“I haven’t played much.”
“Well, you still look like you’re in decent shape,” her father said, even though he couldn’t possibly tell from the sweatshirt and joggers Caroline was wearing.
“The student gym is pretty good.”
“I’d bet, for what they’re charging for tuition.”
“Yeah. You know. Indoor pool and everything.”
Her father huffed dismissively. “Your coach keeps asking about you.”
Caroline scowled, because she hadn’t changed her number, and he could have called her instead.
Raymond Sedlacek sliced the rest of his steak into small, brittle cubes and meditatively dunked one in hiscup of ketchup. “He wondered if you might still think about going pro.”
Caroline snorted. She’d barely touched a racket in six months.
“No, really,” her father said. “You’re still young enough. You just need access to some higher-level coaching. Your coach said he could give me some names, even up here.”
Caroline almost replied that she didn’t have enough time with classes, but that would have been a lie. Every minute she wasn’t in class, she could have been playing tennis. It was no more or less productive than what she had been doing.
So she just gnawed on the side of her cheek and gave a noncommittal answer. Maybe she would feel better if she were playing tennis. At least she was pretty good at tennis.
Her father took that as a yes. “We can talk with him while you’re home on break.”
“Okay.”
“You know, he’s actually the one who told me about the old tennis center down off FM 8439 being up for sale,” her father said with studied casualness.
“Yeah?” Caroline said without much interest. She’d practiced there for a few years in middle school while the high school’s courts were under renovation.
“Yup. Your uncle and I went over to look at it a couple of months ago. They still haven’t found a buyer.”
“I see,” Caroline said, even though she didn’t.
“He thinks the bank’s probably in a hurry to sell. It would probably drop the price a fair bit for a cash deal.”
Caroline suddenly had the first inkling of where things were going.
“What?” she asked, sitting up further. “You’re thinking of buying the tennis center?”
Her father shifted in the wooden bistro chair. “Jay and I looked at the accounts. It seems to do pretty well. It just needs some modernizing. New locker rooms, better lighting—”
“My uncle, who owns an HVAC business, thinks the tennis center is a good investment?” Caroline clarified, because she wasn’t brave enough to point out that her father hadn’t managed to expand the paving business he’d bought from his father.
Her father reached for the tennis bag he’d hauled along to dinner. He unzipped the top and retrieved a paper folder. He attempted to pass it across the table, but Caroline instinctively recoiled from being offered papers by her father.
“It’s on sale for a million two,” he said when she didn’t accept the folder. “I can probably talk them down from that.”
Caroline did not need financial advice from her father. She was almost a quarter of the way to a graduate business degree.
“I have almost everything in a brokerage account,” Caroline said. “A conservative one. Index funds and municipal bonds. It’s doing fine. I don’t need to invest in a tennis business.”
Her father scowled. “You don’t understand. This is an opportunity for the whole family.”
She looked at him helplessly. “Is there something wrong with the HVAC business?”
“No, Jay is doing fine, but—”
