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CHAPTER THREE
THE FOOTBALL TEAM had just started running drills Saturday morning when the black Jeep Wrangler pulled into the parking lot on the other side of the chain-link fence. Mike Marten frowned and glanced at his watch. Whoever it was, was late.
Seconds later, a lanky six-foot-plus kid strode through the gates and down the clay running track that rimmed the football field. He carried himself with an accomplished athlete’s confidence and was dressed in a T-shirt, running shorts and athletic shoes. Mike Marten didn’t have to see his dark buzz-cut hair, good-looking mug or familiar blue eyes to know who it was. The seventeen-year-old kid had arranged to see Mike that morning, through Laramie High School’s front office and Mike’s assistant coach Gus Barkley, and he was the spitting image of his dad.
Will McCabe tensed as he neared. “Coach Marten?”
Mike nodded, and tried not to let the gut-deep resentment he still felt for the kid’s father affect his treatment of Will as the two of them shook hands. If there was one thing he prided himself on when it came to his work, it was his fairness to every one of his players.
“I’m Will McCabe. I called about getting a tryout for the football team.”
“Right.” Mike nodded, forcing himself to put his personal feelings aside. “You played quarterback at your school in Dallas?”
“Varsity, last two years,” Will confirmed with a man-to-man glance at Mike. “I didn’t get much playing time my sophomore year, but last year I started every game.”
Zeroing in on the pride in the kid’s voice, Mike blew his whistle and waved one of his running backs over. He nodded at the sidelines. “Grab a football. Let’s see what you can do.”
Mike put them through a series of increasingly complicated passes. Given his obvious tension, he had expected Will to start out nervously and maybe get better as he went along. Instead he started out great and continued at the same level, no matter what Mike asked him to do.
When the rest of the team finished a series and took a water break, something that had to be done frequently in the summer heat, Gus Barkley came over to the sidelines to stand beside Mike and watch. He shook his head in awe. “Man, that kid’s got an arm. Speed and accuracy, too.”
All should have been qualities Mike welcomed. That was hard to do when every time he looked at Will, he saw Sam, and by association, Pete.
Gus frowned, seeming to read Mike’s mind. Gus, too, had worried about the potential for animosity between Sam McCabe’s son and Mike. Mike had assured him it wouldn’t be a problem. Now that it was happening, he wasn’t so sure. Especially when the loss he felt had returned—at the mere sight of the kid—like a sucker punch to the gut. Mike frowned. He thought he had buried all that years ago, along with Pete.
“Want me to get him outfitted with some gear?” Gus asked, the anxiousness in his eyes contrasting to the easy-going camaraderie of his voice.
“Not until after I talk to him.” Mike motioned Will over to him and Gus, and let his running back know, with a nod in the other direction, that he could take a break with the other players. Will trotted over. He looked at Mike hopefully.
“No guarantees about starting or anything else,” Mike warned gruffly. He didn’t care how naturally gifted a kid was. That went for Will and everyone else. “Whatever you get on this team, you earn. And you haven’t earned anything yet. Got it?”
Will nodded and, to his credit, kept his composure despite Mike’s underlying message that this was not going to be easy. Will was not just going to be “given” a slot as starting quarterback on Mike’s team.
“You’re also going to need a physical before I can let you on the team,” Mike said, turning away from the disappointment in the kid’s eyes. Obviously he had expected to be praised for his performance on the field. In fact, had probably been used to that in Dallas. “Assistant Coach Barkley will take you inside the field house and get you the forms. You can come back when you’ve gotten them filled out, and not before.”
WILL KNEW IF HE WANTED to get a football physical fast, he’d have to arrange it himself. He could hardly ask his dad to do it, he was so preoccupied and out of touch with what was going on with the rest of the family he might as well have been on a different planet.
Of course, it hadn’t always been that way, with him and his brothers left to fend for themselves for practically everything. When his mom was alive all any of them had ever had to do with a problem was go to her. She’d be on the phone and two minutes later everything was all fixed. Didn’t matter what it was, Mom had known what to say and do to take care of it.
That had changed when she’d gotten sick, of course. But even when she was really suffering there at the end, she’d call the shots, while his dad stood around, helpless to do anything except comfort her physically and fly in more specialists.
On the domestic front, his Dad hadn’t a clue. And thanks to the succession of ridiculously bad and bossy housekeepers, he still didn’t. Will knew the reason why his dad wanted those idiotic ladies there. It made it easier for him to go off to work and forget all about the rest of them, the way he always had before Mom died.
Only it wasn’t like before, Will thought as he turned his Jeep Wrangler into the hospital parking lot. Life was hell. Home was worse. The best he could do was try to make this year as bearable as possible by finding a girlfriend and playing football. Then go to college and never look back. Maybe never even come back.
JACKSON MCCABE was waiting for Will, as promised, in his office at the hospital. Young, handsome, successful and newly—happily—married, Jackson was everything Will wanted to be when he grew up. “Thanks for doing this for me, Jackson.” Will handed over the forms. “I know it’s a Saturday morning and you’re a surgeon not a family doc, but I really need this physical right away. Otherwise, I can’t show up for practice Monday morning with the rest of the team.”
“Not a problem.” Jackson gave Will a look that let him know he understood how chaotic life had been for him and his brothers since their mom had died and that he didn’t mind the last-minute call one bit. He ushered Will onto the scale. “What are second cousins for, anyway? Besides—” Jackson shifted the metal weights on the bar until it hung perfectly in balance at one hundred and eighty seven. “I know what a stickler Coach Marten is for the rules.”
“That’s right.” Will stood perfectly still while Jackson measured his height. “You used to play on the L.H.S. football team, too, didn’t you?”
“A couple years after your dad.” Jackson paused to jot down Will’s weight and height on the form. “I sure did.”
Appreciating the way Jackson treated him—as a man instead of a kid—Will walked with Jackson into the adjacent exam room. Figuring Jackson was enough of a straight-talker to tell him the truth, he asked, “What did you think about Coach Marten?”
Jackson checked out Will’s ears and throat. “He’s an excellent coach. Tough. Demanding. A little blustery at times, but don’t let that worry you. His bark’s worse than his bite, if you know what I mean. By the time you finish playing on his team, you’ll know the sport inside and out. And probably a lot more about yourself, as well.”
Will watched as Jackson jotted down some notes on the paper, then fit a blood pressure cuff around Will’s arm. “What do you mean?”
Jackson took Will’s blood pressure. “This is going to sound like one of those really hokey sports metaphors, but it’s true.” Jackson paused to look Will straight in the eye. “Coach Marten doesn’t just teach you about football—he also teaches you about honesty, integrity, responsibility and commitment. Playing on his team changes a guy—for the better. If you let it.”
Funny, Will thought. Jackson, never a guy to wax eloquent about anything, was speaking almost reverently about Coach Marten. His dad hadn’t mentioned any of this. In fact, his dad hadn’t looked all that happy about the prospect of Will playing on Coach Marten’s team. Though, as usual, he’d done nothing to discourage that or any other extracurricular activity his kids wanted to pursue.
Puzzled, Will slipped off his T-shirt so Jackson could listen to his heart and lungs. He breathed in and out as directed. Something was going on here that they weren’t telling him, just like when his mom had died. Damn it all, if they were deliberately keeping something from him again, he was going to be pissed.
He looked at Jackson curiously. “Did Coach Marten and my dad get along?”
Jackson tensed slightly as he unhooked the stethoscope from his ears. “Why would you ask that?”
Gut instinct. Something was off here. Will just wasn’t sure what. “I don’t know,” he said slowly, doing his best to put all the little signs together to come up with something. “Usually when I do something around here that my dad or mom did when they were a kid, people get all nostalgic or something. Coach didn’t.”
Jackson sat on a stool. Suddenly he looked as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. “Maybe he just wanted you to feel like you were there under your own steam, not as a relation to anyone else,” Jackson finally said.
And maybe, Will thought, the bitterness that had been with him since his mother’s death rising up inside him once again, there was something else they weren’t telling him. Something he had every right to know.
KATE SPENT SATURDAY afternoon conducting two back-to-back grief groups and the evening juggling her schedule and calling her associates at the hospital to let them know she would be taking her accumulated time off to deal with a personal emergency. She waited until Sunday afternoon to tell her parents where they would be able to reach her, starting that evening. Her mom hadn’t said much when they spoke on the phone. But fifteen minutes later, both her parents were on the doorstep of her apartment, which was located on the second floor of a big white Victorian that had been converted into four separate dwellings, each with its own outside entrance.
Kate’s mom, a homemaker with gray-blond hair and pale blue eyes, had obviously been baking. She still wore her blue denim chef’s apron over her coordinating shorts set. Kate’s dad, wearing a burnt-orange Laramie High School knit shirt, shorts and coach’s cap, had a roll of antacids in his hand. A big bear of a man, he was known for his blunt speech, admirably strong character and often brutal honesty. He was also still extremely protective of “his little girl.” Part of it was that he didn’t want anything to happen to Kate. He’d already lost a son and he didn’t want to lose his one remaining child. The other part was his protectiveness of women in general. He just wasn’t sure members of the fairer sex should be out on their own, without a man to watch over them. Hence, he couldn’t wait for Kate to marry her intended, Air Force Major Craig Farrell. But that wasn’t going to happen until much later in the autumn. Right now, at the beginning of August, Coach Mike Marten, and his loving, dutiful wife Joyce, apparently felt they had a problem on their hands. As Kate suspected, it didn’t take her father long to get to the point.
“I don’t want to hurt your feelings, honey, but this is the dumbest idea you’ve ever had.”
Out of respect, Kate tried to not roll her eyes as she continued moving around her apartment, packing up a few of her things. “Thanks for being so supportive, Dad.”
Mike sighed, lifting his burnt orange coach’s cap off his head and running his hand through his short salt-and-pepper hair. “You’re a professional woman,” Mike declared, replacing the cap low across his forehead, “not a domestic hire.”
“Meaning what?” Kate interrupted, not about to let her dad talk her out of doing what she knew in her gut had to be done. “I can’t help out a friend?”
Mike Marten looked at her steadily. “Sam’s not your friend.”
Leave it to Dad to hit the nail on the head in two seconds flat, Kate thought. “Ellie was, when we were kids.”
“But you rarely saw each other,” Mike pointed out.
“Only because she was so much older than I was and she moved to Dallas after she married and then I went off to college. That doesn’t erase all the kindness she showed me both before and after Pete died.” At the mention of her brother, her father’s face turned to stone. “Is it really so wrong of me to want to return the kindness?”
Silence fell between the three of them as Mike looked to Joyce for help. Joyce nervously wrung her hands together. There was nothing she hated more than family discord of any kind. She would do or say whatever she had to do to try to keep the peace. “I think what your father is trying to say, sweetheart, is that we don’t understand why you have to move in there in order to help Sam McCabe and his boys.”
Even as Kate had rued telling her parents where she could be reached for the next few weeks, she’d known there had been no avoiding it. It would have been worse had they found out any other way, and in a town as small as Laramie, they would have found out. “There are a lot of reasons. Number one, the boys are too much for Sam to handle on his own. Kevin’s accident proved that.”
“So let him hire a housekeeper,” Mike interrupted.
“He’s hired ten,” Kate spouted back, beginning to resent her father’s protectiveness as much as she loved him as a parent and a man. “They’ve all quit within a matter of weeks.”
“And what makes you think you’re going to do any better?” Mike demanded impatiently, peeling another antacid tablet off the role and popping it into his mouth.
Kate grinned and offered her father a disarming smile. “The fact that I’m your daughter and you taught me to never be a quitter.”
Mike’s brows knit together. “Don’t try to charm your way out of this, Kate. I have serious concerns here.”
Kate sobered immediately. She sat on the edge of her bed. “So do I, Dad. Sam’s boys are in trouble.” So was Sam for that matter, but Kate figured it was best to not get into that just yet. One thing at a time, and Sam’s boys were first on the priority list.
Mike shrugged, not unsympathetic to Sam’s plight, just more realistic—in his view, anyway. “So let ’em come to the hospital for your help like everyone else who can’t handle things on their own.”
Kate ignored the faint hint of derision in her father’s voice. Mike, not only one of the premiere football coaches in the state with more state championship experience than anyone else in the Triple A division, was a staunch believer in survival-of-the-fittest theories. He approached every life situation as though it were a game to be strategized, played and won. In his view, there was no room for failure of any kind, and only the weak needed counseling. Unfortunately his “survivor strategies” very possibly cost Kate’s older brother his life, which was something her own family was still trying to come to grips with.
“Sam doesn’t believe in any kind of therapy or grief counseling for the kids,” Kate said quietly, putting her own hurts aside.
“Well, I can’t say I blame Sam there,” Mike Marten muttered.
“Mike.” Joyce gasped.
“Oh.” Mike looked sheepish. “You know what I mean.”
Kate surely did. If her mom and dad had only believed in counseling, her brother might have talked out his feelings instead of acted them out. If only her parents had gotten help at the first sign of trouble with Pete, instead of trying to ignore his problems, maybe Pete wouldn’t have felt so misunderstood and behaved so recklessly. And maybe the three of them wouldn’t have suffered for years after Pete died. Knowing there was no way to change the past, only ways to deal with it honestly and openly and move on, Kate had eventually resolved her feelings about her family’s tragedy. She wasn’t sure her parents had yet, or ever would without the appropriate help, which they were determined not to get.
Watching as Kate closed the suitcase containing her clothes Joyce said gently, “I know you feel like you owe John and Lilah McCabe a lot for helping you start your grief and crisis counseling program over at the hospital.”
Not to mention what she owed Ellie, Kate thought, for all the times she had cried on Ellie’s shoulder the year after Pete died.
“But can’t you just help them out in some other way?” Joyce continued.
“Such as?” Kate asked impatiently, wishing her parents were not so difficult about this.
“Maybe you and I could just act as general coordinators for them, to help get them through this emergency. We could enlist other women to cook dinner for them. Find someone else to clean the house on a regular basis. Teenagers to baby-sit the little one in Sam’s absence.”
Kate wasn’t surprised by her mother’s suggestion. Joyce believed in community service, though she would avoid becoming too involved in anything that might turn out to be emotionally painful or difficult. Mike was the same way. Even when Kate’s brother had died, her mom and dad had simply toughed it out and expected her to do the same. They’d never talked about the accident, except to declare Pete innocent and apportion blame for Pete’s bad judgment on others. They’d never shown or talked about their feelings, or allowed Kate to do so with them, either. Grief, uncertainty, despair, angst, sadness were not allowed in her family. In her family you moved on, period. And you avoided like mad anything that might tempt you to do otherwise. In her family, you were part of the team or you had no place there. And Kate was perilously close to getting benched. At least temporarily.
But she couldn’t worry about that. She had to concentrate on Sam’s boys. She had only to look at them to know they were suffering exactly the way she had suffered for years after Pete’s death. Everyone was telling them everything was going to be fine—when it wasn’t. Everyone was pretending things were fine—when they weren’t. If it continued, the boys would start to think the problem wasn’t the tragic situation they’d found themselves in, or their unresolved feelings about their mom’s death. They’d begin to believe there was something wrong with them because they weren’t dealing with their grief. They had enough to contend with, just losing their mother and their previously happy family life, without adding the burden of low self-esteem, anxiety and depression, too. Sam and his boys needed her and the help she could provide—whether they realized it or not. What they didn’t need was another temporary solution like her mother’s, which was no solution at all.
“Assume you and I could work out the cooking and cleaning and all that by some round-robin system, Mom, the bottom line here is child care. Do you really want to put teenage girls in the house while Sam’s not home, knowing he’s got three teenage boys there already?”
Joyce paused, thinking hard. “Maybe the little one could go into day care?”
“That would work for Kevin, sure, as long as Sam doesn’t have to travel. But then you’ve still got the other four unsupervised, and believe me, you don’t want to leave those boys without round-the-clock guidance the rest of the summer.” Not the way they were acting out. “But not to worry, Mom, Dad. Sam’s still looking for a housekeeper. As soon as he finds one, I’m out of there.” In the meantime, she’d try to figure out the best way to help each of the boys. Maybe they would get to know her and regard her as a friend, eventually becoming comfortable enough to talk to her on an informal basis. Kate didn’t care about being paid for her services. She just wanted to help the boys deal with their feelings so they could get on with their lives. If she ended up eventually helping Sam, too, all the better.
Mike sighed as he popped yet another antacid tablet into his mouth. “I still don’t see why this is your problem, Kate.”
Maybe it wouldn’t have been, Kate thought uncomfortably, if what the boys were going through wasn’t so close to what her family had suffered. Like Sam, her parents had ignored the warning signs about her brother, when he first began acting out his unhappiness. They had reassured each other and everyone else it was just growing pains, when even Kate—at age twelve—had been able to see that it was much more. Her brother had died as a result of that naiveté. She didn’t want to see it happen again. Not to anyone. And especially not to Sam McCabe’s family who had already suffered such a devastating loss.
“Sam has family in the area,” Mike continued.
“Yes, he does, and they’re all being too easy on him, cutting him too much slack because of what he’s been through.” Kate felt for Sam, too. But she wasn’t afraid to confront him.
Kate’s dad sighed, shook his head. “You should never have gone and gotten that Ph.D. in clinical psychology. You should have kept your job at the high school. You should be spending your time helping kids get into college—” A task Kate knew her father considered much more practical, respectable and laudable “—instead of pushing your way into situations you have no business getting involved in.”
It was Kate’s turn to sigh as she packed her toiletries into a tote. “I became involved, Dad, when I was asked to talk to the boys at the hospital after Kevin’s fall off the porch roof.”
Mike gave Kate a stern look. “And your involvement ended when he was sent home, with little more than a sprained wrist and a few stitches.”
Joyce laid a restraining hand on Mike’s arm. “Honey, we don’t want to fight about Kate’s choice of careers. That’s not why we came over here.”
“Why did you come over here?” Kate asked, exasperated.
“To make you see that moving in with Sam and his boys, even for a few days, is a mistake.”
He was beginning to sound like Sam.
“First of all, you don’t owe that man anything, and neither do I. Maybe if he’d been there for your older brother the way a best friend should have been, I’d feel differently, but the way it is…I don’t.”
Tension stiffened Kate’s shoulders as the conversation veered into dangerous territory. She folded her arms in front of her and squared off with her dad. “Pete’s death was not Sam McCabe’s fault.”
“And I suppose what he did to Ellie that year wasn’t his fault, either,” Mike countered sarcastically.
Kate flushed. “Sam loved Ellie, Dad.”
“He ruined her reputation, Kate.”
Just as Mike now feared Sam would somehow ruin hers, Kate thought. “Maybe for five minutes,” Kate allowed, remembering how the scandal had rocked the town initially. Kate went over to the bureau and got her brush. “Once they were married, I don’t think anyone cared.”
“Nevertheless, he proved he can’t be trusted around innocent young women.”
“Dad, I’m thirty-one years old,” Kate said wearily as she caught her hair in a French twist and pinned it in place.
Mike’s face softened. “And still as sweet and innocent as the day is long, thank God.”
Kate was silent. She had lost her virginity to her fiancé a long time ago, but her father would never accept that she was not a kid anymore. No, as far as Mike Marten was concerned, she was still daddy’s little girl! Wondering when it was going to get easier to deal with her dad, she slipped her hairbrush into her tote bag and regarded her dad steadily. “I’m old enough to take care of myself.”
“That won’t stop a man like Sam McCabe from making a pass at you,” Mike warned grimly.
He already has. Pushing the memory of Sam’s lips and hands away, Kate turned back to her suitcase. “There are going to be five boys there as chaperones. Sam is not going to do anything in front of his sons, especially when they are so clearly grieving the loss of the mother they loved so much.” Otherwise, she probably wouldn’t be able to stay over there, given what had already happened between her and Sam.
“I still think you ought to concentrate on your upcoming marriage to Craig and let the McCabes take care of their own.”
Kate wondered how her dad would feel if she were involved in the solution. Would he at long last be really and truly proud of her? As proud as he’d been of Pete at the height of Pete’s high school football career? Even as she wondered she knew the only thing her dad was likely to respect her for was becoming Craig’s wife—and providing a few grandchildren for him and her mom to love. Mike was desperate to carry on the family name, and had even talked Craig into naming their first son Marten Michael Farrell.