It’s funny how a summer that started so badly could end so well.
The club paid for my trip to the nationals. Mrs. Sharma insisted on it after I gave my $100,000 check to Mr. Hunter. I didn’t win the championship, but neither did Rex. That honor went to a hotshot from Calgary. One thing I realized at the tournament was how much my game needed to improve if I seriously hoped to compete internationally. So, as it turned out, going after a college scholarship wasn’t such a bad decision after all.
I got lucky. A scout from Florida State University offered me a scholarship for the following September, provided I kept my marks up in my last year of high school. Maddy won her division at the nationals, and she got offered a scholarship to the University of Michigan. In the meantime, we’d be spending our senior year together at a special sports high school, where kids took regular classes in the morning and athletic training in the afternoon. It sounded as close to nirvana as high school could be.
When we got home from the nationals, there was more good news. The police had made a breakthrough in the vandalism case. The clue was a gold chain, which the cops had found in the grass after the outdoor stage was wrecked. The personalized engraving on the chain allowed them to trace it back to Mike Baron. When the cops confronted Mike, he didn’t betray the other guys in his gang, not even Quinte. So it turned out there was some good in Mike after all. But he did rat out Mr. Hunter.
Of course, Rex’s dad denied everything. But when Mrs. Sharma threatened to sue him, he agreed to settle out of court for $400,000. That was the amount the club still owed to his company. With the settlement, the debt was erased and the club no longer had to worry about bankruptcy. No developer would be coming to bulldoze our tennis courts.
The last week in August, the insurance check for the vandalism of the tennis auction finally came through. I was sitting with Maddy on the bench at the back of the club, overlooking the Rideau River, when Mrs. Sharma came up and placed the check in my hand.
“It’s yours, Connor,” she said. “You deserve it. You deserve more than that.”
I looked at the check. It was for $20,000. I felt embarrassed, but she insisted I take it. I tucked it away safely in my tennis bag. The truth was, with Maddy beside me under the late-summer sun and the sounds of rackets hitting balls in the courts all around us, I felt as though I already had more than I deserved.
I didn’t know where my tennis career would take me. First to Florida. After that, maybe all over the world. But I knew that whatever happened, I could always come back here, to this club by the river, and I would feel welcome.
I couldn’t help thinking that if old Mr. Cross was looking down from the afterworld, he would be proud of what I had accomplished with his prize money. Not for myself, but for the Purposes of the Sport of Tennis.