Chapter 9: The Boathouse

Brodie put the phone back in his pocket.

"It's fine," he said.

"It's not fine."

"It's a boat, Liv. I still get to row in it. Somebody else just yells."

"You've been captain since you were a sophomore."

He looked at me sharply.

"Trudy told me," I said. "She tells me everything. She can't help it."

He leaned his head back against the door frame and closed his eyes.

"Four years," he said quietly. "My dad drove up for every race. Took unpaid days off the mill. Sat on a cooler on the bank."

Then he opened his eyes and he was fine again, or pretending.

"Go to bed. I'll see you tomorrow."

He went up the stairs.

I stood on the step with my hand still warm from his shirt.

I called the director at seven the next morning.

She answered from what sounded like a treadmill.

"Olivia, I can't keep doing this."

"Who put a condition on the boathouse gift?"

She stopped walking.

"The athletic director called me last night, confused," she said.

"The gift letter was signed in June. No conditions. Then yesterday, an addendum came from your father's office."

"Saying what?"

"That the family won't fund a team captained by someone involved with, quote, 'the individual subject to a no-contact order.'"

"He wrote that himself?"

"His signature is on it, sweetheart."

I thanked her.

Then I sat on the edge of my bed with the phone in my lap for ten minutes, looking at the bracelet.

Brodie's father had sat on a cooler on that bank for four years.

Mine had ended it with an afternoon memo.

I dialed.

"Olivia." He sounded pleased. "Have you thought about it?"

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