Offside

  “I bet,” I said under my breath.

  He tilted his head to hear me better, but I didn’t repeat myself.

  “Is that all you wanted to tell me?” I asked.

  “There are a few other points,” he said. His voice dropped a bit. “How much do you know about your father’s other businesses?”

  I shrugged. I knew he did other shit on the side, but I never really paid much attention to it. I didn’t have the details, but considering it tended to be done at very strange hours, I knew it wasn’t legal.

  “The vultures have already descended on some of it,” he said. “I could…set things up for you. You and I could continue to do business as your father and I had. I know what’s involved. I know the contacts. That twenty-seven mil will look like nothing if we play this right. The gambling and bookkeeping alone will double that if we’re careful.”

  The gambling. Of course. A couple more puzzle pieces clicked together. No wonder he was so hell-bent on me playing for Real Messini. All the people he would meet, the inside information he would have access to—the gambling ring he ran on the side would become huge. I ran my hand through my hair and tried to take it all in.

  Twenty-seven million dollars.

  Fuck me hard.

  I didn’t even have to wait until I was twenty-one or anything. It was mine now. I closed my eyes for a moment, rubbing my fingers into the sockets. I thought about the tiny room Greg and Nicole set up for me. I thought about their little house and Nicole’s dead Hyundai. I thought about Jeremy and how his father had to file for bankruptcy after his mom had a heart attack. Dad could have helped them, worked something out with the hospital, but he wouldn’t. I thought about the kid Nicole babysat for—Timmy—and the shitty prospects his mother faced for her future. I thought about how Sophie had to hide him, completely because of money.

  And when it came right down to it, despite all the shit they struggled with regarding bills, they were all pretty happy.

  I looked up at Lucas and smiled.

  “You are a shifty little bastard, aren’t you Lucas?” I kept smiling.

  He chuckled softly, and I saw his posture relax. He thought he had me.

  “When should all this go through?” I asked.

  “By the end of the month.”

  “Good.” I pushed my chair back away from his desk. “Once the transactions are all completed, you’re fired. I’ll give you the information on my new lawyer before then so you know where to send everything. Max is fired now—tell him not to contact me again. If I hear any more about this shit, I’ll turn you in. There’s plenty of evidence in Dad’s study to fuck your whole agency about six times over. I bet you’d do jail time.”

  I had no idea if that was true or not, but I figured it was. I continued to smile as I watched Lucas go pale.

  “I buried my father’s body two days ago,” I told him. “Today I bury the rest of his shit.”

  He only stared at me with his palms flat against his desktop.

  “Are we clear, Lucas?”

  “I suppose we are,” he replied.

  I left.

  Shakespeare advised: “Neither a borrower nor a lender be.” But I was more intrigued by the idea of giving the shit away. I had the feeling a lot of people were going to resist it, but I also knew I could be pretty convincing. I’d win in the end.

  I always did.

  I wheeled myself out of the office and back to the car and my Rumple.

  It was time to meet my real father.

  “How did it go?” Nicole asked as she helped me back into the car. I shook my head.

  “Can we save it for later?” I asked. “I’m kind of overwhelmed right now. If you want, though, you can warn Greg that I just won the fight over the bills.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Forget it,” I said. “What time is it?”

  “Almost noon.”

  “Shit—will I be late?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Nicole drove us over to the little restaurant where I was supposed to meet my biological father. I called him yesterday evening and set it all up. Nicole told me to take as much time as I wanted. She was going to the bookstore in the next block, and she could pretty much stay there all day without getting bored.

  Nicole took me into the restaurant where we saw my newly-revealed father dancing from one foot to the other next to the hostess’s station. Nicole kissed my cheek and told me to call whenever I was ready to head home. I nodded and looked up into Thomas Gardner’s eyes.

  Like a fucking mirror.

  “Hey,” he said, and his hand went for his hair at the same time mine did. We both paused, smirked, and dropped our hands.

  “This is kind of weird,” I said with a shrug.

  “Yeah,” he agreed. His chest expanded with a deep breath, which he then let out through his nose. “Should we get a table?”

  “Probably.”

  The hostess came over and sat us down in a corner near the windows. She moved a couple of chairs out of the way, and I ended up looking right at the window with Thomas Gardner across from me. It gave him a surreal glow around his head and shoulders, and I tried not to read anything into it.

  We spent about a minute and a half talking about the weather, ordering two waters, and then finally gave up on the small talk.

  “So, uh…how did you know my mom?” I finally asked. However, the server returned, took our lunch orders, and walked off. I sighed and tried again. “You met her in college?”

  “Yeah,” he replied. His brow furrowed and he twisted his fingers together around the water glass.

  “Well…?”

  “I guess I should start at the beginning,” he said. He took a sip of his water and looked down at his hands. “I met Fran at school. It was my last year, her first. I was into all the art stuff then—drawing, painting, theatre—and I even played guitar in a band. We weren’t that great, but we had a decent local following. We performed mostly covers of whatever was popular at the time. We played at local bars for the most part, and almost every weekend, we had a gig.”

  He took another quick drink.

  “There were four guys in the band,” he said. “We ended up with…um…a bit of a…um…well, there was this group of girls…shit.”

  He coughed into his hand and sat up a little straighter.

  “We called them our groupies. They were basically there every time we played. Fran was one of them.”

  He glanced up at me for a second, probably wondering what I was thinking. My mom was a band groupie? For some shit college cover band? It didn’t fit my image of my mother at all. I shook my head, trying to clear it of the very idea.

  “I was…kind of shy,” he said. “I would never talk to them, really, but sometimes after we played a set, they’d buy us drinks. We were actually about to break up the band. The semester was almost over, and two of us were graduating. It was about over, you know? That last night, I had a couple extra…It was my birthday—and uh…Fuck! I don’t know how to say this!”

  “You and my mom hooked up,” I said. My voice was way too calm, even for my own liking.

  “Yeah,” he replied softly. “It was just that one night, and school was almost over. I left a couple weeks later. I went to Chicago Art Institute to start my master’s program. I was going early to get settled in. About a week after I got there, she showed up.”

  “And she was pregnant?

  “No,” he said. “At least, I don’t think so. She said she just had to see me again. I couldn’t…fuck…I couldn’t even remember her name right away! But there she was, claiming I was the only man for her and…and…shit!”

  He slammed his hand down on the table, making me jump. He leaned forward and pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes.

  “I was…flattered. She told me how much she loved my art…and how she had come to every performance of Hamlet when I played the title role. She thought the band’s music was awful, but she just wanted to see me. I didn’
t know what to do. She had come all the way from the west coast and didn’t even have a way back. I let her stay with me…it was only a couple of weeks. I knew it wasn’t going to work out. I was going to be in school constantly. I wasn’t looking to have a relationship…”

  He paused, dropped his hands to his lap, and leaned back against the booth.

  “I told her she needed to get on a bus home, and she started crying. I think….I mean, looking back…I think she wanted to tell me…but she didn’t. We fought, and she left. I didn’t see or hear from her again.”

  “How did you…? You ended up at her memorial service. How?”

  A sharp pain ripped through my temple all of a sudden, and I rubbed at the spot. How did I know he was there? My mind raced…the letter…I read it over and over again, but it didn’t say anything about the memorial service. In my mind—in the far reaches of my memories, I saw a flash of light brown hair and my father…Lou…blocking my view…leading him away.

  “I was in Portland,” he said. “I was an adjunct professor for a semester. My mentor was out on maternity leave, and she asked me to take over her classes. It was a class in how to teach art, and one of the students was from here in town. Class was over, but we were still talking about…I don’t even remember what. Charcoal versus ink…something like that. Somehow she got on the topic of having to return home for a memorial service. She told me the name, and I knew it was her.”

  He stopped and looked into my eyes, his gaze running all over my face.

  “I just went to pay my respects,” he whispered. “But when I saw you…when I saw you—I knew. I knew you were mine.”

  “It is a wise father that knows his own child,” I muttered.

  “Yeah,” he agreed with a chuckle. “Exactly.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and held on to my biceps with my hands. I was cold even though it was really pretty warm out that day. Maybe the restaurant already had the AC on or something. I shivered.

  Thomas Gardner—my father—never knew anything about me.

  “She never told you,” I said quietly. I tried to picture my mom—the woman who tucked me in at night and played the piano when I couldn’t sleep—as a band groupie who got pregnant with me after a drunken one-night stand. I shook my head. The picture didn’t fit who I knew at all.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I couldn’t decide if I should tell you how it was or not. I toyed with the idea of telling you we were madly in love or something, but I thought maybe you’ve been lied to enough.”

  I rubbed my eyes and shook my head again.

  “I want the truth,” I told him. “No more bullshit.”

  “Right,” he said. He cleared his throat. “Is that…um…enough for one sitting?”

  His voice cracked, and when I looked up at him, I thought he was going to lose it or start crying or something. He looked totally distraught, and I didn’t know what to make of it.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, confused.

  He laughed, but there was nothing humorous in the sound. He dropped his head into his hands again.

  “I swear, Thomas,” he said, “I swear if I had known before then I would have done something…I would have insisted…but what your dad said made sense, at least at the time. I didn’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you or make any of this worse. I don’t know shit about kids…but you’re not really a kid now anyway…but I wasn’t there for you. Not for any of it. Shit.”

  “What did he say?” I asked. “What did Dad say to you?”

  “You sure you want more?”

  I could only nod. My throat felt tight, and I had to keep swallowing over and over. I sipped at my ice water and stared at my own hands for a bit.

  “When I saw you, I didn’t know what to do. I mean, you had obviously just lost your mother, and I was in shock as soon as I laid eyes on you. I remember walking toward you—you were sitting on an overstuffed chair—and then stopping. I didn’t know what I could say to you. I was at a total loss. I think I had pretty much planned on leaving at that point and maybe trying to reach out to you later, when your…your dad came up to me.”

  “He must have known…recognized me somehow...or just saw the resemblance and drew his own conclusion. I don’t know. But he stopped me from getting any closer to you, said he knew who I was and not to upset his son any more than he already was. I remember just kind of looking up at him—at Lou—and I think I asked him if you were mine. He made it pretty clear that he was the one who had raised you and that I needed to leave. I wasn’t about to make some sort of scene at a funeral home, and as I said—he had a point. I didn’t want to upset you. He took my number and said he’d call me in a few days.”

  “He didn’t call. It was about two weeks later when I ended up calling him instead. He said you didn’t know anything about me and that frankly, neither did he. That’s when he asked what my name was, which I thought was weird since he said he knew who I was before. I told him, and he flipped. Then I figured it out—Fran never told him my name, but she…she named you after me. He lost it—just for a minute. Then he started laughing and then calmed down again pretty quickly. I knew he had to be…to be grieving. I figured maybe that was just his way.”

  I had my own opinions about that.

  “After a while, he agreed to meet with me,” Thomas Gardner said. “I flew back to Portland, and we met for dinner. He told me a lot about you—how much you…”

  He paused and looked away for a minute.

  “What?” I prompted.

  “How much you loved playing soccer,” he finally said. “How you were some kind of goalie prodigy or something and that you wanted to play pro. He said your mother didn’t want you to know me—that she never wanted me to know about you. He said if I came into your life, then it would just make everything harder for you. You had just lost your mother—your life was in enough turmoil.”

  “I couldn’t really argue with that,” he continued. “I didn’t want to be a disruption. We communicated every few months, and he’d mostly tell me about your soccer playing. He even said once that you had a sketchbook and you liked to draw, but I think that was kind of a slip on his part.”

  I met his eyes for the first time in a while. He offered me a half grin, which was just another opportunity for me to freak out. Every time I looked at him, it was like looking into the mirror.

  “I felt really…proud,” he said quietly, “when he said that. Like…maybe you got something from me besides hair that won’t stay where it’s put.”

  I chuckled a little and ran my hand through my unruly hair.

  “It’s not as bad if you keep it shorter,” he said.

  “Nicole likes it a little bit long.”

  “She seems really good for you.”

  “She is,” I said. I immediately felt defensive. If he even tried to hint that I shouldn’t have her in my life…

  “Easy,” he said as he held his hands out in front of him. “It was a compliment. I’m glad you have her and that you’re staying with her and her father.”

  I relaxed a little, but my thoughts and emotions were still all over the place. He knew nothing about me, and my mom didn’t want me to know about him. Then why would she name me after him? Why?

  I’m the product of a drunken hook up.

  I swallowed again.

  “Anyway,” he went on. “As time went by, I kept asking him when the right time to tell you would be. He kept putting me off. There was always something big going on with your life—a tournament, a scout, and then this…um…Reel Messys, or something?”

  I laughed.

  “Real Messini.”

  “Yeah—that was it.” He nodded vigorously. “There was always something important, and he didn’t want you to have your life turned upside down right before something big was about to happen. He told me how playing pro was your dream, and he said if you eventually made that team, it would be huge. If something about your parentage came out then, it would be a scandal or whate
ver.”

  He sighed.

  “I didn’t want to agree, but he…he convinced me it was the right thing to do. I agreed that if you went pro, I’d back off—stop trying to see you. I trusted his judgment. I mean, he knew you and lived with you. He was your father, really. I knew that. I know that. I’d never try to replace him, Thomas—I swear.”

  He looked up at me then so intently, I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry. My real father….real father…real father. What the fuck did that mean? The guy who hit me? The one who told me everything was my fault and wouldn’t even let me touch the piano because it had been hers? The man who smacked me every time I dared mention her name? For a long moment, we just looked at each other. Maybe he couldn’t take any more of the silence, because he eventually spoke.

  “Lou was your real dad. I know that. I would never try to take his place.”

  My mouth opened without any consultation with the cognizant parts of my head.

  “He abused me,” I said quietly.

  I kept my eyes on his as I watched his eyes go from hopeful insistence, to mild confusion, to slow comprehension, to absolute, cold fury.

  “He what?”

  The knuckles of his hand turned white as they put pressure against his water glass. A moment later, the glass broke.

  In Julius Caesar, Shakespeare told us: “The evil that men do lives after them.” Somehow, I thought it was going to be a long time before some of the scars Lou Malone left were healed.

  Now how was…um…Dad…going to take it?

  CHAPTER 33

  CLEAN SHEET

  I just sat there while a busboy cleaned up the broken glass, and the server tried to wipe all the water up from the table. I wasn’t sure what to think, and I was on edge. My toes kept twitching on my right foot, which they did sometimes. It was something reflexive, Danielle had told me. Though she said it was a good sign, it drove me nuts when it happened. I couldn’t make it stop.

  My…father…Dad…Thomas…I didn’t know how I should address him or think of him. In my mind, I had just started calling him Gardner. That seemed to work as well as anything else. Gardner was just sitting there, too, with his hands balled into fists and his sandwich almost untouched. He didn’t say anything until the server left.