I shoot sixty-six. The best round of the major. Six under par. I move from third to second on the leaderboard.
Every shot is clear. Every decision is mine. Nerys stands beside me with the bag and the yardage book and the low murmur of information, and I use every piece of it, and the using is not dependence.
It's what happens when two people build something deliberately.
My mother watches from the gallery. I can see her in the crowd — small, upright, arms folded. Her expression gives nothing away.
On the eighteenth green, after I sink the final putt, I look at her. She nods. Once.
From Minda Sarmiento, a single nod is a standing ovation.
I walk off the green. Nerys walks beside me. Our shoulders nearly touch.
"Tomorrow?" I say.
"Same plan. Same trust. Same you."
"Same us."
She doesn't correct me. She adjusts the bag on her shoulder and she walks, and the Pacific crashes against the cliffs below us, and the wordussits in the air between us like a ball on a perfect line, rolling toward the cup.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Nerys
The documents appear at eleven forty-seven in the morning, between the ninth and tenth holes of Tala's third round at Pebble Beach.
I know the precise time because I check my phone during the walk between greens — a habit I've maintained throughout my career, monitoring weather updates and scoring changes on adjacent holes. The notification is from Phaedra. Two words.
Call me.
Phaedra does not text during tournament rounds. She understands the sanctity of competitive focus the way she understands contractual language — as a boundary to be respected until the circumstances make it impossible. That she has texted means the circumstances are already impossible.
I step away from Tala while she's on the tenth tee, studying the fairway. I position myself behind the gallery ropes, out of microphone range, and I call.
Phaedra answers on the first ring.
"Your strategy notes are online. FairwayInsider published them twenty minutes ago. The article has been shared four hundred times and the number is accelerating."
My hand tightens on the phone. "Which notes?"
"Course maps for Pebble Beach. Tournament preparation documents for Kiawah and Singapore. Tactical assessments of Tala's playing tendencies. Your handwriting is clearly visible."
I close my eyes. I feel the sun on my face — California heat, different from Arizona heat, softer, carrying the salt of the Pacific. I feel the ground beneath my feet. I feel the particular sensation of the world shifting under a person while they stand on grass.
"The notes are authentic?"
"Several of them appear to be authentic. Your handwriting, your formatting, your analytical structure. But Nerys — several of them have been altered. Lines have been added. Phrasing has been changed. The alterations are designed to suggest—"
"Designed to suggest what?"
Phaedra pauses. Phaedra does not pause unless the content requires her to choose language she expects the listener to find devastating.
"One fabricated line reads:She must fail without me before she will obey.Another reads:Conservative play ensures continued dependence on my course knowledge. She cannot win without external strategy.The implication is that you deliberately encouraged conservative play not to help Tala win, but to make her unable to compete without you — rebuilding your own reputation through her reliance."
I open my eyes. The tenth tee is ahead of me. Tala is in her stance, addressing the ball. I can see her shoulders from here — the familiar rotation, the settled weight, the compact power that I've been standing beside for six weeks.
"That's not what I wrote."
