Chapter 15: Pueblo

My dad found out I was married from a video of the gala his neighbor showed him on a phone.

He called me that night in May.

He didn't yell.

He never yelled, not even at coaches.

He just said, "You should come home for a weekend, Megs," and hung up before I could cry on him.

It took me until the last Saturday in July.

Cody drove.

Junie sat in the back with her stopwatch and timed how long each song on the radio lasted, and wrote it in a notebook.

"Why?" I asked.

"Data," she said.

"What's the data for?"

"I don't know yet. That's why you collect it."

Cody looked very proud and tried to hide it.

My dad's house was the same small brick house on the east side of Pueblo, with the same lawn chair by the door.

He was standing on the step when we pulled up.

Sixty-one, gray crew cut, a whistle still on his key ring.

He looked at me getting out of the truck.

Then he came down the walk and hugged me so hard my feet left the ground.

"You're too thin," he said into my hair.

"I ran forty intervals in April."

"Then you're too fast. Eat something."

He put me down and looked at Cody.

"You're the linesman."

"Assistant referee, sir."

"I know what you are. I saw your leg on the news." He looked at Junie. "And who's this?"

"Junie Duffield," Junie said, and held out her hand. "I'm going to be a referee. Meg says you were one for thirty years."

"Thirty-one."

"Did you ever get punched?"

"Twice," my dad said. "Once by a parent."

Junie wrote that down.

My dad looked at me over her head, and his mouth twitched.

"I like her," he said.

He'd made green chile.

The whole house smelled of it, roasted peppers and pork from the freezer, bags he'd put up last fall.

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