A Time to Dance/A Time to Embrace (2 page)

Nicole stuck her chin out and shouted as loud as she could. “Go, Eagles, come on! You can do it!”

Abby’s eyes moved toward the field where Kade was at the center of the huddle, relaying his father’s plays to the team. Third down and eight, twenty-five yards to go for a touchdown. There was just over a minute to play, and Marion was up by three. This touchdown—and Abby could feel in her gut that there would be a touchdown—would seal the win.

“Let’s go, Eagles!” Abby clapped her mittened hands together and stared intently at the field as the play unfolded.
Come on, Kade. Nice
and easy. Like a hundred times before . . .

Her strapping son took the snap and, with practiced grace, found his place in the pocket, searching downfield until he saw his target. Then, in the fluid motion that comes from being the talented son of a storied football coach, he fired the ball, threading it through two menacing defenders to land, almost like magic, in the hands of a Marion receiver.

The home crowd was on its feet.

Over the din of ten thousand screaming fans, the announcer explained the situation: the Eagles had a first and goal on the three-yard line with less than a minute to play.

The opposing team called a time-out, and Abby breathed in slowly. If she could savor this moment, bottle it up or capture it forever, she would. Hadn’t they dreamed of this time and place since Kade was born, first joking about it and then realizing with each passing year the chance of it actually happening? Dozens of yesterdays fought for her attention. The first time she saw John in a football uniform . . . the way his eyes loved her as they spoke their wedding vows and toasted to forever . . . Nicole playing in the backyard . . . the gleam in four-year-old Kade’s eyes when he got his first football . . . the thrill of Sean’s birth seven years later . . . years of meeting on the pier at the end of the day . . . the music that they—

A whistle blew, and the players took their positions.

Abby swallowed hard. Her family had spent a lifetime getting here—two decades of memories, many of them centered around a white-lined, hundred-yard field of mud and grass.

The crowd remained on its feet, but despite the deafening noise there was a quiet place in Abby’s heart where she could hear her children’s long-ago laughter, see the way John and the kids tickled and tackled on the Marion High field every day when practice was over. For years John had known instinctively how to involve their children in his role as coach, how to put the game behind him at day’s end. The image and voices changed, and the stadium noise was only a distant roar.

“Dance with me, Abby . . . dance with me.”

There they were, on the pier. Dancing the dance of life, swaying to the sound of crickets and creaking boards long after the kids were asleep on nights when summer seemed like it might last forever.

A gust of wind sent a chill down her arms, and she blinked back the fading visions of yesterday. No matter how he’d betrayed her, no matter what happened next, there would never be a better father for her children than John Reynolds.

Another memory rang in her mind. She and John on the lake, adrift in an old fishing boat a year after Kade was born.
“One day,
Abby, one day Kade’ll play for me, and we’ll go to state. All the way, honey.
We’ll have everything we ever dreamed of and nothing will stop us. Nothing . . .”

Now—in what seemed like the blink of an eye—they were here.

Kade took the snap and raised the ball.

Come on, Kade. It’s yours, honey.
“Go, Eagles!” she screamed.

The ball flew from Kade’s hands like a bullet, spiraling through the winter night much the way Kade himself had flown through their lives, a blur of motion.
Come on, catch it
. . . Abby watched as Kade’s best friend, T. J., the team’s tight end, jumped for the ball.
Fitting
, she thought. Like the perfect ending to a perfect movie. And she realized that everything about Kade and John and their football days—even this final play—had somehow been destined from the beginning.

It all seemed to be happening in slow motion . . .

T. J. wrapped his fingers around the ball, pulled it to his chest, and landed squarely in the end zone.

“Touchdown!” Abby’s heart soared and she leapt up and down, her fists high in the air. “I can’t
believe
it! We did it! We
won!”
She pulled her father and Nicole into a hug and high-fived ten-year-old Sean three seats down the row. “State champs! Can you believe it?”

On the field the players kicked the extra point and then lined up for the kickoff. Fifteen seconds more and the Marion Eagles would be state champs. The Reynoldses’ father-and-son team would forever be part of Illinois prep football lore.

John, you did it . . . you and Kade
.

In honor of everything they’d ever been—of the beacon of light that had been their love, their family—Abby felt nothing but pure, unhindered joy for her husband.

Two tears spilled from the corners of her eyes and burned their way down her freezing cheeks.

Not now, Abby. Not when it’s supposed to be a celebration
. The crowd was shouting in unison: “Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . .”

As the stands emptied onto the field, a swirling blue-and-gray mass of celebration, Abby’s father hooted like he hadn’t since he’d been relegated to a nursing home. Sean bounced along behind Nicole and Matt as they rushed down the stairs to join the others.

Abby sat frozen in place, soaking in the moment. She searched the crowd until she found John, watched as he ripped off his headset and ran like a madman to meet Kade. Their hug put Abby over the edge, and the tears came in quiet streams. John pulled their son into a solid embrace that shut out everyone else: teammates, coaches, members of the press. Everyone but each other. Kade gripped his helmet in one hand and his father’s neck with the other.

Then it happened.

While Abby was still savoring the moment, Charlene Denton came up behind John and threw her arms around his shoulders. A rock took up residence in Abby’s stomach and began to grow.
Not
now . . . here in front of everyone we know.
John and Charlene were easily fifty yards from Abby, but it made no difference. She could see the way the scene played out as clearly as if she were standing beside them. Her husband pulled away from Kade and turned to hug Charlene briefly. There was something about the way John brought his head close to hers and kept his hand on her shoulder that conveyed his feelings for Charlene. Feelings he had long had for her. Charlene Denton, fellow teacher at Marion High, John’s greatest stumbling block.

Abby blinked, and suddenly everything good and memorable and nostalgic about the night felt cheap and artificial, like something from a bad movie. Even the tenderest thoughts couldn’t stand against the reality in front of her.

Abby’s father saw them, too, and he cleared his throat. “I’ll be fine here by myself, honey. You go be with John.”

She shook her head, but her gaze never left her husband and Charlene. “No, I’ll wait.”

Her eyes were dry now, and anger pulsed through her, glazing her heart with hard, empty bitterness.
Get away from him, lady. This is
our
moment, not yours.
Abby stared at Charlene, hating her. John’s voice echoed in her heart once more, but this time his words had nothing to do with dancing.

And everything to do with divorce.

This was the weekend they’d agreed to tell the kids. The weekend they would shatter their family’s mistaken belief that Abby and John were perhaps the most happily married people in all the world. Abby sighed. No matter how it felt to see John with Charlene, the reality was he could talk to the teacher or any other woman for that matter. In a few months, John would be single, after all. As would Abby. She hugged herself tightly, trying to will away the nausea that swirled around inside her.
Why does it still hurt, Lord?

No magic answers came to mind, and Abby wasn’t sure if she wanted to disappear or bolt down onto the field and join them so that Charlene would feel too uncomfortable to stay.

I thought I was past this, God. We’ve already agreed to move on.
What’s happening to me?
Abby tapped her foot against the concrete stadium floor and shifted positions, hating the way the other woman seemed unfettered, lovely and young and without the burdens of two decades of marriage. What was this feeling assaulting her? Jealousy?

No, it felt more like regret. Abby’s pulse quickened. It couldn’t be, could it? What was there to regret? Hadn’t they
both
realized the place they were in, the place they were headed?

Or was this how it would always feel to see John with another woman?

Her vision clouded over, and again she heard John’s voice from long ago.
“Dance with me, Abby . . . dance with me.”

The silent words faded from her mind and she blinked back fresh tears. One thing was certain: if this was how being divorced was going to feel, she’d better get used to it.

No matter how much she hated it.

Two

T
HE STADIUM WAS EMPTY, STREWN WITH CRUSHED
Gatorade cups and half-eaten hot dogs. Assorted remnants of blue and gray hung from the student section, proof that the Marion Eagles had indeed been there, that John and Kade had accomplished their lifelong dream and won a state championship together.

Abby wandered down the steps to the field and across the grass toward the locker room. John would still be inside, talking to the press, going over the game’s great plays with the other coaches, picking up after his team.

Savoring the moment as long as possible.

There was a bench just outside the visitors’ door and Abby sat down, gazing across the empty field. Kade, Nicole, Matt, and Sean were holding a table for them at Smokey’s Pizza a block down the street from the stadium. Abby’s father was waiting in the car. She studied the muddied lines and the way the goalposts stood proudly erect on either side of the field. Had it only been an hour ago that the place had been packed, an entire crowd holding its collective breath while Kade threw the final touchdown?

Abby shivered and buried her hands deep in her pockets. The temperature had fallen, but that had little to do with the terrifying cold that reigned in her heart.

A Marion assistant coach walked out and stopped when he saw her. “Hey, Abby.” A smile took up most of his face. “How ’bout them Eagles.”

She chuckled softly. No matter what painful twists her life was about to take, she would remember their football days as absolutely wonderful. Every player, every coach, every season . . . all of it a mosaic of memories she would cherish forever. “Amazing. A dream come true.”

The man huffed slightly and shook his head, gazing into the winter sky. He was the biggest coach on staff, a former lineman with a reputation for getting in kids’ faces. But here in the quiet shadows of a stadium void of cheering fans and the guttural grunts of sixty teenagers in full warrior gear, Abby noticed his eyes glistening with unshed tears. He cleared his throat and caught her gaze.

“If I live a hundred years, I’ll never forget the way John and Kade worked together tonight. They’re magic, those two.” He crossed his arms and stared up at the stadium lights, trying to compose himself. In a moment, he looked at her again. “What a ride, Abby, you know? I’m just glad I got to be part of it.”

“Me, too, Coach.” The corners of Abby’s mouth lifted slightly as a layer of tears clouded her vision. She gestured toward the locker room. “Is he almost finished?”

“Yep, last reporters left a few minutes ago. He’s just getting his things.” The coach smiled at her again as he set off. “Well . . . see ya next year.”

Abby nodded, afraid her voice would betray her if she tried to speak.
There won’t be a next year for us . . . for me.

When the coach was gone, Abby thought about John, about their wedding more than twenty-one years earlier. What had happened to the people they were back then, the people who had walked through fire together and come out stronger on the other side?

Forget it, Abby. The coach was right.
It was over now; she was just glad she’d been a part of it. Abby wished with everything in her she could go back in time, even an hour back to the moments before the final touchdown when John’s long-ago dreams all were coming true.

All but one.

Five minutes later, John came through the door and saw her there. Abby thought of Charlene, her arms around John after the game.
Do
I hug him like she did? Do I nod politely?

There was an uncomfortable silence while he held her gaze.

“Abby . . .” He spoke softly, but every word was coated in exhilaration. “We did it!” His eyes sparkled with an electricity that would take days, weeks to diffuse, and it beckoned her in a way she was powerless to resist. As sure as gravity, they came together, and Abby circled her arm around his neck, burying her head against his shoulder.

“I can’t believe it! State champs!” She savored the comforting feel of his heart thudding inside his chest, and it occurred to her that months had passed since they’d hugged this way.

“I know.” He pulled back, his eyes as full of life and hope and promise as they’d been two decades earlier.

There was a smudge of mud on his cheek, and she erased it gently with her thumb. “Best in the state, you and Kade. Amazing.”

He drew her to him again and they stayed that way, their bodies close, swaying slightly. His arms securely around her waist, hers holding on more tightly than usual.

Every moment was steeped in a desperate finality.

John pulled away first, and Abby hugged herself to ward off the sudden chill. “Could you believe that last touchdown?” He grabbed his gym bag from the bench and grinned at her. “Kade was something else . . .”

Abby smiled back. “Beautiful.”

John stared out at the field as if he were watching a replay in his mind. “I’ve pictured this day ever since Kade first learned to throw.”

They started walking toward the stadium steps, their feet keeping time in a familiar rhythm. John swung the bag up onto his shoulder. “Abby, about this weekend . . .”