The Baller: A Down and Dirty Football Novel(43)

“I’ve been clean for eleven months.”

“Good luck to you, Willow.” I never turned back.





Chapter 21


Willow

“You knew it wasn’t going to be easy.”

I pulled the last tissue out of the box that Dr. Kaplan kept on the glass coffee table between us. “Sorry.”

“I’m well stocked. Don’t worry about it.” She gave me the same encouraging smile I’d grown to become dependent on over the last year. “Take a minute. Then tell me about the day. Start with your grandmother. Did she recognize you?”

I dried my eyes and wadded up the tissue in my palm. “She did. I was really nervous that she wouldn’t. My legs were shaking when I walked in the first time.”

“Understandable. It’s been a long time.”

“She knew me. She knew who I was. But she didn’t seem to know how much time had passed. It was like she just picked a page from our history book, and everything continued from there.”

Dr. Kaplan nodded. “Stage five, most likely. Moderate cognitive decline. I’m glad that she has progressed slowly; we talked about how some cases can move twice as fast as others.”

“I know. It’s selfish of me, but it made me happy that she could recognize me still.”

“It’s not selfish. Selfish people tend to be good only to themselves. I think we can both agree that isn’t the case. What you’re more likely feeling is regret.”

“I suppose.”

“The thing with regret is, you can only regret the past. So for you, that’s healthy. Regret the past. Use it. Make a new future. Visit her often. The more the regret is pushed into the past, the easier it will be.”

“I am. I visited her every day this week.”

“That’s good. And how about the other regret that you need to deal with?”

“Brody?”

“Of course.”

We’d spent the better part of a year talking about the man—who else would she be referring to? “I saw him. It didn’t go very well.”

She nodded and waited for me to continue.

“He hates me. I can’t blame him. He assumed I was back because I needed something.”

“Your history runs deep. You’re going to have to earn back his trust.”

“I’m not so sure he’ll give me that chance.”

“There’s only one way to find out. Perhaps once he sees that you’re genuinely clean this time, that you have a job, and you are planning on staying in Marlene’s life, he’ll come around.”

I took a deep breath and exhaled audibly. “I know. It’s not going to happen overnight. He can’t even believe I’m sober, how can I expect him to believe that I’ve gone to bed and woken up thinking of him every day for the last four years?”





Chapter 22


Delilah

“Is everything okay?” Brody pushed spicy Thai chicken and fettuccini around the plate with his fork. Tuesday night, he’d said he wasn’t feeling well and canceled coming by. And the last few days, he’d been quiet. Tonight his mood was something that resembled sullen. “Do you not like the pasta?”

“Yeah. I’m good. Sorry, babe. The pasta is delicious. Just tired.”

The rest of the evening was pretty much the same. I felt like I was dragging questions out of him. Normally, I was good with quiet. I’d never been a person who felt the need to talk all the time to be comfortable. The thing was, the quiet wasn’t comfortable tonight.

Later, I tried different subjects. Nothing seemed to interest him enough to talk. Brody was also having an after-dinner drink, something that was similarly out of character for him. He poured a stiff rum and Coke and sat down on the couch, staring into his glass as he swirled the liquid.

“What did you ever end up buying when you went shopping the other day?”

He sipped his drink and looked at me with a creased brow. “Hmm?”

“The family friend you were shopping for last weekend. You were in a gadget store when I called you, and you said you were shopping for a friend’s birthday. Remember?”

Brody looked around the room before taking a sizeable gulp. Placing his drink on the table, he lifted a knee and turned to face me. “I got her a wooden checkers board. She lives in a nursing home and has a thing for game shows. She watches them on TV all day and likes to play board games.”

“Oh. That’s nice of you. Is she a friend of your dad?”

He looked me straight in the eyes this time. “She’s Willow’s grandmother, Marlene.”

There was more to this story. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the rest.

“After Willow disappeared, Marlene started to get confused a lot. She had no one but a drug addict for a daughter and a drug addict for a granddaughter. The woman spent her whole life seeing the good in people, and yet when her time came, when she needed that good to show for her, the two of them were nowhere to be found.” Brody had one arm slung over the back of the couch, I reached up and took his hand and squeezed.

“My dad and I took turns looking in on her for a while after I got back from college. But then my dad eventually retired to Arizona, and I’d be traveling four days some weeks with the team. It just wasn’t safe for Marlene to be alone anymore. So I moved her out of her place and into a private nursing home about three years ago.”