The One And Only Part 39

"If?" she said, her eyes finally filling with tears.

"I'm sorry that it upsets you," he said.

Lucy stared at her father, her eyes cold, remote. "Don't," she said. "Don't say anything else. I just hope it's worth it to you both ..."

"Lucy," he said, his voice stronger, more urgent, with just a hint of authority. "Wait."

She shook her head, then walked out of the room, without so much as a glance my way.

Thirty-nine.

"That was brutal," Coach said when he called me from his cell just a few minutes after we had seen ourselves out of Lucy's house. In a mild state of shock, I gripped my steering wheel, trailing Coach in my car.

"She hates me," I said, more to myself than to him. Without thinking, I pa.s.sed the turnoff for my apartment, still following Coach in the direction of his house.

"She hates both of us," he said, as if this were some kind of solace.

"You're her father. She can't hate you," I said, realizing that that hadn't stopped me from hating my own dad for the longest time. In some ways, it was easier to hate someone in your family, the smallest betrayals magnified. But it was also far easier to write off a friend, without a bloodline holding you together.

"She has to forgive us," he said. "Eventually."

I wondered what he meant by eventually-a couple of days, weeks, or years-and the thought that it could be the last, that it could be never, made me pull over to the side of the road.

Coach must have glanced in his rearview mirror, because he said, "Where'd you go?"

"I stopped for a second," I said, my hands shaking. I watched his taillights illuminate ahead of me as he pulled over, too.

"Are you all right?" he said.

"What if she never forgives us?" I said, thinking of all the grudges Lucy had held over the years. All the people she had written off for far smaller offenses.

"She will. Of course she will."

"How do you know?"

"Because ... we're the two most important people in her life after Caroline and Neil."

"No," I said, staring at his car. "Her mother's far more important than we are. That's the point."

"But ... she's not here. This never would have happened if Connie were still with us."

"Of course not," I said, appalled at the mere idea that anything, even the most minor of flirtations, would have ever begun if Mrs. Carr had been alive. I thought back to that dreadful time when she was really sick, and how I couldn't even look him in the eye. "Do you think Lucy knows that?"

"Yes. She knows that. She knows us ... n.o.body cheated here. n.o.body lied."

"We sort of lied."

"No. We just didn't tell her right away ... This thing just happened ... n.o.body planned it ... Lucy's just upset ... She needs time to process it."

"She'll never accept it," I said.

"She has to."

"She won't," I said, wondering what in the world I'd been thinking. How did I ever think this could work?

"Yes. She will. Now c'mon. Follow me."

I hesitated, then decided that where I went at this moment really wouldn't change anything. So I put my car back in drive and said okay.

A few minutes later, we were together in his kitchen, both of us checking our phones.

"Did she call you?" I asked.

"Nope. Did she call you?"

I shook my head.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I shouldn't have kissed you like that. I don't know what I was thinking."

"I let you," I said. "I forgot where we were. You make me forget everything ..."

He gave me a thoughtful look and said, "Maybe it's for the best that it came out now. There was never going to be a good time for that announcement."

"Yes, but I feel like we ruined Lucy's news."

"Nothing can ruin that news."

"You know what I mean. Tonight was important. Really special to her. And we were reckless ..."

"I know ... But it's done. We can't change it now," Coach said, always one to focus on the things he could control.

"But we have to fix it."

"Time will fix it," he said. "Trust me. She'll come around."

I studied his face, wanting desperately to believe that he was right but thinking it was a lot easier for him to be patient, wait her out. He didn't talk to Lucy three times a day. He didn't need her the way I needed her. I honestly couldn't fathom what I'd do if our friendship ended.

I sighed, then went to sit at the kitchen table, resting my chin in my hand. Coach followed, sitting across from me, as I remembered the last thing he had said to me in Lucy's family room. "So what did you want to tell me?" I asked him.

He blinked a few times, his face blank, as if he had no idea what I was talking about.

"You said you had something to tell me," I said. "Right before Lucy came downstairs."

"Oh. Yeah. Right."

"Well?" I said. "What was it?"

Coach looked tense as he took a deep breath.

"Is it Mrs. Carr?" I made myself ask. "Because I know how hard this must be. I mean, I understand that your loyalty will always be to her ... which is the way it should be," I finished awkwardly, wishing I hadn't brought her up.

Coach shook his head and said, "No. It's not about Connie. I mean ... I've had some pangs over the past few weeks. I feel guilty for being happy. For being excited ... But I feel that way about football, too. After we win. Like how dare I be happy about a game when she's not here? Then I always come back to reason and remind myself that whatever you and I do or don't do isn't going to bring her back."

I nodded, familiar with his rationale, but aware that he was evading my question. "So what was it, then?" I said.

A few more seconds ticked by before he cleared his throat and said, "It's about the past. Something that happened a long time ago."

I froze, my mind flitting through the possibilities, praying that there hadn't been another woman while Mrs. Carr was alive. Maybe he'd had an affair with a colleague. Or a random woman he met on the road. Or, most sickening of all, a ripe, bubbly coed. Maybe it was someone I knew, someone I had gone to school with. I couldn't bear the thought of any of these possibilities, but told myself it wouldn't change my feelings. Nothing could change the way I felt about him.

"How long ago?" I asked.

"Back when you and Ryan were in school." He took a deep breath, exhaled, and said, "Do you remember that gal Ryan dated in college? Before the one he married? Tish Termini?"

"Yes," I said, my thoughts racing. Surely Coach hadn't been involved with Tish.

"Well ... the night before we left town for the Cotton Bowl, I was in my office, doing some work, when she came to see me."

I waited, bracing myself for the worst.

"She said she had to tell me something important and was very emotional. I told her to have a seat. So she sat down and told me this story ... about the big blowout breakup fight she'd had with Ryan the night before ... I think we can both picture that now."

"Yes," I said, my insides clenched as I mentally switched gears.

"Then she told me that Ryan had attacked her. I asked what she meant by attacked, and she spelled it out pretty clearly. She said that he pushed and shoved her ... And then ... Then she said he forced her to have s.e.x."

"He raped her?" I said, the word leaving a bitter taste in my mouth.

"Well, she didn't say that exactly. But yeah ... That's what she alleged. That he had s.e.x with her against her will. So yeah. That would be rape."

I stared back at him, everything inside me deflating as I remembered how I'd felt on my bed the other night. How scared I had been even as I tried to tell myself that it was only Ryan. My boyfriend who would never really hurt me. Even with my own awful memories, I found it impossible to grasp what Coach was telling me now.

"So then what?" I said, feeling frantic. "What did you say?"

"I said it was a really serious charge and she'd better be very sure about what she was saying."

"And?"

"And she said she was sure."

"Then what?" I pressed.

"I asked her why she hadn't gone to the police. She said she was scared and in shock and that she wanted to come to me first. She asked if I believed her, and I told her it really didn't matter what I believed. I told her that if she had been raped she needed to go down to the station. Or at least to the campus police."

"Did you think she was lying?"

Coach stared at me for several seconds before answering. "I didn't see any marks on her ... There was no sign at all of a physical struggle ..."

"But there doesn't have to be," I said. "Sometimes there aren't marks."

"I know that," he said. "But I also knew that she had quite the reputation. My a.s.sistant coaches had been telling me for months that she was bad news. Bad for Ryan. Always out at the clubs. Drinking and smoking and carrying on ... And I'd even heard she was up before the honor council for cheating on an exam ... So she wasn't the most reliable girl ... And Ryan was ... well, he was Ryan. The golden boy. Heisman candidate. Good student. Squeaky-clean reputation."

"So you didn't believe her?" I said, boiling it down to its essence. "Did you?"

"No," he said. "I didn't believe her."

"So you didn't do anything?" I said, my heart pounding in my ears.

"Shea ... You have to understand ... I didn't know what I now know ... I only had the facts that I had at the time. And, based on those facts, it just didn't add up. I really thought she was manufacturing the whole thing ... exacting some kind of revenge because Ryan had broken up with her. I thought she wanted me to bench him for the bowl game. Get even. Hurt him the worst way you can hurt a ballplayer ... And, beyond that, beyond destroying a football career, I was aware that this type of accusation could ruin a young man's life. It's serious if it's true, of course, but it's serious if it's not true, too ... And I didn't think it was true. Not a shred of me believed that girl."

"Did you at least talk to Ryan?" I asked. "Ask him about it?"

"Yes. Of course I did. Right after Tish left, I called him into my office and asked him what had happened. He told me a story that made more sense than hers. A story that I could ... wrap my head around."

"What did he tell you?" I said, knowing how convincing, downright slick, he could be.

"He told me that he'd broken up with her and that she was very hurt. Very angry ... He said she came after him pretty hard, and he just defended himself. Like this." Coach held up his arms, blocking his face. "He said he did push her out of his apartment, but only after she refused to leave. And he swore to me that he didn't hurt her ... And that was it ..."

Coach threw his hands up in the air and shook his head. "It was a cla.s.sic he-said, she-said, and, bottom line, I just didn't believe that girl. In my mind, she wasn't credible. He was. So yeah. I took his word over hers. A few days later, I did follow up with her."

"And?"

"And she changed her tune ... She changed her story. At least part of it. She maintained that he had roughed her up but said that the s.e.x was 'a little bit consensual' ..."

"A little bit?"

"Exactly. It either was or it wasn't. Right?"

"Maybe she was scared. Maybe she knew you didn't believe her."

"And maybe she had made that part up."

"Maybe," I said, acknowledging that this was definitely a possibility. "So that was it?"

Coach nodded, avoiding my gaze.

"You didn't do anything else?" I asked, my heart sinking.

"You have to remember, Shea ... There are rules now about this sort of thing. Rules that say coaches have to report all incidents to the university president or athletic director or police. Or all three. But back then ... there was nothing in place. I had never dealt with anything like that before ..."

"Did you tell Connie?" I asked, unsure of why this mattered to me.