Page 104 of Cherry Picking

“A woman in a red coat was standing at the back,” he says distantly. “She skipped the reception. I remember feeling like I should recognize her.”

He plants both palms flat. “He went out on Thursday nights.”

“Is that right?”

“Every Thursday. Six p.m., back by nine.” His thumb traces a restless pattern. “I asked him. The first time he left, he told me he was playing cards with some guys from the shop. I told him good, get out of this house, you’re twenty-four.”

“He kept the truth to himself.”

“He called it cards.” His voice hitches, the sound rough and wet. “I’d ask about the score, and he’d say he lost forty bucks or that he’d cleaned ’em out, and I’d give him grief for it. And I kept pushing him about you.” He looks up. “Every single week. Have you called your brother? Are you going to? He’d say he was working on it, and I’d snap at him that working on it wasn’t the same as picking up a phone.”

“It’s alright, Dad.”

“July,” he says. “You mentioned July was two years for him.”

“That’s right.”

“He was living right here in July.” He anchors a hand on the glass. “So he walked through that door on a Thursday with a two-year chip in his pocket, and he probably made me a damn chicken breast and asked about my hip.”

His composure fails entirely, and it happens fast.

He cries in a sudden, violent wave. Usually, I stay rooted and wait for the tide to recede. This time, I stand and move around the table.

He tries to wave me off, but I take his hand and pull him up regardless. My father collapses against my chest, his forehead finding my collarbone, and he feels so much smaller than the man I remember from three years ago.

“I gave him so much hell,” he murmurs into my shirt.

“You didn’t know, Dad.”

I lock an arm across his back. He fists my shirt at the shoulder, shaking, and his cane thuds onto the tile. Neither of us moves to retrieve it.

Then I break, too.

The last time I let it out was in that Detroit equipment room, armored up with a locked door between me and the world. Now, it arrives in a jagged, painful rush. I stand in my father’s kitchen with my face buried in his hair and just let it go.

We stay pinned together for a long time. Eventually, he pats my back twice—the same way he used to when I was a kid coming off a loss. When we finally sit back down, his face is a ruin, and I’m certain mine matches.

He hands me a paper towel. “Who else knows about this?”

“Ophelia. Renata, presumably.” I fold the towel over my knuckles. “And Evie.”

He looks up. “Evie.”

“I told her last month, after the game in Vegas. Not about the drinking—I didn’t have that piece yet. But the rest.”

His expression shifts, and I realize with a jolt that he’s relieved.

“Good,” he says. “That’s good, Briggs.”

“Dad—”

“No, you listen.” He plants a hand flat. “I’ve been sitting here all week with the thought that you bore that for two years with not a single soul to share it. You finally told someone.” He shakes his head. “That’s the first thing you’ve said today that makes me glad.”

“Thank you.”

“She’s been in this house since January. Five days a week.” He turns the thought over. “Right after that story broke, she drove here and made a shepherd’s pie. She stayed until nine o’clock.”

“I didn’t consider what it would—”