Chapter 22

I spend the drive from the bakery truck to Dillon's apartment trying to figure out if I'm a good enough friend of Layla's by now that I don't need to rely on seeing her just at the bakery truck. Is it okay to stop by her apartment to hang out? We do have a plan for next week for her to come to my place, but that seems far away. Next Tuesday night.

Okay, it's only three days, and I do get to see her almost every morning, even for just a couple minutes, but it's just too little. I remind myself that I've seen her a lot more over the last few weeks because Eli and Landon have made sure of it, but it still doesn't feel like enough.

I hand off tickets to the game tomorrow to Dillon when I drop off one of the muffins. He's a casual fan, but he seemed excited when I offered to grab him a couple as a thanks for helping us out with this. He reassures me he'll email Officer Brady if he finds anything, and I take off. I have meetings this morning that I need to get to before the team checks into the hotel for the night. We'll all be serious about focusing today. The Seattle Torrent is our biggest rival in our division, and we've split wins the last few years. We'd all like to see the Rays go up one on them. It would be a nice boost going into playing the Pumas next week, the toughest team in the league—reigning champions and favored to win again this year.

I stop by my house, putting the muffins in a storage container and then into the freezer. Dillon showed me and Landon how to look at the arsenic under a magnifying glass and pick it out, but we also decided it would be safer if Dillon checked the whole muffin. If whoever's doing this saw Officer Brady or has figured out in some way that we're on to them, they might change up their methods. I don't want to be the reason anyone else gets sick, so delicious treats might start piling up in my freezer until we catch the culprit.

My meeting that morning with the rest of the offense is intense. Seattle has a tough defense, so scoring is going to be sparse. Coach Barrin, the offensive coordinator, likes to have fun with plays, no matter who we're up against, so we go over some of the trick plays and rarer options that we practiced this week to combat Seattle's huge defensive line and their all-star linebackers.

We're tense in the walk-through we have on the field after that, until Coach Reeves—our head coach—and Coach Barrin start cracking dad jokes to get everyone to lighten up.

I head home and try to relax in the couple hours I have until I need to report to the hotel. Still, I'm restless and my conversation with Dottie is weighing on my mind. Maybe if I talk it out with my dad, I can at least shift it aside for now. I don't know how long it's going to take me to come to terms with Grandpa's betrayal to our family. The therapist I went to for a while after he died liked to tell me it was going to take "as long as it's going to take." But after the anger that seemed to return full force during me and Dottie's conversation, I wonder if I'm holding on to something I shouldn't be. Is two years unreasonable or "as long as it's going to take"?

"Hey, Linc," Dad says when he answers. "What's up?"

I blow out a long breath. "I'm not sure. You okay to talk about Grandpa? I need to get something off my chest."

He pauses. "I'm happy to try," he says slowly. I don't know if Dad is having as rough a time as I am. I don't bring Grandpa up with him if I can help it, and the few times we have talked about it, he gets through it as quickly as possible. "But is now a good time? You've got a big game tomorrow, and you should be starting to focus in on that."

"I know. But this is bugging me, and if you're willing to let me hash it out, I'd like to see if that can get it off my mind, at least for a couple days." I run a hand over my hair and then down my face.

"Of course. Let's hear it." Dad sounds like he's bracing for a tough medical procedure.

I gear up to ask him something I haven't dared bring up since we all found out about Dottie after the funeral. "Do you think Grandpa should've divorced Grandma if he was going to do what he did? Was Do—Mrs. Van Buren the love of his life?" This is a lot, and I don't need to add into the mix that I know Dottie well enough to call her by her first name now. Dad's never even met her. Don't think he ever wants to.

He barks out a short laugh. "Honestly, Linc? I don't know. Before we found those letters, I could've sworn my parents had the classic love story. I never heard them fight. I'm pretty sure that Mom didn't know about that woman at all. I've struggled with that, wondering if their love was some kind of smoke-and-mirrors show or what."

That's what I saw. I don't think Dad's imagining it. Grandma and Grandpa were still holding hands everywhere they went, right up to the day he took her to the hospital and she didn't come home. He was always looking for ways to help her—he enlisted me on plenty of "missions" for Grandma when I would spend a couple weeks with them during the summer. Buying her flowers on the way home from getting gas, just because. Building her a hammock stand in the backyard because she saw one in a magazine and talked about it for days.

He taught me that service was love, but I've struggled with how I'm "proving" my feelings to Layla, the same way Grandpa seemed to be proving that he loved Grandma, despite his relationship with Dottie.

"She's a nice woman," I say quietly. I don't tell him that she's filled a hole that my grandparents left behind, because that will hurt him. My parents know that I sought Dottie out after the funeral, that it was part of my healing. I don't mention her, so they probably don't have any idea what my relationship with her has become.

Dad sighs. "I'm not surprised." He pauses a long time. "I think I'm always going to be a little bit angry with Dad for lying to our family that way. But I think I've come to terms with his mistakes the last couple years. I don't want this to burden you, Linc."

"I don't want it to either." I lean back on my couch, staring out the tall windows that overlook the roofs of dozens of houses and then the deep blue of the ocean beyond that.

Dad asks me about our game plan for the Seattle game and teases me a little bit about Layla before we hang up. We didn't resolve anything about our feelings about Grandpa, but somehow just talking to him makes me feel lighter about it. And it's also a relief that there was no judgment in his tone when I implied that I'd gotten to know Dottie. My dad, or my mom, will never be able to have the relationship I have with Dottie, complicated as it is. They're just too close to the actual events of the past. But knowing that he's not upset at me for that relationship brings me a lot of peace too.

I spend a good half hour staring out the window at the endless blue, slowly transitioning my thoughts from family drama to my game tomorrow and my goals to succeed. By the time I head to the hotel an hour later, the weight has lifted off me for the time being.