by Britt Morrow
That was quite a few years back though, right after his NFL career ended and before he would have to confront the reality of comparatively paltry coaching cheques. I wonder if he saved enough to maintain the lifestyle, or if he’s living in a vinyl-sided box now. For the sake of my sanity, I chose to envision him in the latter.
“Is there a reason you’re calling?” He asks irritably.
I wonder if there’s a reason that he picked up. If it was just morbid curiosity at why an inmate would be calling him, or out of a sense of lingering guilt over how everything transpired all those years ago, or maybe he was always expecting that I would eventually get in touch with him.
“I need your help.” It galls me to have to admit that, but I don’t have any other options.
I stopped answering Jeremiah and Gabrielle’s letters shortly after I was incarcerated - I didn’t want to have to talk about Charlie or explain my decision to take the plea. George made an effort to keep in touch; he even showed up for visitation on a semi-regular basis until he got too ill. He passed away a couple of years into my sentence. He got brain cancer, probably from all the stress that I caused him - just a little more devastation for me to leave in my wake.
The cancer overtook him within a matter of months. He called me the week before he died to tell me that I was right: sometimes it’s better just to succumb. I don’t know why then, nearly fifteen years after that conversation, I’ve got the sudden urge to fight my circumstances again.
“With what?”
“Nash. I need you to find him.”
“I’m a football coach, not a private investigator.”
“You don’t have to investigate anything. I know where he is.”
“Then why are you calling me instead of him?”
“Well, I don’t know exactly where he is,” I explain. “But I have enough information for you to track him down.”
“And do what? Convince him to come visit his estranged father in prison?” Colt challenges.
“No, nothing like that. I just want to know that he’s doing alright.”
I’d thought a lot about writing to him, at least during the early years of my incarceration when the media was still interested in me. I thought I could maybe leverage the skills of one of the investigative journalists who continually wrote to me: an interview in exchange for some information. I ultimately decided against it, though. Regardless of how things were going in his life, the revelation that his biological father was imprisoned for murder certainly wouldn’t improve anything.
Recently though, I’ve been thinking about him with increasing frequency. He’s the same age now that I was when I met Charlie. Old enough to understand deprivation and ardor and desperation, although I hope that he hasn’t experienced any of them. And young enough to still understand impulsivity and recklessness, although I hope he’s mature enough not to have acted on them. He’s at the age where he could maybe understand what happened. I’m not yet sure if I want him to, though.
I’ve caused more than enough havoc, ruined at least four lives: Brandi, Earl, Charlie, George. I don’t want to add Nash to that list. I just need to know that he’s happy and well-adjusted and better off without me in his life.
“What do you know?”
“I know that his parents are named Faye and Wyatt Sullivan and that they used to attend the Fairways Church of Christ in Lebanon.”
The names were both printed neatly at the top of the papers George asked me to sign. Solid folks, he assured me, who attended the same church as himself and the Johnsons. They’d been struggling with fertility for a while, he confided. I’m sure Gabrielle had a hand in the arrangement, but I didn’t ask.
“That’s not a lot to go on. How many Sullivans do you think there are in Lebanon?”
“Wyatt Sullivan owns a landscaping business, you can probably find him online,” I urge.
Wyatt has a successful landscaping company, and Faye is a nurse at the county hospital. Nash will have a good, stable life with them, George had assured me.
“And then what?”
I didn’t think I’d ever get this far. I didn’t think that Colt would pick up and that, if he did, the conversation would only last long enough for him to confirm that I’m still wasting away in prison. I never thought he would actually entertain my plan, which, to be honest, I haven’t entirely thought through.
“I don’t know. Attend the church a few times,” I tell him, continuing on despite Colt’s snort of derision. “Try to strike up a conversation with Nash and see if he’s doing alright.”
“I’m pretty sure that striking up conversations with underage kids is going to land me in the same place as you,” he replies sarcastically.
“Please, Colt.”
Despite the urgency in my tone, he doesn’t reply.
“I know you don’t owe me anything. But do it for Charlie if nothing else.” I promised myself that I wouldn’t beg. But I’m not above invoking his dead sister if that’s what it’s going to take.
I hear him take a slow sip of something. It’s only eleven a.m., but I imagine that it’s whiskey. If only because that’s exactly what I could use right now.
“I’ll let you know what I find, Chief,” he finally responds. For once, the nickname doesn’t sound disparaging.
After everything we’ve been through, any faith that I have in Colt is probably misplaced, though. Not that it matters, it’s been over seventeen years since I’ve had anything left to lose.
Epilogue
Colt
Getting the call from Levi surprised me, but it probably shouldn’t have. I was always expecting it to come; I just thought it would happen sooner. I initially thought about ignoring it or hanging up mid-conversation. Later, I considered ignoring his request. He robbed me of my entire family; nobody would blame me for shutting him out. I tried convincing myself that that was true for a few days, but the falseness of it kept nagging at me. Nash is family too. And, as much as I want to despise Levi, I really can’t. I’ve never been nearly as smart as he is, but I’m also not stupid enough to fail to recognize that he’s serving out a prison sentence that should be mine. I didn’t know Earl was touching her, but I should have. It was my duty as her brother. A duty Earl tasked me with, in fact: take care of her. I was never one to take my responsibilities seriously. But Levi was. He fulfilled it for me, even though it was too late. The least I can do is accomplish this one request for him. It’s something that I should have done a long time ago.
Locating Nash wasn’t as hard as I expected. There are a lot of Sullivans in Tennessee, but apparently, only one who’s a landscaper. One who happens to live in the county back where Levi and I grew up, not Lebanon. I should have stopped my search right then: that had to be a bad omen. I was too invested by then though, my curiosity overwhelming. It took me less than twenty minutes of Google searching to find Wyatt Sullivan, and only half of that to figure out how I would connect with Nash. There’s still only one high school in the county, and it turns out that Nash is running it the way Levi and I used to: a “star” receiver, to quote the local paper. The word star should be taken with a grain of salt, though; the county hasn’t grown any, or developed any interests beyond football, since I left.
At that point, I was too invested to give up. I tracked the football team’s progress closely, showing up to games incognito in a ball cap and aviators. I’m still the biggest thing that’s ever happened in that town. Well, either me or my father’s murder. Reaching out to Nash was a gamble; he’s talented, but it’s debatable whether he’s genuinely gifted enough for a university coach to be showing so much interest. I was worried that someone might put the pieces together: the great Colt Wright and his orphan nephew. I was giving the local rednecks way too much credit, though. The baby who went into foster care was never part of the murder storyline; there was nothing salacious to say about him, so the media never latched on. Earl, Levi, Charlie and I made for much better characters.
I did exactly as Levi asked:
made sure that Nash was doing alright. That much seemed pretty evident after only a few games. His parents were at every one, encouraging him without pushing, and interacting warmly with the other parents. I went to a few practices too, just to get a better read on Nash. He came off as friendly and popular with his teammates, well-fed, and free of questionable bruises. That probably would have been enough information to satisfy Levi, but I needed more. I know better than anyone how easy it is to hide things.
So I befriended Nash. Or became as close to friends as possible given the nearly two decades that separate us. Over the past six months, I’ve cultivated a relationship with him. inviting him for coffees or the occasional lunch ostensibly to talk football and his potential role on the team.
I thought I could overcome my failure to Charlie. That, eventually, the success, the women, and the booze would provide enough distractions that she’d rarely surface in my memory. I’ve done everything in my power to eliminate any reminders of her. Prior to my interactions with Nash, I’d never returned to my hometown. I kept the few possessions of hers that I’d retained boxed up in a dusty corner of my basement. I was never callous enough to throw them away, but also not resilient enough to display them anywhere. I’ve toted her possessions across the state with me through half a dozen moves. They’ve outlasted a hurricane, my two beloved dogs, and more relationships than I can count. It took me over seventeen years to even open the box in which they’re contained, but I could always picture it distinctly: an old wound that still pains me from time to time.
Thoughts of Levi haven’t been much easier to erase. I’ll never forget his stare: grey-blue eyes rendered even more steely by his outrage while I tried to deny Earl’s abusiveness on the stand. I can’t even say why I did it, exactly. I was naive, but not naive enough to think that denying Earl was a predator would make it untrue.
I realize now that forgetting them won’t absolve me, though. What I should really be seeking is forgiveness. Securing their offspring’s future is the only way I can think of that might come close to achieving it.
After the first couple of times that I went to watch Nash play, I finally worked up the courage to open Charlie’s box of belongings. I’d made up my mind to offer Nash the scholarship, my reputation as a coach who pursues only the best players be damned. I finally felt worthy of addressing her - what I had left of her anyway. It wasn’t much: her waitressing uniform from Pete’s, a little turquoise ring that she didn’t take off once in the last few weeks that I spent with her, and some notebooks. To see that her entire vivacious life could be distilled to so little was heart-wrenching. I kept going though, leafing through the spiral-bound notebooks that contained all of her GED studying. She’d been so close. Another month, she’d told me proudly when I returned home from university. Just a few short weeks until she’d be ready to take the exam, and the only subject she had left to study for was her favorite: biology.
I scanned the last few pages of her notes. Her loopy cursive describing phenotypes and recessive traits, how the offspring of two blue-eyed parents would also have blue eyes.
I was hoping that going through Charlie’s things would give me some kind of closure, an answer to why someone with so much potential would throw it all away. There was no resolution to be found there, though. She may have lost Levi, but she still had his son, and her decision to abandon them both is as unfathomable to me as ever.
“Take your next right up here,” Nash instructs, bringing me back to the present.
I’m relieved to be passing the turnoff leading to my old trailer: the site of my final interaction with Charlie. The further we get, the more I can feel my breathing and heart rate slow to a normal cadence. Nash remains oblivious, probably daydreaming about his future.
The area that he’s directing me towards is one that I know well; it’s where Cody used to live. Last I heard, he was selling insurance out in Houston, providing a decent life for his pretty wife and two kids. His parents still live here though, in a tidy bungalow nestled among a few rows of equally charming, well-kept homes. This is the rich area of town. The homes aren’t much bigger than the double-wides scattered across the rest of the county, but their construction is more solid, and their yards are devoid of trash or abandoned vehicles.
“This house, right here,” Nash points to a grey bungalow with white trim. It’s reassuringly neat and inviting: a quintessential southern home, front porch swing and all.
Nash’s father, Wyatt, is outside mowing the lawn.
“I can’t wait to tell my dad the good news,” Nash announces, hopping out of the Porsche before it even comes to a full stop.
Mom. Dad. Nash never refers to them as anything other than his parents. I wonder if he even knows that he’s adopted.
“I’m going to the University of Tennessee!” He exclaims over the hum of the motor.
I watch the eager way he and Wyatt embrace as I slowly get out of the car, and fervently hope that he never finds out. I have an old knee injury that bothers me sometimes, but I’m playing it up more than necessary, moving extra gingerly so that I can watch their warm exchange for a few seconds longer. Levi will want to know the details.
Wyatt shakes my hand, enthusiastically expressing his appreciation. He doesn’t know that I should be the one expressing my appreciation to him. Levi’s lawyer made sure that the circumstances surrounding Nash’s adoption were never revealed. Levi was afraid that being the son of a murderer and grandson of a rapist would deter good folks from adopting him. Even being the nephew of an NFL star can't compensate for that.
To Wyatt, I’m nothing more than a benevolent stranger.
“Seriously, thank you so much,” Nash tells me earnestly. When he smiles, his eyes are almost identical to Charlie’s, aside from their deep brown color.
It’s only then that the realization finally dawns.
“You’re welcome.” It’s all I can manage, already backing away to the car. I need to get out of here before I vomit. I know that I should make some kind of excuse to explain my rapid departure, but I can’t bear to stand there for a moment longer. I need to be alone with my dismay.
Charlie was always so much smarter and more perceptive than me, that much isn’t a revelation. Nor is the fact that she was that much stronger and more enigmatic. The only truly shocking discovery is the extent of her suffering, her secretiveness, and my own naiveté.
They say that blood is thicker than water. It was all just one crimson watery consistency when I found Charlie in the bathtub, though. Opaque enough at first that I couldn’t figure out the source of her wounds. Initially, I thought that maybe she’d ruptured some of her stitches from childbirth and passed out from the blood loss. But I just needed to focus on the source of the blood, and then it all became clear.
Acknowledgements
Thank you Papa M for your unwavering support of all my endeavours, no matter how ridiculous. And to Jocelyne and Ash, whose intrepidness inspires me to dream bigger. Thank you also to Carleen for showing me that all it takes is a little bravery and a lot of dedication to be successful on a less conventional path.
About The Author
Britt Morrow
Britt completed a Bachelor of Commerce in Finance, all three levels of the CFA, and a law degree before finally pursuing her passion for writing. She lives in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains where she can be found running ultramarathons, standing front row at a concert, or binge-listening to true crime podcasts.
Love in Vein is her first novel. You can follow her latest adventures and get updates on her current writing endeavors @brittjmorrow.
For inquiries contact [email protected]
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