Keep Quiet (14 page)

No,
he thought, deflating. He wasn’t Jake. He didn’t know who he was anymore. He was the man who left a young girl dead by the side of the road. He was the man who ruined his own family. He was the man who destroyed their wonderful son.

“You okay, honey?”

“No, sorry, I’m just tired.” Jake sighed. “It’s the booze. It must be.”

“So … you don’t want to?” Pam frowned, blinking.

“Let’s just call it a day,” Jake answered, leaning down to kiss her, one last time.

Chapter Sixteen

Jake opened his eyes, vaguely aware that Pam was trying to wake him up. He squinted against sunlight pouring into the bedroom, because they had forgotten to pull down the blackout shades last night. His wife’s face came into focus, and Jake could see that she was back to business, already made up and ponytailed, in her contacts, maroon Chasers Nation sweatshirt, and jeans. She smelled like face wash and things-to-do lists.

“Honey, wake up.” Pam stroked his arm. “The game’s at one o’clock. You’re coming, right?”

“Yes, right.” Jake’s head was pounding, and he had a major hangover. He’d been hoping he could keep reality at bay, but it came rushing back to him, leaving a bitter taste in his mouth that had nothing to do with alcohol. “Is Ryan up?”

“Of course. He’s already out shooting.”

“Is he sick or okay?” Jake heard the rhythmic bouncing of the ball outside on the driveway, the sound of rubber hitting cold asphalt, echoing in the quiet Sunday morning.

“He seems better. Get up and shower, please. I thought it would be nice if we all had pancakes together.”

“Pancakes? Ugh.” Jake felt his stomach turn over. “How can you eat?”

“I’m fine, and Ryan likes pancakes on game day. Can you be down in half an hour? We have to leave by ten o’clock.”

Jake glanced at the clock, which read 8:07. “Why ten, if the game isn’t until one?”

“The team has to be there early, and I have carpool, so we’re picking up Jerome and Baird, so that adds forty-five minutes. Plus it’s an away game, at North Mayfield, and that will take another forty-five minutes extra…”

Jake closed his eyes against the familiar rat-a-tat of the schedule, his wife expertly counting backwards. She’d timed everything so they wouldn’t be late, because she still lived in the world where the worst thing that anyone in their family could do was to mess up the schedules of the other overscheduled families.

“Now get up and I’ll see you downstairs.” Pam ruffled up his hair, rose, and left the room, while Jake threw off the comforter, eased himself into a sitting position, and rubbed his face, as if that would ease the pain in his head, or his heart. He got up and walked around the bed, pausing to glance out the window, which offered a parallax view of the basketball hoop, in the driveway in front of the garage.

There was a cold sun in the sky, and Ryan was shooting a foul shot in his black parka and team sweatpants, wearing his earphones, his hair ruffling in the wind. The ball
thwapped
loudly on the grimy white backboard, spun into the basket, and tumbled through its frayed rope netting. Ryan rebounded without missing a beat and shot a layup, which he missed, but he retrieved the ball, again without missing a beat, his iPhone wire jumping around as if electrified. He pivoted perfectly on the ball of his sneakers then hopped into the air to shoot the three-pointer, his right arm high, his long fingers spread, releasing at just the right moment, and the ball swished through the net.

Yes!
Jake cheered for the kid silently, though Ryan didn’t stop. He went after the ball as he had before and took another shot. He wasn’t smiling, and his forehead knitted, focused, and as Jake watched him, he sensed that his son was losing himself in the drill, using it to black out what had happened on Pike Road, like Jake himself had tried to last night, in the booze and sex. He realized that basketball had become a coping mechanism for his son, as well as being part of his identity; Ryan was the quiet kid who was famous as being a shooter, most comfortable on the court, where action substituted for conversation.

Jake watched him, thinking that he’d never been able to decide if Ryan was having fun when he played basketball, even when the boy was younger. Jake had never played basketball, even as a teen, because he had to work after school, as a bagger at the Giant. He’d never pushed Ryan into basketball just because he was tall; Jake had grown up with everybody asking him,
Why don’t you play basketball,
and it was Ryan who had taken to the sport himself.

Jake eyed Ryan and could remember him as a little boy, shooting baskets on the driveway, no matter the season or temperature. Everybody in Chasers Nation said basketball was a passion, and they were right, but Jake knew that as soon as Pam saw the passion in their son, she had nurtured it with characteristic drive. She got him into the neighborhood leagues in elementary school, then the school and traveling teams in middle school, and the right basketball camps by the summer of seventh grade. They were called “exposure” or “showcase” camps, run by professional players or people with connections to recruiters, and the most talented players went there to be seen.

Jake remembered what a scene that had been, when he and Pam visited a summer tournament on one weekend. The kids were in ninth grade, still in orthodonture, but a lineup of Division III and even Division I coaches had sat in the front row, notebooks in hand, and by Sunday, the “impact players” had been identified. Ryan had been one. College basketball was big business, but recruiting started before puberty.

Ryan made another three-pointer, and Jake projected forward into his son’s future. He didn’t know if the boy would be happy at a Division I school, where he’d have to live the game, twenty-four/seven. Jake doubted that he was good enough to play professionally, and Ryan was more than just a basketball player. He had a real interest in environmental sciences, and Pam would rather have Ryan use his basketball prowess to get into a better school academically, in Division III. Jake felt the same way, although now he would settle for Ryan going to any college at all, outside of a juvenile detention home.

Suddenly, Jake noticed that Ryan stopped shooting and was looking toward the garage. Pam was coming out, talking to him, and hugging herself to keep warm. Jake couldn’t hear what they were saying but he left the window to get ready. He didn’t want to leave Ryan alone with Pam any longer than necessary.

Later, Jake found himself sitting on the hard bleachers at North Mayfield High School gym, which reverberated with the talking, laughing, and shouting of several hundred high-school students, teachers, and families. Little kids ran up and down the stairs between the bleachers, and cheerleaders practiced their splits and dance moves on the sidelines. School bands ran through their fight songs, complete with tubas, trumpets, and drum solos. Student booster groups—the Chasers Nation for Concord Chase and the Cardinal’s Nest for North Mayfield, dressed in matching T-shirts and face paint—tried to drown each other out, cheering from opposite ends of the gym. Jennifer Lopez sang “Let’s Get Loud” over the loudspeaker, and its throbbing bass ricocheted off the corrugated-metal ceiling.

Jake sat alone on the row, which was still mostly empty. Pam had gone to the ladies’ room with some other Chasers’ moms, leaving their parkas, scarves, and knit hats in a perfumed clump. He exhaled a relieved sigh at having gotten Ryan through the morning. Over breakfast, they’d talked about his English homework, and though Ryan had seemed subdued, it was nothing that couldn’t be chalked up to normal stress levels before a league playoff. Once they’d picked up his teammates, the boys plopped their game sneakers in their laps, plugged into their iPhones, and chattered away, reliving the plays from their last victory, a sixty-one to thirty-five drubbing of Great Valley. Ryan hadn’t contributed much to the conversation even when he was its subject, and the others crowed about his twelve buckets, eight rebounds, and five blocks, with a dunk in heavy traffic. The consensus was that they would win today against North Mayfield, and the only time Ryan spoke was to remind them not to take anything for granted.

Game time was getting closer, and families started to fill in the remaining seats in the bleachers, mixing the Chasers’ and North Mayfield fans. A heavyset woman in a hooded parka gestured to Jake. “Sir, are you saving this seat?” she asked, before entering the row.

“No, it’s all yours.”

“Thanks.” The woman sat down at the aisle seat and took off her parka, revealing an I Heart My Corgi sweatshirt, then a short man came up behind her, a Sunday newspaper tucked under his arm.

“Sir, excuse me, is that seat taken?”

“No, you can sit down,” Jake answered, gesturing, and the man sat down next to the woman and put his newspaper in his lap. A folded crossword puzzle was on top, and Jake spotted the headline that read,
NO SUSPECTS IN CONCORD CHASE HIT-AND-RUN.

“I’m Lewis Deaner. My son plays for North Mayfield.” The man extended a hand, and Jake shook it. “Are you from Concord Chase? You don’t look familiar.”

“Yes. Jake Buckman.”

“Nice to meet you. I don’t go crazy at games, even in the playoffs. I tell my son, I make up for the fathers who sit in the anger-management section.” Deaner smiled tightly behind his wire-rimmed glasses, his thin lips stretching like a rubber band. His hair was light brown, thinning at the crown, and he was on the slight side, barely filling out his blue parka and baggy jeans.

“What position does your son play?”

“He’s a guard, a sophomore. He’s only a substitute, so I doubt he’ll see any minutes today. But I come anyway.” Deaner slid a ballpoint pen from his parka, uncapped it, and looked down at his crossword puzzle, which was half-completed. “I’m divorced, so I make the effort. That’s the lay of the land.”

Suddenly the crowd noise surged, and the Chasers trotted onto the glistening wood floor, a moving phalanx of maroon long-sleeved shirts and sweat suits. The coaches jogged alongside them in order of rank; Head Coach Ronald Marsh and his uniformed assistants, then Dr. Dave running next to Ryan.

Deaner looked up from his crossword. “That’s my son, on the sideline, about to come on the court. The short one with the glasses. Number 16. Steve.”

Jake spotted who he meant, in a pair of plastic wraparound glasses. “Good-looking boy.”

“Which one’s yours?”

“The one toward the back, number 22.” Jake watched Dr. Dave put a hand on Ryan’s shoulder and felt a flare of jealousy, even though it was his own fault that Ryan was closer to his coaches than his father. The crowd noise surged again, and the Cardinals hustled onto the floor in their bright red warm-ups. The Cardinal’s Nest cheering section rose as one, flapping its arms, and singing a fight song that was unintelligible.

Jake looked around for Pam and her friends, but didn’t see them. Ryan fell in line behind his teammates, and they ran a drill, jogging up and down the half-court with their knees high. The Cardinals did the same thing at their end of the court, and the crowd yelled, cheered, and called the players’ names, getting more excited. One of the North Mayfield moms on the other side of the aisle produced tiaras from a white Dollar Tree bag and gave them out to her girlfriends. The music over the loudspeaker segued into “I’ve Got a Feeling.”

Deaner watched the Chasers’ warm-up session. “Your team came to play, eh?”

“Yours, too.” Jake spotted Pam and her friends on the floor, hurrying toward him.

“What do you do for a living, Jake?”

“Financial planner.” Jake leaned over, slid out his wallet, extracted a business card, and handed it over, reflexively. “How about you?”

“Technical writer, freelance.” Deaner glanced at the card, then slipped it inside his parka. “I can’t afford you, I can tell. I bet you drive a nice car, like an Audi.”

“Ha! Does it show?” Jake forced a smile. It was a lucky guess, but it rattled him.

Deaner capped his pen and tucked it inside his parka. “You know, my apartment’s not around here, it’s in Concord Chase. Not far from Pike Road, where that hit-and-run was. You probably read about it. A junior from the high school was killed. A girl.”

“Oh, yes.” Jake kept his eyes on the court, where Ryan and the Chasers had started a new drill, lining up on both sides of the half-court, taking shots and rebounding for each other.

“I’ll come by your office tomorrow morning, and we can have a talk.”

“What about?” Jake asked, his tone casual.

“I think you know. I think you know exactly. Make sure you’re there.” Deaner rose. “Enjoy the game, Jake.”

Chapter Seventeen

Jake watched, stunned, as Deaner made his way down the stairs, reached the floor, and vanished into the crowd. His thoughts raced. It had been such a bizarre conversation.

I bet you drive a nice car, like an Audi.

Jake felt a bolt of panic. It was too much of a coincidence. The Audi, the mention of the hit-and-run, even the newspaper headline. What if it was all intentional? What if Deaner
knew
?

Jake told himself not to jump to conclusions. He had to stay calm. He spotted Pam and her friends, climbing the steps and heading toward him. There had been no one else around that night on Pike Road. The corporate center had been empty, there were no houses. But if Deaner didn’t know anything, why was he coming to Jake’s office? Was Deaner still at the game?

Jake scanned the crowd, but didn’t see Deaner. Was he coming back? Why did he leave? What had just happened? Who the hell was this guy? Jake slid his smartphone from his pocket, got online, and typed in
Lewis Deaner freelance technical writer
. Instantly a group of links came onto the tiny screen, and he clicked the first, but it was from a man in Huntsville, Alabama.

Jake reformulated his search request and typed in
Lewis Deaner freelance technical writer PA,
but he got no responses. So either Lewis Deaner wasn’t Deaner’s real name or the man wasn’t a technical writer. He plugged in
Lewis Deaner Concord Chase PA,
but it came back no responses. He tried to compose himself.