Ellen Hartman - The Long Shot

“I wasn’t comparing your results. You approach your job differently. Frankly, you take things to heart more than he did.”

“I keep feeling I should be doing more.” She leaned into her mom’s shoulder. “I can’t lose the team. I won’t.”

Henry returned from the garage. “So what can we do to help?”

Julia straightened up and reached for the purse she’d set down when she’d first arrived. “My new boosters will be key to our successful year. Do you happen to have your checkbook on you?”

Henry rolled his eyes, but he went inside his house and came back with a check. Her mom wrote one as well. She dug out a pad of pink sticky notes and printed Milton Girls Basketball Supporters on the top. She drew a stick figure shooting a ball on the first one and then printed Henry’s name. On the one she made for her mom, she drew two stick figures going up for a jump ball.

“So now we have two fans.”

“Make two more, for Geoff and Allison. I’m going to the city this weekend, and I’ll get checks from them.”

“Four boosters in one day,” she said. “All I need now is my coach.”

* * *

SHE MEANT TO go directly home, but she stopped at her office for two student files she had to review for a special-education committee meeting the next day. She was about to duck out the rear door into the parking lot, but as she turned toward the back of the building, the lights in the trophy case in the lobby caught her eye.

Milton High School had been built in the early 1950s and it showed its age in many ways. The architecture of the lobby, with its thick marble pillars and heavy stone steps grooved deep by generations of students, was still wonderful. The solid stone reassured her. The building would be there the next day and the next, and if she persevered every day, she’d have another chance to do what she could to help the kids she had under her care.

The display case was stuffed full of awards and trophies from years of Tiger basketball dominance. Taking place of pride in the middle of the center shelf, directly under one of the spotlights, was a photo of Deacon Fallon.

He didn’t look like much of a superstar. At eighteen, he had been tall and awkward off the court. Thin enough that he looked gaunt because his body mass hadn’t yet caught up to his height. He’d kept his hair shaved so short his scalp showed through in places, and the combination of blond stubble and pale skin had made him appear, well, mangy. Knowing what she knew now about how some of her students’ families lived, she suspected his diet hadn’t provided much in the way of fruits and vegetables. He’d also suffered from serious acne and a misguided attempt to grow a mustache.

No, nothing about his appearance in the picture said superstar. But she’d seen him play way back then. She might not know how to coach the game, but she knew magic when she saw it. As hard as she’d argued for him to go to college and as much as she still regretted not being able to convince him, she acknowledged his great gift at basketball. She’d just wanted him to trade it for an education and use it as a platform for lifetime employment rather than a get-rich-quick contract.

She’d done her best to persuade him that the NBA would be around for him after college, that he shouldn’t squander his chance to get an education. The entire school had watched the draft in the gym one spring afternoon, but she’d stayed holed up in her office.

She moved a step closer to the case and pulled out her phone, tilting the screen to catch the light from inside the case. She searched his name on Google and turned up a whole lot of pages about his NBA career. She changed her search terms and located him currently—or at least got a step closer to him. He was the financial backer behind a string of physical-therapy clinics, and he resided somewhere near Lake Placid. Did Ty realize he lived just a few hours from Milton, yet still snubbed the boosters?

Finding his phone number wasn’t hard, and before she really thought the action through, she thumbed open her contacts and stored his number. Not that she was planning to call him. Not that he’d come back to coach, anyway. But what if she did call him? Maybe he wouldn’t come himself, but what if he knew someone, or, as Henry had suggested, maybe he’d pay for a real coach? Weren’t professional athletes always looking for photo opportunities for their charities?

Could that skinny, stubborn, serious kid with the sweet shot and ruthless instinct for opportunities on the court hold the key to saving her girls?

CHAPTER TWO

DEACON SLAMMED HIS hand against the glass door of the university administration building and stalked out. He made no attempt to hold the door for the idiot he called a brother. In fact, the way he felt right now, he hoped the door would hit Wes in the face. The kid desperately needed someone to knock some sense into him.

“Deacon, wait,” Wes called.

He kept walking. His Porsche convertible was parked in a visitor’s spot right outside the building. “Deacon!” His brother was behind him, the flip-flops he wore slapping the pavement.

“Get in the car.”

“Can’t you listen for one minute?”

“I was just at a meeting with your coach and a very nice woman from the dean of students office. A meeting in which I fully expected to listen to what you had to say, but— Wait a minute. You weren’t there, were you? They were talking about kicking you out of school, Wes, and you couldn’t be bothered to show up?”

“I got there.”

“A whole hour late. The meeting was over before you managed to drop by.”

“Aren’t you even going to listen to my side of the story?”

“How can there possibly be ‘your’ side to paying your roommate to do your work? How can there possibly be ‘your’ side to skipping practice? Or getting caught in a bar with a fake ID? And I’d really, really like to know how there can be ‘your’ side to stealing your coach’s car and ‘parking’ it inside the weight room.”

He heard Wes’s barely suppressed snicker when he mentioned the car.

Deacon walked back up the sidewalk to face his brother, muscling into his space because he was angry enough that he didn’t care about being nice. Deacon and Wes Fallon were both over six foot and both had spent a good part of their lives in the gym. But Deacon was ten years older and he’d shouldered responsibility for their family at an age when most boys were dreaming about learning to shave. So while he and Wes might be physically matched, he was still able to back his little brother down a step when he wanted to.

“You wouldn’t be laughing if Coach Mulbrake had called the cops when he found out his car was stolen—”

“It was a joke, not auto theft.”

“How is it not theft if you took his car out of his garage without his permission? The only reason he didn’t file charges is that I begged him not to. I worked too damn hard to get to a place where I don’t have to ask anyone for favors, and I spent the last hour doing exactly that because you think everything is a big freaking joke!”

Wes squared his shoulders and put his hands on his hips. “You’re not even going to listen, are you?”

The kid might be eighteen, but he still sounded six when he thought he was being treated unfairly. Which happened more often than expected in the privileged life of Wes Fallon.

“I don’t know what you could say that would convince me you haven’t screwed up the sweet deal you have here to play ball and get a college degree on top of it. You’re suspended, Wes, and unless we scare up three hundred hours of community service and a fistful of letters of recommendation, you can kiss your college-basketball career goodbye.”

Deacon felt sick thinking about how wrong college had gone for Wes. He’d tried to give his brother everything, and he had a horrible feeling Wes didn’t want any of it because he didn’t know how much an education, respect, a life with value meant. How could his brother throw away his life on irresponsibility?