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Travis stopped. It was an innocent game of flag football, but his eyes scanned the field. He couldn’t find Makenna or Paige and he suddenly started to sweat as a memory, his past, began strangling him.

It was the day of John’s wedding. Travis had been in the bathroom throwing up when his father knocked on the door of the stall.

“Just a minute.”

“Trav, are you in there? What the hell’s going on? We’re about to start.”

Travis was standing in the parking lot of St. Christopher’s Private School a grown man, his brother had been married over ten years, and yet there he was in a full-color version of that day. He struggled to get his shit together, could still hear the parents and kids cheering in the present, but the memory moved forward. Travis leaned up against the cool stone of the building as if he could somehow brace himself.

He’d come out of the stall a few minutes later and splashed water on his face. Wrestling with the cinch of his tuxedo necktie, his father took him by the shoulders.

“Were you throwing up in there?”

Travis had nodded. Jesus, he’d only been twenty-two years old and still broken and in a knee brace.

“Okay, I want you to listen to me. Your brother deserves this day. This isn’t about you, got it? We’re a team and when one of us is winning, we’re all winning.”

He’d blinked at his father, smelling the beer on his breath, and given up that day. There had been times before their little bathroom chat that Travis had been defiant, “spirited,” as his mother used to say with her PTA smile. But that day, minutes before his brother was about to marry his ex-girlfriend, was the day his father finally cashed in all those years of football practice and “go team” bullshit. That day he’d been strangled, and not just by his tux. It was the day he caved, gave up, and started taking it for the team.

Travis squeezed his eyes closed, trying to drown out the sounds and kill the memory, but when he opened them, he suddenly remembered why he’d run from all of this bullshit. His life would never be about this—dads living through their sons, cheering crowds, and happy team picture bullshit—ever again. It didn’t matter what school or which field, he wouldn’t spend one more minute on anyone’s team.

He pushed off the building, looked for Kenna and Paige one more time, and then turned to leave. He knew with every fiber of his being that what he was doing was wrong, that he needed to get a grip and get in there for Paige, but he didn’t, couldn’t.

As his bike roared away from the school, his mind began to clear. He wasn’t sure what the hell happened back there, but something was very wrong. His freshman year in college, he’d gone to see a counselor to help get over his injury. He remembered her saying that once a problem started to adversely affect your life, your present life, it was time to deal with it. He pulled into the parking garage of his apartment, and he had a feeling he’d arrived at that point.

The idea of a field day for kindergartners sounded absurd to Makenna until she walked to the back field of the school and saw her daughter dressed in a black-and-white T-shirt that said Conroy across the back. She was standing with her class and when she turned around to wave, she had a little black line under each eye like Tom Brady, but cuter and with pigtails. That sight alone was worth signing up to volunteer and standing by the long jump to watch tiny legs do the impossible.

She was manning her station with Kim, Brianna’s mom. Makenna noticed when Paige started school that all of the women introduced themselves with their name quickly followed by their child or children’s names. Makenna had gone from simply, “Hi, I’m Makenna,” to “Hi, I’m Makenna, but you probably know me as Paige’s mom.”

Being a parent was interesting,
Kenna thought. The caring, mothering part had come naturally to her, even organically, but the public persona of a “mommy” was proving a little trickier. She’d never thought of Paige as an extension of herself. When she was born, it was as though she was this magical person who, by some fate, Kenna was allowed to borrow for a while. There wasn’t anything wrong with being connected to her daughter—it was just change. Her baby was now becoming a tiny person in her own right, which filled Kenna with pride, but also put her in uncharted waters, with no one to share it with. She noticed the “single” part of single mom a little more these days, especially in the larger context of school. Kenna knew she sounded weird, which was why she normally kept to herself and simply smiled. She would probably never know if other women felt the same because for as long as she could remember, she was younger than most of them and always on the fringe. She wasn’t willing to risk looking like the crazy widowed farm girl. Dear God, it would be so nice if her mind would take a break every once in a while.

Paige ran over and grabbed her arm.

“Hey, you look great. I’m at the long jump, so I’ll get to watch you in a little while.”

“Okay. Is My Travis here yet, because Coach Sweaters needs him for the relay.”

Kenna looked toward the entrance to the field and then to the parking lot.

“I don’t see him yet. Maybe he was caught up at the restaurant.”

Paige looked around with a mix of frenzy and excitement as two of her friends joined her.

“Mama, this is Kiley and Amanda, they’re my friends.”

Kenna shook hands, and then one of the teachers called the girls over to their starting point. It looked like Paige would begin with the beanbag toss.

Kenna glanced at the parking lot again and then took out her phone. No messages.

“Did you want to work the measuring tape or the clipboard?” Kim, Brianna’s mom, asked.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I’ll take the clipboard.” Makenna tried to smile and slipped her phone back into the pocket of her shorts.

Thirty minutes later, they were on their second batch of high jumpers and Kenna took one more glance toward the entrance to the field. She knew he wasn’t coming and even though there could be a completely understandable reason, she also knew there wasn’t.

He wasn’t coming because he didn’t want to be there. It seemed things had finally gotten too complicated for Travis McNulty. It was one thing to make lunches, sneak sex here and there, show up at a birthday party, or even go out on a handful of great dates, but field day represented the R word. Responsibility was the unsexy part of life. It was often bigger than what could fit on the back of a motorcycle.

Kenna shouldn’t have been surprised, but when one of the gym teachers came over to ask her if “Paige’s friend” would be there for any of the relay station shifts, something hit her square in the center of her chest. Pain, anger, probably a mixture of the two. She apologized, said something had come up at the restaurant, that Travis wouldn’t be able to make it. Then she pulled her baseball cap down and did what she’d done her whole life—she moved on.

After two more hours of “working the clipboard” as Kim had put it, Makenna had only seen her daughter for about five minutes. Wasn’t seeing your child the only reason parents volunteered for this stuff anyway? She took a sip of the water bottle someone had given her and sent her father a picture. She looked for Paige at the other stations and realized that St. Christopher’s field day was huge. There were activities on three different fields and the basketball courts. She scanned the crowd for their name on the back of a T-shirt or for Paige’s pigtails. They’d tied green ribbon in them that morning, but as she looked around, it seemed other parents chose green too.

Kenna recorded another little boy’s three-foot long jump, which was pretty impressive because he was barely over that height himself, and finally found Paige. She was at the relay station and her pigtails were flying as she approached another girl and handed her the stick. Kenna leaned forward to get a better look because it seemed like her line was winning. She turned back to her station. Even though her heart was threatening to do a long jump of its own, she wrote down the last little girl’s distance. Kim said she was “going to run and use the little girl’s room.”

Happy for the break, she stood there wondering why it had become so important for Travis to be at St. Christopher’s field day. What did it say about her parenting skills, her survival skills for that matter, for her to have let love creep in and disrupt her world? She sat down at one of the picnic tables. She would have put her head between her legs the way they illustrated in the emergency landing instructions, but she didn’t want to scare the children.

A guy who had introduced himself earlier as the gym teacher blew a whistle and then instructed everyone through a megaphone that field day was now over. He thanked the parents and guardians for all of their help and then told the kids to return to their homeroom teachers. Paige ran over and gave Kenna a hug.

“Did My Travis call?”

“He did,” she lied, not even flinching because there was no way she was telling her little girl that she’d been left, ignored. “There was an emergency at the restaurant and he had to stay there. He was so sorry he missed it, but he said to bring your lunch box by and he’d make something special for lunch.”

Paige looked concerned at first. “Is he okay? He’s not hurt?”

Not
yet
, Makenna thought. “No, he’s fine.”

“Okay, good. It’s not a biggie; we have a field day every year, so maybe he can come next year. Or, you know what he could do? The carnival. That would be fun,” Paige said and kneeled to tie the laces of the new purple tennis shoes they’d bought for field day. It was good Makenna had a minute, because she was stunned by her daughter’s recovery time. Paige was such an incredible energy, a light in her life, that sometimes Makenna wondered who was raising who.

“Did you see me run? My new shoes were lightning bugs!”

“I did. I think you won some of those prizes.”

Paige nodded and took her hand. “Thanks for coming, Mama.” She brushed off the front of her shorts. “I have to go back to my classroom now.”

Makenna bent down and kissed her daughter. She held her in a hug until Paige squirmed; then she watched her run back to class. After making her way through the front office and apologizing again for Travis not showing up and leaving them short on volunteers, Makenna climbed into her Jeep. She sat for a moment and put her hands to her face. She was pissed at him, angry that he hadn’t even bothered to call, but it all felt like so much more than simple anger. She was filled with a need to “circle the wagons,” as her father would say, and there was this weird sense of protectiveness. The only problem was Makenna wasn’t sure which child she was protecting.

Chapter Thirty

M
akenna could feel him circling the next morning. He’d called her last night, a few times, but she and Paige had made spaghetti and watched
Monsters, Inc.
She’d ignored his calls. After tucking Paige in, complete with burrito extra cheese, Makenna had moved the couch to the other wall in their living room. It looked good and made the whole room new. She proceeded to do every bit of laundry in the house, including the dish towels and bath mats. After hosing off the patio, she crawled into bed and tried to read. Her house was clean; her daughter was asleep and tucked into her magic forest room. She set her book aside, clicked off the light on her nightstand, and stared up at the ceiling. This was her life, she told herself, her perfectly restored world, and everything was in order. She cried herself to sleep, woke up early, and made breakfast. At The Yard, she silently ran through the back kitchen as Paige picked up her lunch from Travis. He was standing there, Paige’s lunch box dangling from his finger as if nothing had happened. He and Paige talked while Makenna grabbed invoices off Logan’s desk, and then they were back in the car on their way to school. Makenna had not said a word to him; she wasn’t sure where to start. It wasn’t until two hours before opening when Travis finally took a seat across from her at the corner bar table.

“I’m sorry.” He tried to take her hand across the table. She didn’t pull back but didn’t move at all. “I’d just finished dealing with Avery and when I got to the school—this is going to sound so strange—I couldn’t go in.”

“Wait, you were there? Why were you dealing with Avery?” Kenna could have kicked herself. She had decided to say nothing, to not give him the satisfaction of a conversation, but some part of her, probably her heart, hoped he had an explanation.

“Yeah, long story short, Avery and John are having a baby and she wanted to deliver the news personally because that’s totally healthy, right?”

She didn’t laugh. She could barely look at him.
Was I supposed to laugh, really?

“So, I was kind of reeling from that conversation and then I had this weird flashback memory thing. I just left, and I’m sorry.”

Makenna finally looked up from her laptop, her face now burning.

Travis ran his hand over his clearly sleep-deprived face and continued. “I’m not sure what happened to me, but being at the school and hearing those parents, those fathers cheering, I lost it. I know I sound like a complete idiot, but I couldn’t go in. How’d it go? Paige said she got two ribbons.”