Page 96 of Final Drive

Ravenswood is forty minutes north. I drive it with the windows down, since the noise stops me rehearsing what I’m going to say, and rehearsing is how he wins.

The house has eleven rooms nobody uses. My mother is at a board thing in Charlotte. The staff have gone home. My father is in the study with a fire going in May, since he likes the room warm, and he doesn’t stand up when I come in.

“You came back,” he says.

“You knew I would.”

“I hoped.” He closes the folder in front of him. “Sit.”

I don’t.

“Suit yourself.” He leans back. “I’ll assume you’ve heard from the athletics department by now, so we can skip the part where you accuse me of things.”

“That’s fine.”

“Good.” He steadies his eyes on me. “The compliance officer has a problem. He has a coxswain whose registration doesn’t match her biology and a captain who’s bonded to her. He can’t unpick which of you knew what, and he doesn’t want to try. The cheapest thing available to him is scratching the pair. Both of you. It removes the question.”

I don’t move.

“That isn’t a threat, Gray. That’s arithmetic. He’ll get there on his own by the middle of the week.” He turns his hand over. “Unless somebody with standing tells him the family’s concerns have been addressed.”

“You.”

“Me.” He says it without any weight on it. “One phone call. The complaint gets characterized as a misunderstanding between an alumnus and the department. Your coxswain races. You race. Bennett signs his form, keeps his license. Nobody’s career ends over a piece of paperwork her father filed when she was sixteen.”

The fire pops. He waits.

“And?”

“And you withdraw from the arrangement. You take the position at the firm in June, you live at the Charlotte property, and you stop appearing in photographs with seven other men and one girl.” He says girl without emphasis, which lands worse than emphasis would. “I’m not asking you to stop caring for her. I’m asking you to stop making her your public problem. You’d be doing her a kindness. She’d have her season.”

He’s the best I’ve ever seen, and I’ve watched him do this to men twice my age across boardroom tables. He hasn’t raised his voice once. He’s built me a version of losing that sounds like winning, with the cost on me and the benefit on her, so refusing makes me the one who took nationals away from her.

A week ago I’d have taken it. I’d have driven home, told them Harrison had backed off, and carried the rest myself.

“I need to make a call,” I say.

A muscle goes at the corner of his mouth. It’s gone before I can read it.

“By all means.”

I go out through the French doors onto the terrace. It’s full dark, and the lawn runs down to a tree line with nothing behind it but frogs.

She picks up on the second ring.

“Where are you?”

“Ravenswood.” I put my back against the stone. “I’m going to tell you exactly what he offered. Then I’m not going to answer him. You are.”

She takes a second. “Say it.”

I say all of it. The scratch, the arithmetic, the phone call, the firm, Charlotte, and the word girl. I don’t shape it. I don’t leave out the part where it works. When I finish I can hear her breathing on the other end and nothing else.

“He’s offering me my season,” she says.

“Yes.”

“For you.”