The Chance: A Novel (37 page)

A sparkle danced in Kinzie’s eyes. “Really?”

“Really.” Ellie stood and smiled. Her own heartache over the way she had failed Kinzie could wait until later. For now she wanted her daughter to feel as free as possible. “Any question at all.”

They held hands and started walking again. Kinzie smiled, but the sadness in her eyes returned. “Anything?”

“Anything.”

“Okay.” Her tone was serious. Clearly, she had questions. “My daddy was a soldier, right?”

“Right.”

“He died in the war?”

“He did.” Ellie kept their pace slow. The zoo was getting crowded, and most of the visitors hurried past them. Ellie and Kinzie were in their own world. “He died a hero.” It was the explanation she’d told Kinzie before. Her father was a soldier. He died fighting to keep America safe, and because of that, he was a hero. Until now that had been enough.

“Okay, Mommy. Here’s my question.” She slowed a little more. “How come you and Daddy never got married?”

Ellie wasn’t sure she was up to this, but she owed it to Kinzie. No matter how she felt.
Keep it light, Ellie. Don’t give her more than she’s asking for.
“I didn’t know Daddy that long. He had to go to Iraq a few months after I met him.”

“But . . . you had a baby with Daddy.”

Ellie wanted to do anything to steer the conversation away from Kinzie’s father. If she believed in prayer, this would’ve been a good time to talk to God. Instead, she drew a deep breath and tried to find the right words. “Sometimes, Kinz, two people can think they love each other when really it’s too soon to know if love is there or not.”

“So . . . you didn’t really love my daddy?”

“I thought I did.”

Kinzie was quiet for a while. “Did you ever love a boy, Mommy?”

They were getting closer to the tigers, but they still had a lot to talk about. Again they sat on a bench in the shade. Ellie looked straight into her daughter’s eyes. “I did.”

“But not Daddy?”

“No, sweetie. Your daddy wasn’t ready to love. He was . . . too young.”

“Oh.” Kinzie seemed content with that. “You loved a different boy?”

“Yes.” Ellie wasn’t sure how much to say. But if Kinzie asked, then she had a right to know. At least the broad strokes. “I loved him very much.”

Conversations and voices from other visitors made it hard to hear Ellie’s little-girl voice, but the moment seemed somehow protected, as if, in all the busy zoo, there were just the two of them. “What was his name?”

“Nolan.” Ellie watched her daughter’s face for a reaction. “Nolan Cook.”

Kinzie stopped cold. She looked up at her mom, her mouth open. “Isn’t he famous?”

“He is.” Ellie stopped and ran her hand down Kinzie’s light blond hair. “He plays professional basketball.”

“That’s what I thought.” Her mind was obviously racing. “Two boys in my class talk about him all the time.” She thought for a few seconds. “Does he love you, too?”

“Well . . . he might have.” Ellie could see herself sitting beneath the old oak tree, feel Nolan Cook beside her again on that hot summer night. “A long time ago, maybe. We were only fifteen.”

“Still . . . Does he love someone else? Like does he have a wife?”

“He doesn’t.” Ellie took her daughter’s hand, and they started walking again. She never for a moment imagined they would talk about Nolan today. Maybe she shouldn’t have said anything. “I don’t know if he loves someone or not. But we haven’t talked in more than ten years. He’s got a different life now.”

“Does he know where we live?”

“No.” The questions came so quickly Ellie struggled to keep up. “I’d say for sure he doesn’t know where we live.”

“Mommy!” She stopped again, her eyebrows raised halfway up her forehead. “You should call and tell him!”

“Kinz, it isn’t like that.” They reached the tigers. “He doesn’t remember me, baby. We can’t talk about him, okay? No one knows about Nolan and me.”

That concept was more than Kinzie could absorb: She made a confused face. “Other people talk about him.”

“We can’t tell anyone that I used to love him.” Ellie used a sterner look this time. “Understand?”

Kinzie’s enthusiasm fell off some. “Yes, Mommy.”

“Okay, then.” Ellie breathed deep and pointed. “Look! The tigers!”

For the next ten minutes, Kinzie forgot about asking questions, too caught up in the tigers and their stripes and how two of them seemed to want to fight. “They’re the biggest cats ever!” Her eyes were practically round. “I didn’t think they were this big in person.”

“They’re huge.”

Kinzie tilted her head. “I wish I could pet one.”

“Me, too.” Ellie made a face. “Probably wouldn’t be a good idea.”

Kinzie laughed out loud. “They’d eat us up to pieces, Mommy. That definitely wouldn’t be a good idea.”

Eventually, they set off for the bears, and Kinzie started in again. “What about your mommy? How come you never talk about her?”

Here we go
. Ellie pushed back the ocean of sorrow attached to the topic. Kinzie had no grandparents, none whatsoever. Ellie had never met C.J.’s parents. She didn’t know anything about them. And since C.J. had wanted nothing to do with his daughter, Kinzie’s birth certificate used Ellie’s last name.

The child looked up at her, waiting. Ellie dug deep, searching for a strength she didn’t feel; Kinzie deserved an answer. “My mom moved in with another family.”

Alarm filled Kinzie’s face. She had never asked about Ellie’s mother before, and now there was no doubt the answer was troubling. “You mean she left you and became the mommy for someone else?”

Ellie thought about that. “Yes.” Her mother had been pregnant with someone else’s baby, so yes, that was true. “Something like that, sweetie. We didn’t have a lot of time to talk about it. My mom moved in with another family, and two days later, my daddy moved me to San Diego.”

“Here?” Kinzie seemed surprised. “So your daddy lives here?”

“Yes.”

The questions on Kinzie’s face were obvious before she put words to them. “Why don’t we see him, Mommy? He’s my grandpa, right?”

“He is. But he’s mad at me.” She smiled, trying to downplay the situation.

“Why?” Kinzie lowered her brow, clearly upset. “Why would he be mad? You’re the best mommy in the world.”

The compliment soothed the desperate pain inside Ellie. “Thanks, baby.” She ran her hand down Kinzie’s back. “He’s mad because I had a baby before I got married.”

“Oh.” Again her expression sank. “So is he mad at me, too?”

“No, sweetie. Not at all.” Ellie stopped and stooped down so that she was face-to-face with her daughter. “Never think that. This has nothing to do with you.”

Kinzie was quiet, searching Ellie’s eyes.

Ellie tried again. “He was mad at me, so I left. Once you were born, things got busy.” Her mouth was dry. The moment was too important to get it wrong. “I guess . . . he should come and find me if he’s not mad at me anymore.”

Still more questions filled Kinzie’s eyes, but it took her a little while to voice the one that must have been the most pressing. “What if I want to see him?”

Ellie grabbed at the only answer that worked. “Maybe you should talk to God about that. Then someday that might happen, Kinz.”

Her eyes softened, and a smile tugged at her lips. “Okay, Mommy. That’s what I’ll do.”

Ellie straightened again, and they walked to the bear exhibit. There were supposed to be four bears in the facility, but they could see only one. He was in a deep pond, batting at a ball floating on the surface of the water. They watched him for several minutes while he kept batting, trying to catch it in his enormous paws. Each time it spun away on the water’s surface, elusive.

Kinzie stood next to her, resting her chin on the steel bar as she watched the bear in action. “Bears are like people, Mommy.”

“How come?”

She lifted her sweet face to Ellie. “Because even if they try, they don’t always get what they want.”

“That’s true.” The comment hung on the walls of Ellie’s heart for the next few hours as they moved on to the reptiles and primates. Kinzie seemed finished with questions, apart from another twenty or so about the animals and whether they liked living in cages—Ellie wasn’t sure—and whether it was more fun living in the wild—Ellie guessed it might be.

Finally, they drove to a restaurant not far away. The place was packed, so while they waited for a table, they sat on stools near the window and sipped Cokes. A TV nearby was showing a basketball game. It took Ellie a few seconds to realize that one of the teams was the Atlanta Hawks.

Nolan’s team.

“That’s him.” Ellie leaned closer to Kinzie and kept her voice low. “Nolan Cook.”

“It is?” Kinzie squinted at the TV. “Oh, yeah! He plays for the Hawks! That’s what the boys in my class said.”

A foul was called, and Nolan went to the free-throw line. The camera captured a close-up of his face, the sweat and concentration, the determination. He bounced the ball a few times, and Ellie was instantly back in the gym at Savannah High, watching him play, mesmerized by his gift for the game.

“That’s him, right?” Kinz looked from the TV to Ellie and back.

“Yes.”

Kinzie grinned. “He seems nice.”

“He is.” Ellie smiled at her daughter. “He always was.”

They watched him sink another free throw, and Kinzie took a long sip of her Coke. “I really think you should call him. You used to love him, Mommy.”

“Remember? That’ll just be our little secret, okay?”

She frowned, but her eyes danced. “Okay.”

Their table was ready. Kinzie didn’t bring up Nolan the rest of the afternoon, and Ellie was grateful. The day of open conversation had been good for them. Exhausting, but good. The problem was Ellie had the same questions as Kinzie. And no matter what words she found to pacify her daughter, when it came to Ellie’s life, the truth remained.

There were no answers.

N
olan and Dexter were the last two in the locker room an hour after the Hawks’ loss to Orlando. Atlanta led the series three to two, but today’s game was the worst they’d played in the post-season. Nolan blamed himself.

No matter what he tried, he couldn’t find the zone.

“You ever question God?” Nolan draped a towel around his neck and dropped to the nearest bench. His legs felt like rubber.

“Sure.” Dexter leaned against the locker and stretched his feet out in front of him. “My wife’s friend dies of cancer when we’re barely out of college . . . a kid gets killed in a car accident . . . another soldier dies.” He looked at Nolan. “I have a list of questions.”

Nolan held on to either end of the towel. “I’m not supposed to wonder, right? I mean, I’m Nolan Cook.” His soft laugh sounded sad even to him.

“You’re human.” Dexter took the spot beside him. He leaned forward and dug his elbows into his knees. “How’d it go the other day with the singer’s daughter?”

“Kari.” Nolan pursed his lips and exhaled hard. “Not great.”

“Too bad.” Dexter rubbed out a bruise on his left calf. “She looked nice.”

“She was great.” He ran the towel down one arm and then the other. “But I brought up Ellie. Like . . . it got away from me before I realized.”

“Man, no . . . That’s wrong.” Dexter stood and paced the length of the locker room. He grabbed an ice pack from the freezer and brought it back. When he had it positioned over his calf he shook his head. “Ellie’s a figment of your imagination. Call me crazy, but I don’t think she wants you to find her. Otherwise she’d be leaving messages at the front office.”

Nolan stared at the ground between his bare feet. Dexter was right. “I need to call her.” He looked at Nolan. “Kari, not Ellie. Maybe after the play-offs.”

Dexter nodded. “Yeah. After we win the title.”

“Right.”

“Why’d you ask about God? About having questions?”

“Just thinking about my dad.”

“Mmmm. Yeah.” Dexter sighed. “He should be here.”

Several times when they were in college, Dexter’s family had welcomed Nolan for Christmas or a few weeks of summer vacation. His teammate was one of eight kids from Detroit, and when his family got together, it was like a scene from a movie. “You’re another son,” Dexter’s mother had told Nolan a number of times. She would pat his white cheek and Dexter’s black one, and she would grin. “See the resemblance?”

Dexter’s family got him through more tough times of missing his dad than Nolan could count.

“My dad would’ve loved this. The play-offs.” Nolan noticed a bruise on his right arm. Even in a fresh T-shirt and shorts, he was still hot from the game. He might not have found the
zone today, but he’d given it everything he had. He was glad they had a day off tomorrow. He stood and grabbed his basketball. “Come by later if you want. Bring your wife. The pool’s ready for the summer.”

“Okay.” Dexter grinned. “Might take the sting off today.”

“Yeah.” Nolan dribbled the ball through the locker room, down the cement corridor, and through the tunnel to the court. He didn’t want to tell Dexter, but finishing the play-offs had nothing to do with the timing of calling the singer’s daughter. He had to get past the first of June. Maybe then he could put Ellie Tucker out of his heart for good. He dribbled to the edge of the court. Most of the lights were off, but that didn’t matter. He jogged across the hardwood, found his place, and hit the shot on the first try.