Dirty Tackle: A Football Romance (12 page)

I didn’t want to get any further into it than we already had, like her launching into a discussion about when exactly I was going to tell Shane about Scarlet and what exactly I was going to say. My mother needed to keep her nose out of that situation. I nodded my head and quickly made my way to my room.
 

As I was putting clothes into my bag, I heard a small knock on the door. I turned and saw my daughter standing there with a pensive look on her face.

“Where are you going, Mommy?” she asked.

Scarlet was precocious if she was anything. People told me all of the time that she looked just like me, but I knew that her skin tone and the fineness of her hair came from her father. To me, she looked like the spitting image of Shane.

There had been quite a bit of chatter around town when I had ended up pregnant and single. I have beat it out for college as soon as I could. Going to school and being heavily pregnant had been one of the most challenging experiences of my entire life. Luckily, my parents had been there to support me through all of that, and I needed to remember that before I got smart with my mother again. I had struggled then, and they were struggling now. I was supposed to be helping them, not making my mother feel bad.

I wondered again why had I been such an idiot. Looking into my daughter’s eyes made me think again that I had made the wrong decision for her all that time ago.

“It’s just for a couple days, honey,” I said. I patted the bed next to me, and she walked across the room and jumped up on it. She stared at me, and I wondered what she was thinking. She had started to ask questions recently about her father that made me more than a little uncomfortable. I hoped for her sake and for Shane’s that things would go smoothly once the initial shock wore off. I had to think that there was a way that maybe we could be a family. The idea was so far-fetched that it felt like some kind of fantasy.

“So Grandma will stay with me more,” she said looking down at her hands twisting in her lap.

Mommy guilt hit me hard. I paused in my packing and settled onto the bed next to her putting my arm around her. “I know I’ve been working longer hours with this new job. I haven’t been here as much as I wanted to. But I promise things will start settling soon.”

“Where you going?” she asked.

I thought about how to address this particular delicate situation without straight out lying to her. I decided a variation of the truth would be okay. “Mommy’s friend’s dad passed away today. He asked me if I would go with him to the funeral. I said that I would.”

“What’s your friend’s name?” she asked.
 

I groaned inwardly. “How about ice cream after dinner tonight? I’ll tell Grandma that you can have any flavor you want. Two scoops even!”

I could see that she had not forgotten her question despite her excitement about the ice cream. But, I thought that she understood I wasn’t ready to answer the question yet. My daughter was growing up too fast, and I thought that was probably because I was a single parent. I had to play both roles of mother and father, and that meant that she had to grow up far faster because she had to understand some things were too adult for her to know.
 

“Okay, Mommy,” she said. I gave her a hard hug.

“I promise I’ll call every night and say good night. Okay?”

She nodded to me and scooted off the bed. She was gone, and I was left with the weight of my guilt.

I finished packing and moved into the kitchen. I found my mother just finishing up putting spaghetti sauce into a plastic container. She handed it to me along with another container that I could see was full of spaghetti noodles. “I suppose that you and your friend will need to have dinner yet tonight. You can take these with you.”

I felt a spring of emotion in the back of my throat. I quickly wiped the tears away as I gave my mother a quick hug. “Thanks for everything, Mom. You’re the best.”

She swatted me away. “Get out of here. Don’t worry about anything. I’ve got it under control.”

I saw that Scarlet was sitting at the table eating dinner. Actually, she was more picking at it than anything. I worried about her. I made my way quickly over to the table and gave her a kiss on the forehead. I leaned over and looked deep into her eyes. “It’s just a couple of days. I’ll be back in a flash. You won’t even have time to miss me, okay?”

“Okay, Mommy.” Those two words were spoken so solemnly that they hit me in the gut. I knew that it was just a couple of days away from where I might make her day forever, though, with some big news. Just a couple more days.

“I love you,” I said to her.

“I love you too.”

Before she could see the tears in my eyes, I left the apartment. I made my way back to Shane’s condo knowing that he would appreciate being able to indulge in my mother’s famous spaghetti sauce. I focused on the path forward and not on the little girl that I had just left my apartment. It was just a couple more days, and everything would change for the better. At least, that was what I fervently hoped.

I don’t know if I would have gotten through all of the arrangements and made my way to the church for the funeral if I wouldn’t have had Maddy next to me. It seemed like there was a list of never-ending questions for things that needed to be addressed, and I barely knew the answers. Some of them, I had no idea. I was answering questions about the final wishes of a man that I had barely spoken to in a decade. Questions about his casket, where he wanted to be buried, the kinds of plants and floral arrangements he would have preferred, the words that would go on his headstone. I had no idea, and my father hadn’t left a will.

Then there were the questions about what I was going to do with his house and his belongings, and his car. I didn’t know what to do. Through it all, Maddy had been by my side quietly offering words of advice. I hadn’t taken it for granted. She had been my rock.

Now, as I stood at the back of the church watching it fill up with far more people than I would have expected to show for the old man’s last hurrah, my eyes found her standing at the front talking with the pastor. My family wasn’t even religious, but she had thought it would be a nice gesture to offer a religious ceremony. I figured my father was probably going to Hell anyway, but it was a small gesture. My last gift to him, not that the bastard necessarily deserved a shot at redemption. I had only done it because Maddy seemed to think it was the right thing to do.

I was back at the back of the church talking to people that I hadn’t seen since I left Rosewood. They all expressed their condolences and then told me what a great job I had done on Sunday during the game. It was so obvious that they were all proud of the hometown boy done good. I hadn’t really thought about Rosewood all that much since I left it. The only thing that I truly regretted when it came to the town was leaving Maddy behind. She had been what had made my memories of the town great; at least, until the end.

I had just finished shaking the hand of my old high school football coach when I saw Maddy’s parents enter the back of the vestibule.

There was a young girl walking between them. If I would’ve had to guess her age, I wouldn’t have said she was more than ten years old. I was surprised. Madeleine’s parents were far too old to have another child, so I wondered who this girl was with them. They approached me, and I shook Mr. Thompson’s hand. I saw Mrs. Thompson looking at me quizzically. I had always wondered what Maddy’s parents thought of me. I knew her mother just from the brief interactions that we had in my mother’s salon. That was a long time ago, though, even longer because my mother had passed two years away before I had left Rosewood for good.

“That was a great catch at the end of the game on Sunday,” Mr. Thompson said giving my hand a hard shake.

“Thank you, sir,” I said. Had Maddy said anything to her parents about the two of us being together now? Of course, even though I had professed the majority of my feelings to her, and she had admitted that she felt the same way, we haven’t really talked about what that meant for the future and our current status. I felt like we were together now, but did it mean we were in a relationship or just starting fresh and seeing where things went? That wasn’t what I wanted, but I didn’t know what Maddy wanted. It was a conversation that I knew was going to have to wait until after the funeral. There had been far too many distractions since our arrival back in town.

I got down on my haunches and stared at the girl. There was something familiar looking about her. “And who are you, pretty lady?” I asked. I stuck out my hand in what I hoped would be perceived as a friendly gesture.

She smiled at me shyly and stepped just a little bit behind Mrs. Thompson. She didn’t extend her hand to me, but she didn’t run away from me either.

“Now Scarlet, mind your manners,” Mrs. Thompson said.

She looked up at Mrs. Thompson and then stepped back in front of me. She stuck out her hand then, and I shook it gently. I felt like my hand was at least twice the size of hers. “I’m Scarlet,” she said. “I know who you are.”
 

My eyebrows rose in surprise. “You do?”

She nodded vigorously. “Grandpa watches you on TV on Sundays. Sometimes he swears at you, though,” she said.

It should have been a comment that made me laugh, but there was one word in that sentence that struck me in the middle of my core. Grandpa. I glanced up at Maddy’s parents and saw them exchange a look.

“Come on now, Scarlet. We should go sit down before things start,” Mrs. Thompson said. “It’s nice to see you again, Shane.”

“Mommy!” Scarlet suddenly called out. I watched in shock as the little girl ran down the middle of the aisle and launched herself at Maddy.

Something changed in that moment. I thought about how similar I thought she looked to someone that I knew. What a dumbass I had been.
 

What the hell was happening?
 

I saw Maddy’s eyes find me as I stood there frozen and stiff. She looked terrified. It was all the answer that I needed. The Thompsons moved around me quickly further into the church. I found myself shaking hands with the people who had come up behind them, but I couldn’t have recalled one of their faces or what they said later. All I could think about was that Maddy had a daughter. A daughter who looked to be about eight years old. That could only mean one thing.
 

My mind refused to accept that simple truth, though. She wouldn’t keep something like that from me. The pretty little girl who was wrapped up in her arms couldn’t possibly be my daughter.

I felt as if the ground was shifting underneath me just as I found the pastor at my elbow saying something about the ceremony being ready to start. I watched as Maddy pushed the little girl back toward her father. She appeared to be having words with her mother. I could tell by the look on her face that she was angry. She wasn’t the only one.

I passed her as I made my way up to the front pew. She followed me. I motioned for her to move into it in front of me, and then I sat down next to her.

The service was a blur. I was one of the pallbearers along with a couple of my father’s buddies from high school. It had been somewhat of an amazement to me that my father still had any friends at all. But the good thing about this was that it meant that I left the church before everyone else as we carried the casket out to the hearse that would take us to the cemetery.

I got into my car to follow it, and Maddy got in next to me. I tried to focus on the road, but it was impossible as the silence stretched out between us. I couldn’t let it continue any longer.

“You never mentioned you had a daughter,” I said. There were so many other questions that I had for her, but this seemed to be the safest place to start.

“Yes. Her name is Scarlet,” she said.

“So I gathered when I introduced myself to her,” I said. I still didn’t quite trust myself to look at her.

“What is it that you want to ask me, Shane?” she said. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that she stared straight ahead out the windshield. I couldn’t get a read on her expression at all.

“I can’t deal with this right now,” I said. My hands tightened on the wheel until my knuckles were white. I felt the surge of anger inside of me again. “After this is over, you and I are going to have a talk. And you are going to tell me everything.”

She nodded slowly. We still didn’t look at each other, and we rode the rest of the way to the cemetery in silence.
 

As I stood next to the gaping hole in the earth, I thought about what it meant to be a father. That idea was so foreign to me, and I hadn’t had the best role model in the world. Still, he had been my father. I watched as they lowered the casket into the earth listening to the monotone voice of the pastor as he said the last words that sent my father someplace else in the universe.

 
I felt a heaving in my chest. When I felt Maddy’s hand on my arm, I shook it away. I didn’t trust her anymore. Something had changed between us when I had looked into that little girl’s eyes. Something that was entirely unexpected, but something that I knew had shaken me to the very core of my being.