They held the meeting in the library.
They invited Gramps to attend. Mr. Dichard, the chairman of the board and Richard’s dad, told everybody in the library that Sam Winston had declined the invitation, saying that he didn’t feel the need to come to defend himself as if appearing at some kind of trial. But, Mr. Dichard said, he’d thanked them for offering him the opportunity.
“Sam said that we all know who he is,” Mr. Dichard said, “even if we didn’t know who he used to be.”
Mr. Dichard was the president of the Claremont National Bank, and had played high school basketball with Lucas’s dad. He and Mrs. Moretti were the only parents of seventh-grade players on the board.
There were seven board members in all. They were the ones who would vote on whether or not Gramps got to coach in the championship game. A few of the other board members briefly spoke. They all agreed that not only shouldn’t he coach the game, he shouldn’t be allowed to coach at any level of Claremont town basketball ever again.
“I understand Sam’s sentiments,” Mr. Dichard said when it was time for him to give his opinion. “But without sounding too harsh, the fact is that Sam committed a crime against basketball, no matter how long ago that happened. And I frankly don’t see as how someone like that should be teaching our kids values, about basketball or anything else.”
Lucas and his mom were seated in the front of the library. Mrs. Moretti sat next to them. After Mr. Dichard finished his remarks, it was Jen Moretti’s turn. She stood and addressed the other grown-ups in the room. And Lucas.
“I’ve played a lot of basketball in my life,” she said. “I played some of it at a pretty high level, and when I got to UConn, I was lucky enough to play for Geno Auriemma, one of the greatest basketball coaches of all time, for men or for women. And I just want everybody in this room to understand something: I would have my son, Ryan, play on a Sam Winston team any day of the week.”
She paused and looked around the room.
“By the way?” she said. “Which one of us in this room didn’t do something dumb when we were young?”
Mr. Dichard got back up. Lucas thought he looked more annoyed than he usually did, which was saying something. Lucas hadn’t been around him all that much, but he’d been around him enough to think that Mr. Dichard went through life looking annoyed.
“Dumb is taking your parents’ car out without permission, Jen,” he said. “It’s not conspiring to fix college basketball games.”
Now Mr. Dichard was the one looking around the library.
“Does anyone else have anything to say?” he said. “Because if not, we should go ahead and vote.”
Lucas felt his phone buzzing in his pocket, and smiled.
Just then the library doors opened, and the rest of the Claremont Wolves came walking in.
Now Lucas stood up.
“We’ve got something we’d like to say,” he said.