The Chance

  But a reality hit him that summer. As soon as school was out, it came over him like a Georgia heat wave. He was the man of the house. His dad was gone and he wasn’t coming back, and his mother spent much of her time with his sisters. They were twelve and fourteen that summer, and they seemed to take most his mother’s emotional energy. When she couldn’t contain her tears another moment, she sometimes came to him. “Nolan, I’m turning in early. Can you get dinner for the girls?” He would hug her and agree to help however he could. With his dad gone, he was man of the house.

  He wasn’t about to let his mother see him cry.

  When he was alone, he would sit beneath the old oak tree and think about his life, about what happened. And about how he could possibly find Ellie now that his father was gone. His dad had planned to help him find her that summer. Instead, all of them were trying to figure out a way to survive another day.

  No letter from her ever came, something Nolan couldn’t understand. Again he tried finding her by calling the base, but the calls turned up nothing. No one could help him. Some mornings he would get on the family’s computer and search for her. Ellie Tucker, Alan Tucker, San Diego, Camp Pendleton. That sort of thing. The search never turned up anything. He even contacted Caroline Tucker. Ellie’s mother broke down and cried on the phone as she admitted that even she didn’t know where in San Diego Ellie lived.

  “Her father’s keeping her from me. Or maybe Ellie doesn’t want me to know where she is.”

  Finally, the reality sank in. Finding Ellie wouldn’t be as easy as his dad had thought. Short of getting in the car and driving to San Diego to look for her, Nolan was out of options. And when that became clear, he did the only thing he could do.

  He played basketball.

  His father was replaced by the assistant coach—Marty Ellison, an older man who loved Nolan’s dad and understood the team like no one else. He arranged summer workouts and talked about winning the championship, the one Nolan’s dad had believed in for them. Always, he was harder on Nolan than on the other guys.

  One day Coach Ellison talked to him after practice. “Nolan . . . I’m sorry.”

  “For what?” Nolan was exhausted, the way he usually was after morning workouts. He had the basketball tucked under his arm. “For pushing me harder than everyone else?”

  “Yes. I have no choice.” Coach Ellison’s eyes held a tenderness that surprised Nolan. “Your dad believed in your gift. He used to tell me he could see you playing in the pros.” He put his hand on Nolan’s shoulder. “I’m doing what he would’ve done.”

  “Yes, sir.” Nolan was grateful for the explanation. It filled him and gave him a purpose he hadn’t felt since losing his dad. Nolan shook the coach’s hand. “Well, sir, keep it up. If he’s watching from heaven, I don’t want to let him down.”

  “Exactly.”

  By the end of summer, Nolan was twice the basketball player he’d been the previous fall. He played on a club team and everywhere he went he created a stir among college scouts. When the students of Savannah High returned to class, two things had happened. First, Nolan had appeared on a Sports Illustrated list of top ten sophomore players in the country. And second, he had come to realize something about Ellie.

  She wasn’t coming back. She wasn’t going to call and she wasn’t going to write. He would have to find her.

  There were whole days that next year when all Nolan could think about was their one last chance, the letters buried beneath their old oak tree. Always he figured he’d find her somehow. But he never did. The years of high school flew by in a rush of basketball—club seasons, summer workouts, and high school games. They made the play-offs each year, but the team never qualified for the championship, never came as close as they had when he was a freshman. When his dad coached.

  Winning a championship for his father became a goal he seemed unable to achieve. When the clock ran out on his last game as a senior, he found a quiet corner beneath the bleachers and cried. The first time since a month after his dad died, he let the tears come, because there were no more games left. The chance to win a state title for his father was gone.

  That night he promised himself two things: Somehow he would find Ellie Tucker, and one day he would win it all. Maybe in college—since by then he had agreed to play on a scholarship at North Carolina University. Or maybe sometime after that. But one day he would have the perfect season and bring home a trophy for his dad.

  The memories stopped there. Nolan returned the stuffed rabbit to the glass case and shut it. Better to keep thoughts of Ellie where they belonged—on a shelf where even he couldn’t touch them. He looked once more at the photo of him and his dad. How quickly the years had gone. The blur of seasons at North Carolina and the two appearances in the NCAA Elite Eight round of the play-offs.

  “Maybe this year.” The words came softly. And in the silence that followed, he could hear his dad’s voice, the tone of it, and he could sense the safety he felt when they were together. The man had been his coach and mentor as far back as Nolan could remember. The fact that he was taken out by a heart attack when he was just forty-one remained almost impossible to believe. He still caught himself thinking maybe there had been a mistake and his dad had moved to Portland, Oregon, with his mom and sisters. As if sometime in the next hour, Nolan might get a call from him, promising to pray and believing—like always—that no one would dominate the game the way Nolan would.

  The truth was something altogether different.

  Life had moved on. His mom was dating someone these days, a good guy. Nolan clenched his jaw and turned away from the hutch. He needed to check e-mail, something left-brained to get his mind off the past. If he was going to get his team through the play-offs, if this was the year he might win it all, one thing was sure.

  He needed to stay focused.

  They were thirty thousand feet over Tennessee or maybe Kentucky when Nolan woke up. The jet was a converted passenger plane, leather seats and footrests, the plane the Hawks used for away games. The ache in his heart from earlier had eased. His dad was with him. That would always be true.

  He looked out the window at the topside of the clouds and beyond, at a narrow river cutting its way through the landscape. Every mile took him farther from Ellie. Where he last knew she lived, anyway. Nolan leaned back against the seat. How could more than ten years have gone by and he still hadn’t found her? He had unlimited resources, after all.

  In his senior year with the Tar Heels, they’d played the University of San Diego. Nolan caught a later flight home because he spent an entire day in a rental car, driving the perimeter of Camp Pendleton and canvasing the closest supermarkets, a Walmart, and a mall. He came home no closer to finding her than before. He realized then that it was pointless to search for her in San Diego. She could be living anywhere.

  When MySpace and Facebook first surfaced, he had tried to find her online. At least once a week since then he searched for her and came up empty. By the time he was drafted into the pros, he wondered if she’d met someone in college and gotten married. If that was the case, fine. But he wouldn’t rest until he had closure, until he could talk to her or look into her eyes and see for himself that she no longer cared for him.

  The way he still cared for her.

  Nolan’s mind flashed back to the draft, how it felt to be taken third pick in the first round. They paid him $10 million for his signing bonus alone. He earned more per season than anyone had a right to. The day his first check cleared, he did what he’d wanted to do since the summer after his freshman year at Savannah High. He called a private investigator and explained the situation.

  “Her name is Ellie Tucker.”

  “That’s her name today?”

  Nolan hated the question. “As far as I know.”

  “So you don’t know her name.” It wasn’t a question. “What do you actually know about her?”

  The questions caused one of his hardest moments since his father’s death. Proof that he knew nothin
g about Ellie, that too many years had passed to be sure about what had happened to her or where she lived or what she was doing. Too many years to even know her name.

  Still, he paid the PI and prayed—really prayed—that God would help him find her. Instead, for a heavy price tag, he was given a spiral-bound report that basically said the thing Nolan had feared most. Ellie Tucker—the girl who he was going to marry—was nowhere to be found.

  He closed his eyes. That brought him to now. This week his manager was doing everything in his power to set Nolan up with a nice girl. The latest of many who had all amounted to nothing. This one was the daughter of a Christian singer, a Grammy Award–winning solo artist whose voice was one of the best in any genre. Her daughter was twenty-one, a recent graduate from Vanderbilt University. Brilliant, beautiful, and ambitious. She ran a ministry for kids in Uganda, and already her efforts had resulted in the building of three wells that provided clean water to people who were dying without it.

  His manager had called fifteen minutes before his ride picked him up earlier that day. “Nolan, I’ve got details.”

  “Details?” Nolan was reading e-mails, still trying not to think about how badly he missed his dad.

  “About Kari Garrett.”

  Nolan didn’t immediately connect the dots.

  His manager chuckled. “You obviously weren’t holding your breath for this call.”

  “No.” Nolan felt himself smile. His manager didn’t give up easily. “Who is she?”

  “Kathy Garrett’s daughter. The singer, remember?”

  It had all clicked. “Of course. Sorry.” Nolan pushed his chair back from the computer and rubbed his eyes. “What about her?”

  His manager hesitated. “Remember? She wants to meet you. She’s perfect, Nolan. You’ll love her.”

  “Right. It’s coming back to me.” He wished he could feel more excited. “What’s the setup?”

  “The two of you and dinner in Atlanta the night after you get back from this run.”

  Nolan exhaled slowly. “Isn’t that sort of awkward? Like I’m taking her on a date and I haven’t met her?”

  “It’s not a date. It’s a hang.” He sounded confident. The plan wasn’t going to change now. “Just get to know her. You’ll thank me later.”

  Laughter found its way across the phone line. “Okay. Text me the specifics.”

  And like that, Nolan had a date with Kari Garrett. No matter what his manager wanted to call it. She wasn’t the only setup who had come his way. One of the brass in the Hawks’ front office was trying to pair him up with Tanni Serra, the nation’s top pop star. A girl he wouldn’t consider dating. Barely a week passed without someone trying to match him with a girl who otherwise would be untouchable.

  “Man, what’s that feel like? You can have any girl you want,” his teammates teased him often.

  “I don’t want any girl.” He would grin at them. Everyone knew the truth. Nolan Cook hadn’t slept around, hadn’t dated. He loved God, and he would one day find a girl who shared his faith. Still, the guys were right. He could have any girl he wanted.

  Any girl except Ellie Tucker.

  Never was he more deeply aware of the truth than on a trip like this, one that took him away from where he last knew she was living. In San Diego, California. The truth stayed with him as they arrived at the venue and stretched, and as they took the court to warm up. It stayed with him as they dominated that night, notching a third straight victory, and it stayed with him as he scanned the audience at every break, looking for her. The way he always looked for her. Just in case she’d moved to Wisconsin. The truth was this: If Ellie Tucker wanted to contact him, she could have. He was easy to find. For reasons he couldn’t begin to understand, that could mean only one very sad thing.

  Ellie had moved on.

  Chapter Eight

  She was Ellie Anne now.

  The name change became official when she turned twenty-one—the best use of a hundred bucks Ellie had ever found. Her baby girl was two that year, and Ellie changed the child’s name, too. She washed her hands in the backroom sink and dried them on her smock. She cut hair at Merrilou’s, a few miles off Pendleton’s naval base. Only once in a while did a client come in who remembered her as Ellie Tucker. The way her last client had.

  Her next appointment was already here, so she’d have to take a break later.

  Ellie returned to the front of the salon and smiled at her client. “You ready?”

  The woman stood and smiled. “Another beautiful day.” She was in her thirties, one of the more talkative ones.

  “Always.” Ellie glanced at the television. She had a clear view of it from her station, and since she worked the evening shift tonight, she couldn’t resist putting on the game. Hawks versus Bucs, Game 4. If Atlanta won tonight, they’d advance to the second round and have a few extra days off to rest.

  “Glad we can watch the game.” The woman settled herself into the seat. She was a skinny bleached blonde with hair halfway down her back. She pointed to the screen. “I love that Nolan Cook. He’s amazing, right? I mean, what guy is like him?” She caught a quick breath. “Tim Tebow, of course. They’re both the same. Untouchable. Everyone’s in love with them, and all they do is live for God and play ball for His glory. Right? I mean, it’s amazing.”

  Ellie’s eyes were on the screen. The game hadn’t started, but the announcer was talking about Nolan. Her friend Nolan. The boy she had loved since third grade. Something about him averaging the most points in the league through the first round of play-offs, and how he had more steals than anyone in the Eastern Conference. The camera fixed on him, warming up, taking shots from around the arc of the three-point line, breaking for the basket and making a convincing layup.

  Then the angle changed, and the faces of three kids filled the screen. The announcer was saying, “These are Nolan Cook’s guests for tonight. Three kids from the local foster program. None of them have parents, but here, for the next few hours, they have Nolan Cook.”

  Ellie ran a fine comb lightly through the woman’s hair. She was going on about how she wished she could set up a friend of hers with Nolan because there were just no guys like him and her friend was so great and . . .

  Ellie only pretended to listen. Something she was good at after years of cutting hair. “Highlights again?”

  “Yes.” The woman used her hands to add emphasis. “Bright highlights. Something light blonde for summer.” She sat a little straighter. “We have the Bahamas next week.”

  The salon was near the base, so the clientele was mixed. Some soldiers and soldiers’ wives. But most people who came to Merrilou’s lived high-end lifestyles and talked about their trips to the Caribbean or Hawaii or Europe. Their husbands held high positions at Morgan Stanley or UBS, one of the financial institutions in greater San Diego, where they made boatloads of money. Their wives enjoyed spending it and telling Ellie about the details.

  Women like this one.

  Ellie mixed the bleach and color in a small plastic bowl and kept her eyes on the TV. They were showing Nolan again, this time as he rallied his teammates into a fired-up huddle. The game was about to begin.

  What are you thinking about, Nolan? Do I ever cross your mind?

  The separation between them was her fault. She could have reached out to him. She’d known that years ago. When he was at North Carolina, she even wrote him a letter, took it to the post office, and then changed her mind and ripped it into a dozen pieces. Twice she had nearly dialed the phone number to the North Carolina basketball office, but both times she’d changed her mind. She’d thought again about contacting him when he was drafted by the pros. She researched his manager’s name and office number. She still had it programmed into her phone.

  Yes, she’d followed Nolan’s life as far back as she could remember. How his father had died of a heart attack after losing the state final game the spring after Ellie moved to San Diego and how Nolan missed him. How he had poured all his passion and en
ergy into basketball. He’d gotten exactly what he wanted back when they used to sit under their old oak tree. All of his dreams had come true.

  All of his and none of hers.

  And that was the one thing that had stopped her from contacting Nolan back when he was in college. It was the sad detail that still stopped her today.

  Deep down, she didn’t really want to find Nolan Cook. Didn’t want him to see how her life had turned out. How she’d failed. Ellie felt the familiar ache in her chest. Her life was a sad mix of hurried choices and lifelong consequences. She’d rebelled against her father and fallen for a soldier when she was a senior in high school. Not long after, Ellie was pregnant. When the guy found out, he left her for another girl before being deployed. He was killed by a roadside bomb in the Middle East, and Ellie was raising their daughter by herself. She didn’t talk to either of her parents, and hadn’t in years.

  How would she tell Nolan that?

  The idea of Nolan seeing her now? Ellie shuddered at the thought. He would despise who she had become. She had missed out on college and instead spent her days cutting hair so she could feed her six-year-old daughter. Her dreams of writing that great American novel as gone as the summer nights under the old oak tree. She hadn’t been to church in five years and had no plans to go. Not ever.

  So why contact him?

  What would she have in common with Nolan Cook, the man so public about his love for Jesus? Nolan wasn’t looking for someone like Ellie. The right girl for Nolan would have rock-solid faith and a commitment to purity. She would be a role model for girls around the country, beautiful and innocent and strong in her convictions.

  Ellie smeared the bleach on a square piece of tinfoil and wrapped it around a small section of the woman’s hair. Then she repeated the process. No, he wasn’t looking for her any more than she was looking for him. Still, during basketball season, she couldn’t help herself. She loved watching Nolan Cook play, same as she did when she was fifteen years old. The way he took control of a game and drove to the hoop, the way he could sink a three-point shot like butter through the net. His expression of determination and intensity.