She was standing on the first tee box at TSU, the flat and open fairway stretching bright green to the horizon, and she asked one of her fellow golfers for a Sharpie to mark her ball. She almost started to write GOTCHA, but just wrote her initials TFJ instead.
When she was scrutinizing a green before putting, trying to determine which way a putt would break, the image rose in her mind of Jericho squatting and holding his putter from two fingers like a pendulum, trying to discern the tilt of the greens at Newcastle Golf Club. When he’d looked up at her, his blue eyes were the color of the sky on a calm day.
And then there was the storm shelter off the ninth hole at the TSU golf course, another wooden shack for golfers when the course blew the horn to signal lightning danger. Tiffany got caught out in a thunderstorm one Friday, and she and the other girls sprinted inside the tiny shelter to wait out the weather. They laughed and joked while they waited, but melancholy hovered around the edges of her mind like the rain sluicing off the windows.
And then there were the damned trees in the thick woods around the golf course. Between the trees, there were all kinds of little clearings where one could sneak back there for a tryst with—someone.
Tiffany was chasing what she’d always wanted in life, what she’d always felt like she was meant to do, meaning to be a professional golfer on the LPGA Tour. Yet, she couldn’t shake feeling like a dark hole in the air was following her around the course, the emptiness where Jericho should have been laughing at her jokes, smiling when they talked, and reaching out with warm hands to touch her skin in the dark of his bedroom.
Even though she talked to her parents once or twice a week and texted with her cousins all the freaking time, Tiffany never asked them about him.
Instead, Tiffany asked her father, “Did you rejoin Newcastle Golf Club?”
“Too rich for my blood. We’re still sending Levi a hundred dollars a month for books and snacks at Howard University, same as we did you when you were at TSU. It’s a good thing you kids got scholarships for tuition and the dorm, though. A retired military and an office manager couldn’t have afforded college tuition like it is now.”
Tiffany asked her mother, “Have you heard anything at church about what’s going on over at NGC?”
Her mother clicked her tongue and said, “Big changes, that’s all I know about. Half the people at church who used to belong there have resigned their memberships. I’m calling around because they should take that money and put it toward something good for the community, like the capital fund at First Methodist.”
Of course, Tiffany never mentioned Jericho Parr to her cousins Imani and Asia. They were her besties, and she only talked to them about music, life, and the world.
She only occasionally slipped and texted something like, Have you heard anything about what he’s doing at NGC?
Imani texted back, IDK, but he’s applied for a whole bunch more construction permits. It’s like he’s getting permits to build a huge building, like a casino or a sports stadium or something. Or a warehouse. Or an airplane hangar. It’s enormous.
Asia texted, He’s only ordered one breakfast from room service since you left. And the girls at the desk say that he comes in late and orders one supper from the café to go up to his room every night. I drove by the golf course last week, and there’s more construction equipment in the parking lot than sports cars.
Tiffany finally emailed Coach Kowalski to see what was happening behind the scenes at NGC. He sent a chirpy text back about all the great changes being made and completely ignored Tiffany’s question about where the high school golf team was practicing.
And that kind of settled things, didn’t it? Jericho Parr was proceeding with his plan to gut Newcastle Golf Club, or whatever he was calling it, and evidently he didn’t give a flying fig about its importance to the community of Newcastle.
Tiffany redoubled her efforts at Coach Robinson’s clinic, practicing every shot like it was her only chance to get into a playoff to win the LPGA Ladies’ U.S. Open.
Coach Robinson said to Tiffany over breakfast one day, “You’ve always been driven, but something’s changed lately. You’re going to do fine at that qualifier at the beginning of September, Tiffany. If you finish in the top ten, you will start playing on the minor-league tour the next week. If you win, they might call you up to the LPGA, but either way, you’re going to be fine. You’re going to be in the top ten unless you trip over another rock and break your leg again.”
Tiffany tapped the wooden table and touched the gold cross at the hollow of her throat to dispel the bad luck. She didn’t believe in the knocking on wood thing, really, but she didn’t take chances with something like that. “I just want to do well.”
“Yes, Tiffany, you’re going to do well. You have a good chance of winning it. If you put together four rounds like your last four rounds here, you’ll win. So what’s really going on?”
Tiffany picked one of the many things drumming at the windows of her mind. “I had a shot at the LPGA after college, and I lost it when I blew out my knee. I’ve got another shot. I don’t want to blow this one, too. For the last two years, I’ve been walking around a semi-private golf course in upstate Connecticut, trying very hard not to think about how I blew my chance at being a professional athlete. I don’t want to blow it again.”
Coach Robinson nodded as she sipped her coffee, and then she said, “I have every faith in you. If I’m worried about anything, it’s repetitive stress injuries from working too hard. Why don’t you take a couple of days, go to Connecticut to see your parents, and then come back here to finish your preparations for that qualifying tournament? And then after that, you’ll need to make some decisions.”
“I’m already entered in the qualifying tournament. What other decisions do I need to make?”
“Like where you’re going to live,” Coach Robinson said. “You can’t live in Connecticut. You need somewhere with year-round golf and an elite PGA coaching facility. I recommend Nevada, near Butch Harmon’s academy. North Carolina has Hank Haney’s facility. But you’re going to need more than a college coach can give you. You need elite-level coaching to make it on the LPGA Tour, and you won’t get that in Connecticut, chasing your orange balls in the snow in the winter.”
“But they bounce right off the water hazards in January,” Tiffany said, joking.
“Uh-huh, but you’ll need coaching from someone like Harmon or Haney. Don’t blow your chance by thinking too small. Connecticut isn’t going to do it for you anymore. I’ll call Butch and see if you can get on down in Nevada.”
That part of Nevada reached a hundred fifteen degrees in the summer. A born and bred New England girl, Tiffany was not used to that kind of heat, and she didn’t like it one bit, either. “Yeah, I’ll have to think about that.”
“You can think about it while you rest up for a few days. Tell your mom I said hi.”
So that was why Tiffany went back to Connecticut, to see her parents and rest before the last big push in training before the qualifying tournament that would change her life.
It certainly wasn’t to see Jericho Parr.
A Fam with a Plan
Jericho
Jericho Parr was sitting at his desk in his hotel suite at Newcastle Inn and Spa, staring at the spreadsheets that were still bleeding money on his computer screen.
Checking out of the hotel and short-term leasing an apartment would be the financially prudent thing to do, but every time he tried to pack up his clothes, he found a trinket or blouse that Tiffany had forgotten, and then he didn’t move from the only place they’d been together.
He knew he had to move eventually, but he didn’t have to yet.
So he was standing over that spreadsheet, glaring at it and trying to make the numbers turn black with just the sheer force of his will, when his room service breakfast arrived.
The waitstaff who delivered it was Tiffany’s cousin, again. “Thanks, Asia. Just on the coffee table is fine.”
&n
bsp; “Of course, Mr. Parr.” Asia settled the tray on the coffee table and poured out his coffee. “So Tiffany came back to her parents’ house yesterday.”
The floor rocked under Jericho’s feet, even though he was pretty sure Connecticut did not have many earthquakes.
He frowned. “Is her leg okay?”
Asia nodded. “As far as I know, she’s fine. Her coach told her to come home for a week and rest before final preparations for her big tournament during the first week of September.”
Jericho went back to his spreadsheets. “As long as she’s okay, that’s all that matters. Thank you for bringing breakfast.”
“Don’t you want to see her?”
The numbers on the computer screen smeared as his eyes focused somewhere beyond them. “I don’t think she wants to see me.”
“And why do you say that?”
Jericho sighed, not wanting to rehash their breakup at six-thirty in the morning. “She made it pretty clear, and she was probably right.”
“Have you been in touch with her?” Asia asked him.
Was this interrogation actually Tiffany’s family questioning him as to whose fault their breakup was? The Master Sergeant was probably glad to see the last of Jericho, anyway. “I tried texting her a few times, mostly apologies. She didn’t answer, and she didn’t tell me she was coming back to town.” A thought wormed its way into Jericho’s head about who Asia might be asking on behalf of. “Did she ask you about me?”
Asia shrugged.
Jericho closed the computer and turned his chair to face Tiffany’s cousin. “Did she ask you about me?”
She flipped her hand toward the window like she was flinging away something stupid he’d said. “At least three times a week and often every day, but she asked without asking, if you know what I mean.”
This must be one of those woman things because Jericho was clueless. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Asia sighed at him. “She asked how the golf club was doing, and she asked what was being done to the golf club, and she asked whether you were still around, and she asked how many breakfasts you were ordering. And she asked whether you were golfing and what you were scoring. She asked how your shoulder was.”
“My shoulder’s been fine for years.”
“Yeah, but she couldn’t ask me how you were doing because then I’d know.”
Jericho watched Asia, wondering if this was a setup somehow. Maybe Tiffany’s Marine father had decided to kill Jericho anyway and was trying to get him alone in the forest somewhere to do the deed.
And yet, hope lightened his soul so much that he nearly floated out of his desk chair. “Are you sure she wants to see me?”
“Jericho Parr, I am Tiffany’s cousin. We’re besties, she’s my sis, and we’re fam. We were baptized together, we went through all of school together, and I held her hair back the first time she got drunk and threw it all up. I know everything about that girl. I know things about that girl that she doesn’t know about herself, and she wants to see you, even if she doesn’t know it yet.”
And yet, Jericho did not want to talk to Tiffany under her father’s steely-eyed gaze. “I think her father might try to kill me.”
“Oh, yeah. Master Sergeant Jones will definitely try to kill you. How about Imani and I get her over to Newcastle Golf Club so you two can talk?”
Jericho walked over to the coffee table, opened his wallet, and started throwing hundred-dollar bills onto the tip plate on the tray. “Tell me when to stop.”
Asia watched the paper money settle on the tray. “You can’t buy me with your money, but I’ll take it anyway. Three more.”
The Tour
Tiffany
On the Sunday afternoon after she arrived back at her parents’ house, Tiffany stood in the parking lot of the Newcastle Country Club with her cousins and said, “I don’t like it. This is a bad idea. Are you sure Jericho’s not going to be here?”
The three girls watched the construction equipment crawl by, enormous tires grating on the gravel of the parking lot as they billowed exhaust and burning oil from the roaring diesel engines.
Asia had not been kidding when she’d said that there were more backhoes and bulldozers in the golf club’s parking lot than there were sports cars. The sports cars were parked on the mown field across the street. The clubhouse was half-built, and construction equipment tore some walls down while workers framed others.
Past the driving range, an enormous new building rose from behind the range’s netting and hovered in the warm afternoon air. Cranes poked the sky over its rounded roof.
Tiffany pointed to it. “What the hell is that?”
Imani stood beside her, arms crossed while she fidgeted from one foot to the other. “That must be the stadium or casino or whatever the heck Parr got the building permits for. Seriously, it’s over a hundred yards long inside. It could hold a football field, and there’s a huge parking lot on the other side of it. Asia, I do not know why you thought coming here was a good idea. Tiffany needs to walk away and leave this grunt forever.”
Asia waved her hands. “I didn’t say we were here to see anyone. We are here to see what is going on with her club. Come on, let’s go see what he did to the driving range.”
Tiffany shook her head. “I don’t want to get mad. I don’t need to be mad. I need to rest and not do anything that causes inflammation for a few days, and then I’m going back to Tennessee State and Coach Robinson. Murderous rage causes inflammation.”
“I’m sure you’re not going to have any reason to feel murderous rage,” Asia said as she started walking through the parking lot toward the driving range. “The driving range looks longer. Didn’t you always say that your drives were hitting the netting in the back, so you couldn’t calibrate how far they were going?”
Tiffany looked at her. “You were listening?”
“Of course, I was listening, sis. I’m always listening.”
That didn’t make Tiffany feel any better. “You say the driving range is longer?”
“Yeah, but he was starting to do that before you even left, right? Did you bring your golf clubs?”
“They’re in the trunk of my car, but I don’t need to hit balls. You said we were here just to look.”
Asia shrugged. “Why don’t you just grab your clubs? Even though you need to rest while you’re here, you probably shouldn’t entirely stop practicing, right? You should probably hit just a few balls.”
Asia was right. Entirely laying off golf for an entire week would be detrimental to her game, and Tiffany couldn’t afford that if she wanted to win at the qualifying tournament.
And she wanted to win the qualifying tournament.
So, Tiffany wrestled her clubs out of the back of her car and flipped the backpack-style straps over her shoulders, and they set off down the path through the meadow toward the driving range with her clubs clanking on her back.
The grass around the path mown into the meadow was late-summer high and brittle as hay, and they tramped single-file toward the driving range. Connecticut must have been getting a lot of rain lately because the soil had eroded around some of the large stones embedded in the earth, and Tiffany stepped carefully lest she twist her ankle or worse.
As they got closer, a row of skinny kids wearing matching red golf shirts occupied the driving range.
Tiffany pointed at them. “Is that the NFA golf team?”
“You tell me,” Asia said. “How am I supposed to know? I don’t know who’s supposed to be here.”
As they got closer, Tiffany saw they were indeed the high school golf team she had coached, and the skinny girl on the end was Latoya Miller, who about came out of her shoes when she spotted Tiffany walking up to the driving range.
Latoya sprinted across the field, yelling, “Coach Tiffany! Coach Tiffany! Are you a professional golfer? Are you on the LPGA Tour? Why are you walking funny?”
Tiffany caught Latoya as the teenager launched herself and hugged her. “I’m no
t walking funny. I’m not not walking funny. I had a limp because I was wearing a brace. But my leg got fixed, so I’m not limping anymore.”
“They said you were down at TSU for the summer.”
Tiffany told her the whole story. “And I’m just back for a few days before I train even harder for a qualifying tournament.”
Latoya was practically dancing with excitement. “Come see my swing. I got rid of the reverse pivot.”
Tiffany thanked the golf gods Latoya had finally gotten over her wicked reverse pivot, and they walked down to the driving range. She squinted as they got closer. “What’s that on the other side of the caddie shack?”
The tees of the driving range that were occupied by the high school golf team were just as they used to be, and then there was the little shack for the range attendants and bag boys, and then there was another section of the driving range that was occupied by some club members she knew and a whole bunch of members she didn’t.
Latoya told her, “That’s the new driving range. Didn’t you know about that? It’s made it so much easier for the team to get range time because we don’t have to squeeze in between all the leagues.”
She asked Latoya, “So, are you allowed to practice here?”
“Yeah, why wouldn’t we be? If anything, we’re practicing more. Coach has us playing eighteen holes every day, and we’re going to be able to practice over the winter here, too.”
Tiffany didn’t have time to ask Latoya what she meant about practicing golf during the winter in snowy, bitterly cold Connecticut. Instead, she walked around the side of the caddie shack and trotted down an embankment with her bag on her back as she watched her feet, making sure she didn’t step in a hole or on a rock and destroy her knee and her life goals again, and she peered at the new section of the driving range.
Three bays down stood a tall, muscular man whom she absolutely, positively didn’t want to see. He wore a red NCC staff golf shirt and khaki athletic pants, just like when she’d first seen him in the bag room months before. “No frickin’ way.”
Under Parr Page 21
