The Chance: A Novel (22 page)

Ellie stared at her plate, trying to focus. The bunny had done it. Triggered another wave of memories. Whatever Kinzie was talking about now, all Ellie could see was the stuffed rabbit, the one she had given Nolan the night before she moved. Did he still have it? Was it buried in a storage unit or thrown out in some long-ago bag of trash?

“Don’t you think, Mommy? We should get a rabbit for our house?”

“Well.” Ellie blinked and looked at Kinzie. “Rabbits are better off outside. Unless they need a little help. Like the one in your classroom.”

Kinzie thought about that. “You’re right.” She sneaked a piece of macaroni off Ellie’s plate. “Tastes pretty good, right?”

“It’s perfect. You can open your own restaurant one day, Kinz. They’ll line up around the block.”

She giggled again, and it gave way to a yawn. “I’m sleepy.”

“Me, too.” Ellie finished her plate and set it in the sink. “Go brush your teeth. I’ll meet you in the room.”

The apartment had only two bedrooms, so Ellie and Tina shared rooms with their daughters. It was the only way to survive the cost of living in San Diego. She watched Kinzie skip off, and she tried to picture her own mother. Choosing a stranger over a relationship with her. Ellie’s anger fanned the embers of a loss that never quite burned out.

She would die before she turned her back on Kinzie.

The thought tried to consume her, but she refused it. She
stuck her plate in the dishwasher and sat down at the computer. Savannah had been on her mind constantly. She typed the city’s name into the Google search line, and a map appeared. Maybe she and Kinzie could drive there sooner rather than later. A few more clicks, and she had directions from San Diego to Savannah: 2,386 miles. A thirty-eight-hour trip.

She stared at the route. For a year she’d been saving, dreaming about the possibility. Dreaming about making the drive she had wanted to make since she was fifteen. She would go past their old house and walk the path from her house to Nolan’s.

His mother no longer lived there. Ellie had read in
Sports Illustrated
that she moved to Portland to be near Nolan’s sisters. Of course, he lived in Atlanta. So it wouldn’t be about finding people. It would be about finding her way back, remembering a time in her life when everything was good and right and pure. A time when she believed. Nolan had moved on by now. The news had him paired off with another celebrity every other month. Even if he never actually dated them, he had choices.

“Mommy . . .” Kinzie called out from the bedroom. “I’m ready.”

Ellie stood and pressed her hand into the small of her back, the place that always ached after a day on her feet. “Coming.” She closed the map and walked to their room.

There was the other reason why she wanted to make the trip back to Savannah this summer. The most obvious reason, the one that was never far from her mind. She had a box to dig up. An old tackle box with two letters—one she wanted back in her possession and one she had wanted to read for eleven years.

Nolan would be in the play-offs, too busy and too far removed to think about the childhood promise they made that long-ago night. Too successful and in demand to remember their one last chance. She would be the only one who would make it back. But if she could figure out a way to get there, she would dig up the letters. She would do it on the day they agreed on, a time that was coming up in just five weeks. A date etched on her heart since she was fifteen.

June 1, 2013.

Chapter
Eight

S
he was Ellie Anne now.

The name change became official when she turned twenty-one—the best use of a hundred bucks Ellie had ever found. Her baby girl was two that year, and Ellie changed the child’s name, too. She washed her hands in the backroom sink and dried them on her smock. She cut hair at Merrilou’s, a few miles off Pendleton’s naval base. Only once in a while did a client come in who remembered her as Ellie Tucker. The way her last client had.

Her next appointment was already here, so she’d have to take a break later.

Ellie returned to the front of the salon and smiled at her client. “You ready?”

The woman stood and smiled. “Another beautiful day.” She was in her thirties, one of the more talkative ones.

“Always.” Ellie glanced at the television. She had a clear view of it from her station, and since she worked the evening shift tonight, she couldn’t resist putting on the game. Hawks versus Bucs, Game 4. If Atlanta won tonight, they’d advance to the second round and have a few extra days off to rest.

“Glad we can watch the game.” The woman settled herself into the seat. She was a skinny bleached blonde with hair halfway down her back. She pointed to the screen. “I love that Nolan Cook. He’s amazing, right? I mean, what guy is like him?” She caught a quick breath. “Tim Tebow, of course. They’re both the same. Untouchable. Everyone’s in love with them, and all they do is live for God and play ball for His glory. Right? I mean, it’s amazing.”

Ellie’s eyes were on the screen. The game hadn’t started, but the announcer was talking about Nolan. Her friend Nolan. The boy she had loved since third grade. Something about him averaging the most points in the league through the first round of play-offs, and how he had more steals than anyone in the Eastern Conference. The camera fixed on him, warming up, taking shots from around the arc of the three-point line, breaking for the basket and making a convincing layup.

Then the angle changed, and the faces of three kids filled the screen. The announcer was saying, “These are Nolan Cook’s guests for tonight. Three kids from the local foster program. None of them have parents, but here, for the next few hours, they have Nolan Cook.”

Ellie ran a fine comb lightly through the woman’s hair. She was going on about how she wished she could set up a friend of hers with Nolan because there were just no guys like him and her friend was so great and . . .

Ellie only pretended to listen. Something she was good at after years of cutting hair. “Highlights again?”

“Yes.” The woman used her hands to add emphasis. “Bright highlights. Something light blonde for summer.” She sat a little straighter. “We have the Bahamas next week.”

The salon was near the base, so the clientele was mixed. Some soldiers and soldiers’ wives. But most people who came to Merrilou’s lived high-end lifestyles and talked about their trips to the Caribbean or Hawaii or Europe. Their husbands held high positions at Morgan Stanley or UBS, one of the financial institutions in greater San Diego, where they made boatloads of money. Their wives enjoyed spending it and telling Ellie about the details.

Women like this one.

Ellie mixed the bleach and color in a small plastic bowl and kept her eyes on the TV. They were showing Nolan again, this time as he rallied his teammates into a fired-up huddle. The game was about to begin.

What are you thinking about, Nolan? Do I ever cross your mind?

The separation between them was her fault. She could have reached out to him. She’d known that years ago. When he was at North Carolina, she even wrote him a letter, took it to the post office, and then changed her mind and ripped it into a dozen pieces. Twice she had nearly dialed the phone number to the North Carolina basketball office, but both times she’d changed her mind. She’d thought again about contacting him when he was drafted by the pros. She researched his manager’s name and office number. She still had it programmed into her phone.

Yes, she’d followed Nolan’s life as far back as she could remember. How his father had died of a heart attack after losing the state final game the spring after Ellie moved to San Diego and how Nolan missed him. How he had poured all his passion and energy into basketball. He’d gotten exactly what he wanted back when they used to sit under their old oak tree. All of his dreams had come true.

All of his and none of hers.

And that was the one thing that had stopped her from contacting Nolan back when he was in college. It was the sad detail that still stopped her today.

Deep down, she didn’t really want to find Nolan Cook. Didn’t want him to see how her life had turned out. How she’d failed. Ellie felt the familiar ache in her chest. Her life was a sad mix of hurried choices and lifelong consequences. She’d rebelled against her father and fallen for a soldier when she was a senior in high school. Not long after, Ellie was pregnant. When the guy found out, he left her for another girl before being deployed. He was killed by a roadside bomb in the Middle East, and Ellie was raising their daughter by herself. She didn’t talk to either of her parents, and hadn’t in years.

How would she tell Nolan that?

The idea of Nolan seeing her now? Ellie shuddered at the thought. He would despise who she had become. She had missed out on college and instead spent her days cutting hair so she could feed her six-year-old daughter. Her dreams of writing that great American novel as gone as the summer nights under the old oak tree. She hadn’t been to church in five years and had no plans to go. Not ever.

So why contact him?

What would she have in common with Nolan Cook, the man so public about his love for Jesus? Nolan wasn’t looking for someone like Ellie. The right girl for Nolan would have rock-solid faith and a commitment to purity. She would be a role model for girls around the country, beautiful and innocent and strong in her convictions.

Ellie smeared the bleach on a square piece of tinfoil and wrapped it around a small section of the woman’s hair.
Then she repeated the process. No, he wasn’t looking for her any more than she was looking for him. Still, during basketball season, she couldn’t help herself. She loved watching Nolan Cook play, same as she did when she was fifteen years old. The way he took control of a game and drove to the hoop, the way he could sink a three-point shot like butter through the net. His expression of determination and intensity.

She would never know him again, never seek him out. But when he played basketball on TV, for a few hours she could pretend once more that he was her friend and she was the only girl in his life. The way she pretended now.

“Did you hear me?” Tinfoil stuck over half the woman’s hair. She pointed at the TV. “I said he’s good-looking, Nolan Cook. Don’t you think?”

Ellie smiled. She could see him the way he looked their last night together, when he took her in his arms and hugged her. He was just a kid back then. “Yes, he grew up to be very handsome.”

The tinfoil pieces rattled as the woman looked over her shoulder at Ellie. “Grew up? You’ve seen pictures of him as a boy?”

“No.” Heat flooded her cheeks. “Just . . . he’s older now. I used to watch him when he played for North Carolina.”

“Oh. Right.” The woman turned back to the TV. “The guy breaks hearts every time he takes the floor.”

Ellie nodded, her eyes on Nolan as she finished applying the bleach. “Time for the dryer.”

“Make sure I can see the TV. I’m cheering for Nolan and the Hawks tonight.”

Ellie led the woman across the salon and set her up beneath
the hot-air dryer in a place where she could see the game. The woman needed twenty minutes for her hair to process. Good thing. Ellie needed a rest from the chatter.

She returned to her station, her attention back on Nolan. A private smile tugged at her lips. No one would’ve guessed that Ellie had known him, that in another lifetime she and Nolan had been inseparable. She hadn’t told a single person since the move to San Diego. Only her roommate. As if that part of her life had never happened at all.

The Hawks rolled out to a quick lead. Led by Nolan’s fourteen points in the first quarter, they ran the floor like they were the team to beat. Same as they’d done the first three games in the series. Ahead by fifteen at the half, already the announcers were making predictions about who Atlanta would play in the conference final. As if they expected the Hawks to handle the next round as easily as they had handled this one.

Despite the lopsided score, Ellie kept the game on while she finished the woman’s hair and then moved on to her next client. She didn’t leave until nine o’clock, long after the game was over. On her way out, she turned left and walked to the end of the strip mall. The old bearded man was there, slouched against the brick wall and a pile of dirty blankets.

He scrunched himself a little higher as she approached. “Miss Ellie. How you be?”

“Good, Jimbo. Another beautiful day.” She stooped down and pulled a donut from her purse. It was wrapped in a clean napkin. “One of the girls brought these.” She smiled as she handed it to him. “I saved you one.”

The man’s eyes welled up. “Don’t know why you’re so good to me. I ain’t never done anything this good.”

“That’s not true. You always tell me I look pretty.”

“Aww, that’s nothing.” He brushed a gnarled hand near his face. “You’re an angel, Miss Ellie. I’m . . . I’m nothing.”

“Don’t say that!” She wagged her finger at him. “Here. Tips were good today.”

She handed him a twenty-dollar bill. He hesitated. His hands trembled as he took it. “I keep asking the good Lord what I ever did to deserve a friend like you.” Tears slid down his weathered cheeks.