It’s the only eatery in Good Grief, and yes, it serves alcohol, so it doubles as a bar, but it also has the best fries in the Pacific Northwest and possibly the entire United States.
They’re reasonably priced, too.
I place an order of fries, which is big enough to be a meal, and they really don’t need ketchup or any condiments, but I like barbecue sauce on them, and a drink, then I lean back in my seat, putting my hand over the bench back, and look out the window.
I hadn’t really gotten to spend much time with Claire after we got in our separate cars. We didn’t spend much time at the assisted care facility, since Leah had everyone ready for us.
I ended up with three men, and we spent an hour and a half wandering through the sporting goods section of the department store.
None of them ended up buying anything, but they seemed to have a great time just looking.
I actually had a pretty good time watching them and listening to their stories about the hunting and the fishing they’d done over their lives, and one of them had been a bear trapper, and boy, did he have stories to tell. I hadn’t even realized people did that for a living.
I suppose spending time with older folk just naturally lends itself to contemplation.
And I wonder what I will be talking about when I am their age.
Their age feels a lot closer now than it did when I was in high school.
I wonder if I will look back on my life and wish I’d done things differently.
That is almost a given. Since I already look back on my life and some mistakes I’ve made and wish I’d not been stupid.
Of course, there are lessons I learned because of those mistakes, lessons I wouldn’t have learned otherwise, and I could hardly resent that.
“Trey Haywood. I’d heard you were back in town. I figured I’d run into you eventually.”
I jerk my head away from the window at the familiar voice from my past.
Mr. Woodley, the basketball coach through my high school years, the one who’d coached when we won the state championship and I’d been chosen as an all-state baller.
He and I go way back, and I have the greatest amount of respect for him.
I slide out of the booth and stand up, holding my hand out. “Mr. Woodley. It’s great to see you.” I look around. There’s no one with him.
My brows push together as I try to remember if I’ve heard anything about his wife.
I know he had one.
They had the team over every year at the end of the season for a big barbecue at their house. It was always winter and freezing cold. We had a huge bonfire, and we’d go sledding and ice skating. It lasted all night and was always a ton of fun. I never really talked to his wife much, but any woman who would have a group of guys over and let them have free range of her home and property, who would cook for them without complaint and make enough desserts to fill two tables, is a good woman in my book.
As we finish our handshake, I say, “Are you here by yourself? Would you like to sit with me?”
A ghost of a cloud passes over Mr. Woodley’s eyes, and I wish in a small way that I hadn’t said anything. But in another way, I’m glad I did, because he nods.
“I’d love that, son. Mrs. Woodley passed away five years ago, and it gets a little lonely without her. I get tired of my own company, and I get really tired of eating by myself.”
A little grin tilts up one side of his mouth, and I remember that look from my basketball years. Mr. Woodley has a great sense of humor, although he pushed us to what we thought were our limits and then beyond. I’ll be forever grateful for the lessons he taught me and in particular for the fact that he showed me that I could do a lot more than what I thought I could.
He slides into the seat across from me. “I get even more tired of cooking for myself. It stinks.”
“I can relate to that. I’m a terrible cook.”
“Your wife died?”
“No. She claimed I was immature and only interested in myself, and she left me for a guy who apparently was better than that.”
I guess it is my turn to be a little sad. I suppose I am well over my wife.
A person can kill love really fast with insults and the kinds of degrading comments she hurled at me what felt like nonstop the last year we were together, but I didn’t just lose my wife. I lost my family, my boys, the home I thought I’d built, even my cats. It stunk. Especially since I don’t even know what I could have done differently to have kept it all.
One side of Mr. Woodley’s mouth pulls back, and he nods slowly. “Kids nowadays don’t have the grit to work on their marriages. They expect everything to be handed to them, and they walk out when things get hard.” He shakes his head. “I know there are two sides to every story, but I wasn’t really talking about you.”
“I know,” I say, even though he could have been. I’m sure I could have done more. The thing was, I was willing to work on it; she just didn’t give me a chance.
“But surely there are some happier things we can talk about.”
I nod and smile, and then wait while the waitress takes his order and walks away.
We catch up on some of what he’s been doing, when he retired, and the cancer that took his wife. I talk about my job in Seattle and how I moved back in with my dad when he had the stroke. I tell him I don’t plan on staying, just hanging out long enough to make sure he gets back on his feet and maybe adopts a few healthier habits.
“He’s pretty young,” Mr. Woodley says.
“Almost sixty,” I agree. “He should have lots of good life left, if he’ll listen to the doctor.”
“Habits are hard to change.”
“That’s true. But he’s pretty motivated. The stroke scared him, and I think he has a lady he’s interested in.”
“I’d love to see that happen for him. He and your mother were perfect soulmates, and when he lost her, he lost a huge part of himself. It took him a long time to get over that.”
I unwrap my straw, studying it very carefully. Giving it much more attention than it needs as I put it in the drink the waitress has just set down.
One of the worst things about coming back to Good Grief is the way the memories that I haven’t even thought about in years kind of sneak up on me at the oddest times.
The sadness that I thought I’d put behind me forever twists my heart. I miss my mom. I miss having a mom and dad. I miss the family atmosphere that we created together when I was with them.
“I’m not sure if death is worse than divorce or not. If they were divorced, I would probably just be wishing that they were back together. Forever. I don’t think I’d ever give that up.”
It’s probably the way my boys feel, although I’ve never talked to them about it. My ex has said a lot of things about me to them—things that aren’t true—and when I am with them, I do everything I can to show them that I am not the man she claims I am.
I envy my dad the years he got to spend with his soulmate.
I never had that.
Maybe that is a little of the reason behind the longing for my mom. I just want someone who loves me no matter how bad I screw up. Who sees the best in me, even if there isn’t much of that to see, who is willing to give up whatever she needs to see to my happiness.
But even as I’m thinking that, I realize...I was never that for my ex. I never saw only the good in her. I never turned a blind eye to her mistakes and screwups, and I never gave up anything for her happiness. I was too concerned about my own.
But I didn’t want to pour my heart and soul into someone who wasn’t going to appreciate it. Who was going to take advantage of me.
Maybe that is the risk of love.
Maybe that risk is worth it, because if it works the way it is supposed to, I would end up with a woman who does the same for me—my soulmate.
I like that idea but don’t know how to start to reach for the reality it represents.
Mr. Woodley has taken a drink, and now I have to pull myself ou
t of my contemplation as he continues our conversation. “I don’t think kids ever do. But at least if your parents were divorced, you’d get to visit your mother.”
“But it would be so weird seeing her with another man. It’s hard enough to think about my dad and his interest in Mrs. Bogart. I’m happy for him, but it’s weird.”
“That’s what your kids are going to think when they see you dating someone else.”
“I know.” I don’t even bother to deny that I would date someone else.
I want to.
I want the family.
I want the house filled with love and laughter.
I want my soulmate.
Somehow, I think of Claire and her crazy ideas of what basketball practice entails.
Almost as though Mr. Woodley can sense my wandering thoughts, he says, “I heard you’re the assistant girls’ basketball coach.”
There’s not the slightest hint of a smile or humor on his face, and I have to deduce that either he doesn’t know about Claire and the way she runs her program, or he approves.
Both seem kind of impossible to me.
“Yeah. Claire Harding is the head coach.” I try to say that casually. “They had a winless season last year,” I add, even though I’m sure he knows it.
“Nowhere to go but up,” he says easily. He picks his drink up, taking a sip of his water and setting it back down carefully.
“That’s a great attitude.” I wish it were that easy. Even one win would be better than last season, but with the way Claire runs things, and with only four girls, I’m not holding out much hope that is going to happen.
“So what’s your role?” Mr. Woodley asks casually.
“What do you mean? I’m the assistant coach. I do whatever she tells me to.”
“And what has she told you to do?”
“Nothing. I just tagged along while she’s...” I look up at Mr. Woodley, and he is staring at me, listening, like he really wants to know what’s going on.
“Yeah?” he prompts when I trail off.
“I want to complain about her,” I say. And that’s really all I intend to say.
“So don’t. Just tell me what basketball practice is like. You had what, two?”
He’s as connected as I would have thought in this small town.
I twist my drink around and am grateful when the waitress interrupts us, setting my fries and barbecue sauce down in front of me and a salad down in front of Mr. Woodley.
It’s what I should have gotten, but it’s been so long since I have had their fries I couldn’t resist.
He lifts a brow at my fries and then says, “I’ll pray for the food.”
I nod and bow my head, remembering that back when I was in school, Mr. Woodley prayed in the locker room or on the bus before every game.
I appreciated that.
It made me feel good to think that I was working as hard as I could, and then God was picking up where I left off. It also seemed to my teenage self that God wouldn’t be able to say no to Mr. Woodley, where it wouldn’t be as hard for Him to say no to me.
Erroneous thinking, now that I am older, but it made me feel good as a teenager.
His prayer isn’t long, and he already has his fork picked up when I open my eyes and look back up.
“So, are you gonna tell me about it?”
I grin a little. “I’ve got a feeling you already know.”
“Maybe. But I’d like to hear about it from you.” He stabs a few pieces of lettuce and a cherry tomato, lifting them up. “Unless, of course, you don’t want to talk about it.”
“I would. I’d love some advice. I really don’t know what to do.”
“Talk away.”
So I tell him. I tell him about the fact that originally, she wasn’t going to have any basketball practices until the season started.
And then, when I talked her into starting practices now, she uses them as community benevolence.
That there are only four kids on the team. And one of those is a thirteen-year-old.
I end by telling him she promised that there would be actual basketball practice on Tuesday, and throwing a hand up, one with fries and barbecue sauce in it, I say, “I don’t know what to do. I don’t have the authority to demand we do something, anything, that would help the girls play better ball, and...” I pause here because I’m about to say something that I haven’t said to anyone. “I don’t want to fight with Claire. I like her.”
At that admission, which he probably knows I didn’t intend to make, Mr. Woodley smiles.
“You know, she never missed a game.”
I blink, not following him. “Huh?”
“Claire. She went to every single game you ever played.” Mr. Woodley sticks another forkful of salad in his mouth and chews, like he hasn’t just rocked my whole world.
Claire hates sports. She isn’t the slightest bit interested in basketball. She was in college when I was in high school. He has to be mistaken.
I look at my fries and try to wrap my brain around my arguments. He is wrong. Dead wrong. “She was in college. She graduated from high school before I even started playing.”
“She commuted. And yeah, we had some bad weather. She drove through it anyway. And I don’t know whether she adjusted her schedule so she didn’t have evening classes, or whether she skipped them. But she was there. For every game.”
I watch barbeque sauce drip off the fries I’m still holding, not really seeing it and blinking as each thought zips through my head.
Did Claire graduate from high school and all of a sudden develop some kind of love for basketball? What was she doing going to every game?
“How do you know this?”
“Don’t you remember what I used to tell you boys?”
“You told us a lot of things.” I wasn’t saying that sarcastically. It is true.
“I told you to practice trying to see everything. You needed to be able to sweep your eyes over the court and know what kind of defense the opposing team was playing, know where every player was, what direction they intended to go, and make split-second decisions based on everything you saw. You, especially, being point guard. You needed to know what play to set up, what defense you were going to run, and what kids to watch. You had to teach yourself to be observant and to not miss anything.”
I nod. He had. He had often showed us pictures, given us three seconds to look at them, and then asked us questions about them. Improving our powers of observation.
It’s what he claimed anyway.
“I practiced that myself,” he says. “I would sweep my eyes over the stands. Then, later, I’d see if I could remember who was there. My wife helped me.” He pauses here, and I know a little of the pinch of pain he must be feeling. Then he starts again. “It was something I’d gotten good at over the years. Just always learning, always trying to improve, always trying to be better. Because a coach needs to be able to do that too, you know. Have good powers of observation.”
I nod. There are tons of times I could think of off the top of my head where he had seen things on the floor that I hadn’t seen, but it stood to reason that he practiced and got better at catching the little details that really mattered in a game.
“I know.”
“That’s what I’m telling you. She was there every game. From the time you started in ninth grade, and you were good enough that you started, until your very last game, and every game in between—when you hit one thousand career points. When you hit two thousand career points. When you were named all-state. We went the whole way to Boise for the all-state game. She was there.”
“She had a boyfriend then.” I am sure of it. I think I might have mentioned the crush I had, although apparently it hadn’t made me observant enough to realize she attended every single one of my games. I hadn’t noticed at all.
“She might have. He never went to any games with her, though.” Mr. Woodley shrugs, and it stands to reason he wouldn’t have known if Claire had a boyfriend or
not. His focus was basketball.
“She sat alone?”
“Sometimes, she sat with a sister. But yeah. She sat alone.”
That changes things. When a person is in high school, or when a person graduates from high school and comes back for a game or whatever, they don’t want to be alone.
For Claire to want to go to a game bad enough that she would go by herself and sit by herself...she was serious about wanting to be there.
“Why do you think she was at all those games?” I finally ask. I’ve already had a thought in my head about it, but it feels kind of wrong that she would have been at those games because the team was so good, especially when she didn’t even like sports.
Mr. Harding had been about to put a bite of salad in his mouth, but he lowers his fork, and his eyes meet mine. His head tilts ever so slightly like he can’t believe I don’t know.
“You.”
My stomach and heart bump into each other, and it takes a bit for them to get straightened out.
In the meantime, I have trouble breathing.
My mouth opens and closes. Several times.
“Me? You think she was at the games because of me?”
“I was coaching the games. I really wasn’t staring at the stands, paying attention to what everyone was doing. But...” Here, his eyes twinkle. “You know my wife, she went to every game too. She called you guys her boys, since we never had children, and she loved you like her own. She’s the one who pointed out that the only player Claire watched was you.”
My mouth hangs open, like a broken screen door.
“After she said that to me, well, I was a coach, and I wanted to win, but yeah, I loved you boys like my own, just as much as she did. And I watched.” His eyes, old and full of wisdom, meet mine. “She was right. Claire went to those games, every single one of them, because of you.”
Chapter 14
Claire
ON FRIDAY, MR. HAYWOOD is my last client of the day. Of course, that is super nice since all I have to do to go home is walk next door. I even park my car in my driveway instead of his.
I have to admit I am a little nervous as I walk up the steps and onto the porch, knocking on the door.
Me and the Cute Catastrophe (Sweet, Small Town Romantic Comedy in Good Grief, Idaho Book 1) Page 10
