“Ed…are you sure?” she asked. “Two weeks is a long time without notice.”
“I’m sure. Go and do your thing. Make us proud!”
Her meeting with Ed had left Amy feeling excited. She was really going to do this. She was really going to make some art!
Her last hurdle was Ryan. She feared he would balk at having to take the boys for two whole weeks, but he turned out to be the easiest. He was so eager to please her that he’d practically fallen all over himself offering to take the boys.
So here Amy was, in this insane house, with all the paints and canvasses she could possibly ever need.
Her phone pinged.
E found the Hot Pockets. There were only four. Next time, get the big box.
Aye, aye, captain.Last week, Jonah had complained they didn’t have any Cheez-Its, even though Kevin was standing at the sink, eating from a giant box of them. That’s what Amy’s life had come to—shopping at warehouse stores for industrial-sized portions of junk food. Once, she’d gotten a haircut, lopping off a full four inches. Not one person in her house noticed. On the other hand, Julie had noticed immediately.
Julie had never married. She was gorgeous, with long blonde hair and a perfectly curved figure. She went through men like underwear. Some stuck around a few years, others unraveled after a couple of outings. She split her time between Dallas and Austin, and had built up a substantial clientele for her swank interior-decorating service.
She didn’t have kids, which meant she didn’t have a home where shoes and homework and bills and fast-food trash piled up. Where three males could eat through two hundred dollars’ worth of groceries as soon as they were delivered. She didn’t have to take charge of people who couldn’t remember where they were supposed to be or forgot their homework or refused to do it until last minute. She didn’t have to find time to comb through a Christmas-gift wish list that got mysteriously longer as the season wore on, or decorate a tree all by herself, or make cookies that she never got to sample, or do all the shopping, or pass on getting drunk when doing any of those things for fear it would set a bad example. She didn’t have to counsel grown men about their antics, or onboard or offboard employees. She never ever had to worry what was going on in her laundry room or kitchen or, God forbid, any bedrooms while she was away from the house.
But Amy did. Her life drained her brain every day, and she needed the break.
So whatever was going on out there with Mr. Neely, she was determined to enjoy these two weeks. But she was not going back out there looking like she spent her days in a recliner watching game shows. She stood up and took one step in the direction of the bathroom. And then she very nearly jumped the rest of the way when “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” began to blare from the invisible speakers.
4
When the angels sang “Hark,” Harrison almost spilled his coffee on a plush white chair. There was some timing mechanism that he hadn’t yet found, and though he could turn off the lights and music again, he was too big to get behind the tree and futz with the volume like Amy had the day before.
He needed to email his host and ask her how to stop the madness. It wasn’t that he minded the Christmas music—what he minded was the full-metal blast of it when he was least expecting it.
He pulled out his laptop to email Sam Rodrigo, who, until last night, he’d assumed was a man. Before he could pull up the mail app, his phone rang. He looked at the caller ID and groaned. It was Clay, his manager.
“My man!” Clay said loudly when Harrison answered.
“Unless you are calling to tell me someone died, you’re fired. I told you not to call me.”
“Why? Is it too early? Wait, wait, what time is it there? Sorry, bro—I’m in London with Gavin McGilly. Remember him? He shot a sixty-six at Torrey Pines.”
Yes, he remembered Gavin McGilly and his sixty-six at Torrey Pines. The last time Harrison had played there, he’d shot four over par. Out ofthe money, basically. “Are you seriously calling to tell me he shot a sixty-six? Come on, Clay. We’ve been over this. I’m on abreak.”
“Oops,” Clay said cheerfully. “I didn’t think you really meant it. I mean, if you think about it, you’ve kind of been on a break for almost a year now. I honestly thought you’d be on the links by now. Why be in Texas at Christmas if not for the weather?”
If Harrison could have, he would have reached through the phone and punched Clay in the mouth. “What do you want?”
“Just checking on that rehab, buddy. Got those tournaments coming up in January like we talked about. You going to be ready to play? Been working the program? How’s the knee feeling?”
“Stiff. But I can still kick your ass.”
“Maybe ramp up to three rounds of PT a day, what do you say? And get out and hit some balls. I also think we should plan to check in with Dr. Davila before the new year. If Dr. D says you’re good to go, we can still make Farmer’s—that’s the last week of January. Seeing Gavin reminded me it’s at Torrey Pines, and it made me think of you.”
“Hang up the phone, Clay,” Harrison said. “Hang up and lose my number.” He clicked off and tossed his phone onto the bed. He rubbed his face. He shoved his fingers through his hair. His mind was racing through all the creative ways he wanted to kill his manager. And his knee was aching again.
What was so unbearably annoying about Clay was that he was right. Harrison did need more physical therapy. But he’d been in such a funk the last few weeks he hadn’t found the motivation to keep up with it.
He didn’t want to think about that now, although anyone could see that continued physical therapy on his knee was part of the equation for divining his future. What happened to all the navel-gazing he was going to do, anyway? So far, he’d mostly thought about food.
He dashed off a note to Sam asking how to adjust the timing and settings of the Christmas music, checked some late-season tournamentleaderboards, checked the news, looked at the weather again—they were still predicting a winter storm for the area—then closed his laptop.
It wasn’t even ten a.m. and he was already looking for things to do. That was the problem with his job. He was on the go so much that when he was on tour, he barely had time to breathe. When he had downtime, he didn’t know what to do with himself. When he thought about retiring from professional golf, he really couldn’t imagine what he’d do with himself. All the questions he had about what came next were beginning to freak him out a little.
