The One & Only: A Novel Read Free Page A

Carrs’ house. Ten minutes at most, but an eternity when I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Asking him how he was doing didn’t seem like my place, and telling him I was sorry felt like too much of a mammoth understatement. So I said nothing, just watched out of the corner of my eye as he reached for his silver Walker thermos, the same one I had seen Mrs. Carr fill with freshly brewed coffee at least a hundred times over the years. Probably more than that. I wondered who had made his coffee this morning and if he even knew how to work their fancy European machine. Befuddled by modern gadgetry, he was the least handy man I knew in the state of Texas. He still had a flip phone and did without a computer, insisting that it was the only way to avoid all the Monday morning quarterbacks who would inevitably track down his email address. He took a sip ofcoffee and made a face, replacing the thermos in the cup holder near the dashboard.
    When I could no longer bear the silence, I cleared my throat and imitated what I had heard others say between the ceremony and burial. That the service was really nice. That Lucy did a great job with the eulogy.
    “Yeah. She sure did. I’m proud of her.” His voice cracked, and, for a few seconds, I held my breath and looked away, terrified that he was finally going to break down.
    But when he spoke again, I realized it was all in my head. He was still composed, in complete control. “Lawton said you helped Lucy write it?”
    “I just helped a little,” I said, which wasn’t exactly true. They were all Lucy’s ideas and feelings, of course, but I had rewritten and rearranged whole sections because she said her own words didn’t sufficiently honor her mother.
    “Please make it better,” she had pleaded until I broke out my highlighter and red pen. Lucy was probably smarter than I was and had always done better in school, but writing was my thing.
    Coach gave me a look that said he didn’t quite believe me. “Well. I think Connie would have been pleased.”
    I caught that he said
would have
—instead of
was
—a clue that he wasn’t one hundred percent sure about God these days either, and I felt a stab of despair followed by a more dire emptiness. At that moment, I desperately wanted Coach Carr to have real, enduring faith, although I wasn’t sure why that mattered to me so much.
    As we turned out of the cemetery onto Baines Avenue, the main thoroughfare bisecting Walker from east to west, I worked up the courage to speak again. “Coach Carr?”
    “Yeah, girl?” he asked, waiting.
    “Could you … uh … put on your seat belt?”
    It was the first time I had ever told him what to do—unless you count “pass the salt”—and I added a
please
to soften it.
    He smiled his easy smile, crinkle lines appearing around his eyes as he strapped the belt over his shoulder. “There. We good now?”
    “Yes,” I replied, one syllable closer to absolutely nothing left to say.
    “All righty then,” he said, his voice changing again, only this time in the opposite direction—loud, normal, almost cheerful. It suddenly became clear to me what he was doing. He was faking it, trying to put me at ease, which made me feel even guiltier for being in the car, next to him. In
her
place. He finished his sentence with “Should we talk Signing Day?”
    He was referring, of course, to the big day last week, always the first Wednesday in February, and the first day that a high school senior could sign a binding letter of intent, committing to play for a particular college or university. It was one of the most important days of the year in Texas. This year, Walker had made a big splash by landing one of the top recruits in the country, Reggie Rhodes, an explosive, game-breaking tailback from Louisville, beating out Texas, Alabama, and Ohio State. It was impossible to be too excited about the news, given Mrs. Carr’s death the very same week, but it was something of a salve, and Coach’s