When Monday’s final bell rang at Bluegrass High School, Grace’s training room became instant chaos.
Her empire was a long, narrow space between the boys’ and girls’ locker rooms. A countertop ran the length of one wall, with cabinets above and below. On the other side, her desk was tucked into a corner with four padded treatment tables lined up in the middle section. The far end was the rehab area, with a stationary bike, whirlpool, and a collection of what the kids called her implements of torture.
She spiraled prewrap around an ankle, a routine so practiced she could simultaneously direct traffic. “Hop on the bike and do a ten-minute warm-up, Kevin, then I’ll have a look at your range of motion. Cooper!” she barked, and a wrestler leaning against the counter dropped the rolls of tape he was juggling. “Are you here for a reason?”
“Just waitin’ for Kevin.”
“This isn’t a lounge. Wait somewhere else.” As Grace ripped off the last piece of tape and smoothed it into place, a basketball thumped on the concrete floor.
She fired a glare at the culprit, who immediately stuffed the ball under her arm with an apologetic grimace. “Sorry, Miz Mac. I forgot.”
Again…but Grace could understand why. The basketball had been an extension of Jennifer’s body since she was big enough to wrap her pudgy toddler hands around one. She’d won a national free-throw competition at age eleven, beating out thousands of competitors, boys and girls. Nobody had to push this girl onto the basketball court or into the weight room. If anything, her parents worried about their daughter’s single-minded obsession with the game.
Grace patted the treatment table. “Jump up here, and let’s take a look at that foot.”
Jennifer did, hugging the ball as if it were a trophy she’d just been handed. “Did you hear? They called!”
“Really? Baylor?” Grace looked up from the blister on the ball of Jennifer’s foot to meet her shining gaze. “That’s awesome.”
“They offered a verbal commitment, and we accepted.” She clutched the ball between her hands, momentarily overwhelmed. “Holy crap, Miz Mac. I’m going to Baylor. Do you realize that they’re the third-ranked team in the entire country right now?”
Grace had not, but she did know they were a basketball powerhouse and Jennifer’s dream school, and that it had been a decade since any athlete at Bluegrass High School had been recruited by a program of that caliber. She held up a fist for Jennifer to bump. “Congratulations. When y’all knock off UConn for the national title, I’ll be able to tell everyone I used to touch your sweaty feet.”
With the blister padded and taped, Jennifer danced off. Grace finished the rest of the taping, then guided Kevin through a set of strain-counterstrain exercises before applying Kinesio Tape to his sore hamstring and sending him off to the wrestling room. When she hustled the last athlete out the door, she grabbed her tablet, and made her way to the gym to keep an eye on the varsity girls’ basketball practice while she entered treatment notes and injury reports.
Before she could settle into her folding chair, her phone rang. She checked the number, then retreated into the corner before accepting the call.
“Can you talk?” Melanie asked.
“Until someone comes up lame. Or just whining. I’ve never seen a bunch of ninth graders with more creative ways to get out of morning weights.”
Melanie laughed. “I always hated ’em myself.”
But Grace doubted she’d missed a single session—rain, shine, in sickness or in pain. There was a reason Melanie could’ve played basketball in college if she hadn’t chosen the rodeo team instead.
“Speaking of goofballs, I heard Korby is coaching the sixth-grade boys in Earnest. Is it a total disaster?”
“Oddly enough, no. My youngest brother, Matthew, is on the team, and they’re doing pretty well. One thing about Korby: he never gets mad, and he never seems to run out of patience.”
“Well, he should have learned something in high school. Hank spent hours and hours with him, going over plays.”
Grace thought back to all the times she’d seen Hank with Korby and a friend or two on the playground courts or the practice field, before school or during summer vacation. “Huh. I always thought Hank was just avoiding your dad.”
“That too, but you know how he was. Give him two days, and he’d have the entire football playbook memorized—offense and defense—and I don’t care what people say about dumb jocks, that shit is complicated. If he’d ever cracked a book, he could’ve breezed through his classes.”
Grace rolled her eyes. “Why bother when he could spend fifteen minutes reading my notes at lunch and go ace the quiz?”
“You should’ve been the one named MVP,” Melanie declared. “Did you ever tell Hank the coaches gave you extra credit in their classes for keeping him eligible to play?”
“Hell no. He might’ve stopped bringing me Butterfingers.”
Melanie laughed again. Then her voice dropped to a more serious note. “Shawnee called this morning. She told me you helped out at the ranch yesterday. That must have been awkward.”
“You have no idea,” Grace said, picturing herself dangling from Ranger’s saddle.
“Damn. I should be there, taking care of Daddy and everything. This couldn’t have happened at a worse time.”
Grace fingered the scratch on her cheek, retracing Hank’s featherlight touch. The tangle of his body with hers. What he’d said…
Uh-uh. Don’t be going there, Gracie. She pushed the conversation in a safer direction. “Shawnee didn’t try to pump me for any more information. What did you tell her?”
“Everything except Maddie. And I asked her to keep Hank’s stuff amongst ourselves.” Meaning the combined Jacobs-Sanchez clan, Grace assumed. “I was hoping if she knew, she’d cut him some slack.”
“It worked. She backed way down.”
“That’s good. He needs the space. Or so I assume.” Bitterness leaked into Melanie’s voice. “Now that I’ve crossed over to the dark side, I don’t get firsthand information. But he must’ve come a long way since the last time I saw him, or he would’ve slammed the door when Cole came knocking.” She hesitated again, then asked, “How is he, Grace?”
She’d known this question was coming, and she’d spent a good part of the previous evening pondering the answer. “Different, but not entirely in a bad way. And we talked. I think we’re okay…for now.”
Until she had to tell him the next monster truth.
She moved closer to the basketball court as a mob of wrestlers came out to jostle for a drink at the nearby water fountain. The girls were at the far end, standing with hands on hips as the coach made broad gestures to indicate where each player should go during the next play.
Grace lowered her voice. “Wyatt’s theory might be right. After watching Hank yesterday, I think being oblivious was his way of surviving your parents. You tuned in to your parents, read their moods, and tried to head off the worst. But Hank tuned out.”
“Shutting down your radar is one way to deflect constant negative input,” Melanie agreed, sounding so much like Wyatt it must have been a direct quote.
But tuning out meant blocking signals of all kinds, the equivalent of wandering through life wearing emotional blinders—and constantly stepping on toes. It would be a helluva shock when those blinders were ripped off. Hank had responded by retreating as far from the human race as he could get—with the exception of the woman named Bing.
And oddly, after all the hours they’d spent discussing Hank, it suddenly felt as if they were invading his privacy. Grace changed the subject. “Will you have the kids by Christmas?”
“I wish, but the wheels don’t turn that fast. Plus we’ll be gone for two weeks to the National Finals, and we want Scotty to live with us too, so on top of everything else, we’re buying a house. One of those big Victorians on the North Hill, only three blocks from downtown. We should close this week.”
“Even with Thanksgiving?”
Melanie snorted. “Have you met my husband? It’s amazing how fast Realtors and bankers can move when you know which arms to twist. Once we move in, we can schedule the home inspection with social services and hopefully get the kids early in January.”
And Scotty—the youngest of Wyatt’s baby bullfighters—could finally stop worrying about what fresh hell his mother or one of her boyfriends were inflicting on his brother and sister. “How old are they now?”
“Eleven and fourteen.”
Wow. Almost the same ages as her youngest brothers—Matthew and Lucas. Grace shuddered at the thought of having full responsibility for two adolescents. “Are you scared?”
“Terrified. What do either of us know about being parents?”
“There’s a whole herd of young bullfighters who owe their careers to Wyatt.” And in some cases, possibly their lives. Disadvantaged didn’t begin to describe the students Wyatt chose to take on. “Plus you practically raised Hank.”
Melanie made a derisive noise. “And now he doesn’t speak to me.”
“But he is taking care of the ranch.”
“Under duress.”
“True, but he seems okay with it as long as he doesn’t have to deal with your dad.”
Melanie sighed. “Can’t say I blame him. I sure hope Steve and Iris can keep a leash on Daddy when he finds out.”
The basketball coach blew his whistle and tossed the ball toward the hoop. As the center grabbed the rebound, a group of players raced down the court in a fast-break drill, and Grace locked her gaze on the action. Murphy’s Law of athletic training guaranteed that the instant she looked away, someone would go down.
As always, Jennifer was flying down the court. The pass hit her in stride as she broke toward the basket and a defender stepped out, hands high. Jennifer planted her foot to make one of her deathly quick cuts around the block. Her left knee buckled and she cried out, tumbling to the floor.
Grace’s stomach lurched. Oh no. Not Jennifer. Not now, dammit.
“I’ve gotta go.” Grace dropped her phone and tablet on the bottom row of the bleachers and jogged onto the court to crouch beside the injured girl, who was clutching her knee and moaning, tears already streaming down her face.
Grace put a steadying hand on her shoulder. “Hey, Jen. What happened?”
“It’s my ACL,” the girl sobbed. “I felt it pop.”
“I heard it,” the coach added grimly, hunkered on her other side.
From what Grace had seen, they were probably right. It had all the trademarks of a noncontact anterior cruciate tear—rapid deceleration, change of direction, and the audible pop.
“Let’s get her in the training room.” Grace caught the assistant coach’s eye. “You can give me a hand while Coach calls her parents.”
They carried her between them, fireman-style, with Jennifer’s arms clutching their shoulders and Grace supporting the injured knee. When they had her settled on a treatment table, Grace handed her a towel to muffle her sobs and gently maneuvered the leg into a slightly bent position, one hand on Jennifer’s thigh while she pulled forward on her calf.
Jennifer gasped as the tibia slid forward with sickening ease, no longer moored to the femur. Damn, damn, double damn. Grace eased a pillow under the knee, her own throat going tight. “I’ll get some ice.”
“It’s torn, isn’t it?” There was a note of pleading in the girl’s voice, as if she still held out a tiny hope that Grace might say no.
Grace nodded. The nightmare that disproportionately stalked female athletes had come true, and they all knew exactly what it meant. Jennifer’s senior season was done, and the offer from Baylor that she’d barely had time to celebrate would most likely be withdrawn. All because of one wrong step.
It was part of the game. Part of life. And it sucked.
Eventually, they would talk about what it would take to get it all back. Reconstruction. Months of therapy. Pain and sweat, pushing through mental and physical barriers until she could prove to college scouts that she was one hundred percent.
All of that would start when the orthopedic surgeon verified the diagnosis. For now, Grace wrapped her arms around Jennifer’s quaking shoulders and let the girl cry out her broken dreams.