The pages that Lucas had printed out, about Joe Samuels and Tommy Angelo and the point-shaving scandal at Ocean State University that had finally put the school out of business, were on the kitchen table. His mom had them in front of her.
She slowly turned page after page, reading the old stories from newspapers that Lucas had already read.
“It’s the same as if he lied to us,” Lucas said.
“That’s not true, honey,” she said.
“Well, he didn’t tell the truth,” Lucas said.
“He just didn’t tell us the whole story,” she said.
She took off her reading glasses and looked at him across the table.
“I know all this is a shock,” she said. “But none of this changes the wonderful man Gramps has been to you.”
“You sound like Dad,” he said.
“That used to happen a lot,” she said.
Lucas reached across and poked a finger on one of the pages in front of his mom.
“No wonder he wanted to be somebody else,” Lucas said. “No wonder he turned himself into Sam Winston. He didn’t want anybody to know that he tried to fix basketball games when he was in college.”
Lucas felt as if he were out of breath.
“When I was online reading about this stuff, you know whose name came up? Clair Bee?”
“He wrote the Chip Hilton books,” his mom said.
“They called him Coach Clair Bee on some of the covers,” Lucas said. “It turned out he’d coached a college team once and this happened with some of his players.”
“Your dad told me about it,” his mom said. “It was at Long Island University. Coach Bee resigned because of it. But you should know that he also ended up in the Basketball Hall of Fame.”
“How can you not think he lied?” Lucas said. “And that means to both of us.”
“Maybe he thought the truth would hurt too much,” she said.
“Well, at least he got that right,” Lucas said.
“But he still has the right to tell us his side of things,” she said. “We owe him that.”
“Why?” Lucas said.
“Because you love him and he loves you,” Julia said.
“I love Sam Winston,” Lucas said. “Not Joe Samuels. Not the guy in those stories. Not the cheater.”
He practically spit out the last word.
“They’re the same person,” she said in a quiet voice. “Like two sides of the same coin.”
“He talks all the time about doing things the right way,” Lucas said. “Playing basketball the right way. And now it turns out he did something as wrong in basketball as you could ever do.”
He stood up.
“I want to stop talking about this now,” he said.
“Okay,” she said.
Lucas turned and walked out of the kitchen. He went up to his room and shut the door. He was still angry. He could still feel the heat inside him. And the disappointment. And the shame. But he made himself sit down and open the file on his basketball journal and write about the coach who it turned out he didn’t know at all.
When he finished, he shut his laptop and got on his bed.
Then he started to cry again, rolling over so he did it into his pillow, so his mom couldn’t hear how much the truth really had hurt him.