. I had also brought a box of tissues, just in case, but he didn’t seem to need them although I checked a lot to make sure.
Both the flights were much smoother than the first one I’d taken, and I was so relieved by that. We had sped through the Detroit airport to get to the second plane and we sped out of the Chattanooga airport, too, going directly to a rental car in the pitch darkness. The whole time, Will had kept his eyes above thecrowd, walking fast with his gaze at least a foot over the heads of all of the rest of us. That separated him from everyone else, including me. He didn’t want to talk. He had wanted me to come, though, so I was glad to be here, and I still had the tissues ready. Just in case.
We drove in more silence to his parents’ house—now just his mother’s house. They—no, I should have said thatshelived in a part of town that I had visited only a few times. It didn’t reflect very well on me, but I had driven past this place before.
Holy Moses. I realized that I was just like Kirsten, who had spied on the Woodsmen players in Michigan. I was just like the woman who had tormented Will when he had been in college, his stalker. Well…it wasn’t exactly the same, and I tried to comfort myself with that thought. When I’d driven by his childhood home in my old car, I’d known that he wasn’t in residence. He had been away at school and then playing for the Rackers in Alabama. I’d been sure that I wouldn’t see him, but I’d still spied and that wasn’t much better.
“I’ve been here,” I heard myself admit as we approached the driveway.
