hawk
Kendraand I awoke to my phone vibrating on the bedside table, which we promptly ignored. Neither of us willing to let the outside world puncture the bubble of protection we created the night before.
When her phone rang immediately after mine ceased, we both lifted to see missed calls from our GM.
I pressed redial, Kendra’s eyes wide as we waited for him to answer.
“Thank God. We’ve got a problem.”
I placed the call on speaker. “I’ve got Kendra with me; she’s listening.”
He sighed heavily. “Yeah, that’s what I figured. And why I called her when I couldn’t get you.”
Impatience had me on edge. A call this early in the morning wasn’t the time for chitchat, and if he was calling before noon, something had happened. “Enough. What’s up?”
“Milligan and Griffen were arrested for sexual assault.”
Shock and horror covered Kendra’s face. I reached overand squeezed her hand, at once understanding that she would somehow feel responsible for this.
He spoke quickly, but it became clear we needed legal guidance, so we called an emergency meeting. The team was traveling back to Boston, but both Milligan and Griffen would be detained in Cleveland.
“We’re not providing either of them legal support.” The words were out of my mouth before I had a chance to think of the implications. No, the Minutemen organization would fight like hell for its players when they deserved it, but neither of these players had given me any reason to believe that these accusations were false.
“I think we need to get legal guidance before you make that call, boss.”
Kendra was up and in the shower before I had hung up the phone. I joined her, both of us quiet as we got ready to head to the office.
“What about his wife?” Kendra stared out the window as my car crept through the city streets.
I sighed. “Your sister is close to Lindy, huh?”
“She is. I don’t think Lindy has a clue that he’d ever so much as strayed. Have you seen her social media content?”
“Straying is one thing, which implies consent, Ken. But assault?”
“Either way, her world is about to come crashing down around her. Will the team support her?”
“I don’t know. We need to talk to legal first, find out the details, and gofrom there.”
The season had just blown up on us. Here we were, down two key players, and it was still unclear how much of their contracts we were obligated to pay. The only bit of good news was that Nate Reaves had once played shortstop, so he slid over into the position and closed part of the defensive hole that had opened up on us.
Legally, we had to let the case play out with Milligan; the negotiations we’d started months ago had tied our hands a bit. He was currently suspended and off the active roster. Legal was confident that the team’s ties to him would be cut before too long.
The media had dug up a link in the Combined DNA Index System between the rape kit for the current case and the one from Kendra’s case. And while her feelings hadn’t changed about pursuing charges, the CODIS hit had brought the possibility back into the forefront. Her identity remained protected, and as long as that was what she wanted, I would see to it that it stayed that way.
We may have publicly been able to keep the story buried, but the legal team had a statement from her that explained not only the details of the assault, but his behavior since then.
At the same time, her relationship with her sisters was solid, but she couldn’t talk to them because of their relationship with the team. I hated that she couldn’t get all the emotional support available to her.
Thank God for Colby. She’d been a rock for both of us, and someone that Kendra could talk to about everything. We both had to remind her that she was more important than the team. I wasn’t going to let her sacrifice her emotional health for the team’sbenefit.
“Hey,” Kendra said as she leaned against my desk. “They sucked today.”
“That they did.” We’d gone into the all-star break eight games ahead in the division, and we were ending the year out of playoff contention. The Boston fans cursed my name and had been calling for Granddad to come back from retirement. The most recent article had been titled:Jonathan “Hawk” Crosby - Too Wet Behind the Ears.
“Is Kylie bringing the baby tonight?” Luc and Kylie had a daughter, Willow, at the very end of the summer. The biggest surprise was that Luc had decided not to extend his coaching contract. We were hopeful that Jack LeCompte would transition into coaching after his contract lapsed, but that was just one more question we would need to deal with in the off-season.
“Yes.” The entire family was coming to see the season that bombed spectacularly. It was almost mathematically impossible for us to have fallen so far off track. But we had managed.
