Chapter 23: Page Two

The Anvils' locker room smelled of tape and champagne nobody had the heart to drink.

The players had gone out to the bus, and the door was shut.

It was only the four of us now, my father on the bench under his own name plate and my brothers on either side of me.

I held the envelope in both hands.

It was soft at the corners, as if someone had opened it and closed it many times.

"You open it," Paolo said.

"It's addressed to me."

"That's why."

I slid my thumb under the flap.

There was one sheet inside, folded in thirds, written in blue ink in a hurry.

The top of the page had a date from the week before my mother died.

"Dad," I said.

He looked up.

"She wrote this for me. But you're going to hear every word of it, out loud, from me."

His knuckles went white on his knees.

"Yes," he said.

I read it.

"Mara. If you are reading this, your father has already read the first page, the one I wrote for him."

Luca made a small sound.

"This page is only for you."

My voice was already going, and I pushed on.

"I took you out of that house because I could not live inside a lie, and I could not raise you inside one."

"I never stopped him from finding us. I left the door open and let the street do the rest."

My father put his hand over his mouth.

"I saw you play at fourteen, from the back of a freezing warehouse, in a black visor with your hair under it."

I stopped.

Everyone in the room stared at me.

"She knew?" Paolo said.

"She knew."

I kept reading.

"I knew it was you by how you tuck your left elbow. You get that from him."

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