Keep Them Close(51)

Then I straighten my shoulders. If Luke has decided to cut me out, he’s misjudged me. I won’t beg. I won’t plead.

I will bring him to heel—not by breaking him, but by remaking the terms of our fight. I will make him see what he’s abandoned: the steadiness I lend when everything else splinters, the clear mind that untangles chaos, the fierce stubbornness that gets us through crises. I know him better than he knows himself. I know his weak points, the soft places he disguises with sarcasm. I will be unyielding, exacting, the sort of ally who will not be discarded like an inconvenient prop.

This is not petty revenge. He hurt me, yes, but only because he thinks I hurt him first. No, this is a lesson, a demonstration. I will pull together the evidence of what I do, assemble it into a case he can’t ignore. Then I will stand there and watch him realize the truth: he needs me. When that recognition comes—when his jaw goes slack and whatever pride he’s clung to finally yields—I’ll be ready. Not because I want him groveling, but because we are family, and you don’t split with family. You keep them close.

He’s not done with me. I love my brother, and he loves me back. I’ll prove him wrong. I’ve never lost a case.





42


Luke

Yeah, it might seem odd that I’d get back at my sister by getting myself arrested and putting my career in jeopardy. But the more I thought it out, the more sense it made.

When Trinity showed me the security video, when I realized what Allison had done, the idea came to me. Yes, I was furious with her. Yes, part of the plan was to get back at my sister. That part would be easy. Trinity had the video of Allison planting the pills, and her DNA and fingerprints would be all over the contraband. Allison would be caught dead to rights.

But someone had to drive that car when the police pulled it over. Who would be crazy enough to do that?

Well, how about someone who was ready to leave Mortimer, who didn’t want to preside over a baseball factory, who wanted to move on to the next reclamation project—but who didn’t know how to hand the program off to his trusted assistant, Alan McIntyre?

See, that had been my problem. I had planned to leave Mortimer after last season, but I knew the chancellor would name his buddy as the next coach, not Alan. That was unacceptable to me. Alan deserved the chance, and the team deserved Alan. I couldn’t leave the program knowing that they’d toss Alan aside. I could bring Alan with me, but he’d moved around so much while in the minor leagues; he and his wife had finally planted roots here.

So suddenly, I had an opportunity. If I got caught with the pills in the car, just before the season was to begin, the chancellor would have his excuse to get rid of me, but it would be too close to the start of the season for him to name anyone but Alan as the interim coach. Alan would have this year to prove himself, with probably the best Division III team in the country.

And me? Well, sure, I’d have a few weeks of bad publicity. But then it would all come out—the video of Allison, the DNA and fingerprint results. And I knew that Allison had somehow tipped off the police to be looking for Trinity’s car—I figured that would eventually come out, too. It would be clear for all to see that Allison had tried to set up Trinity. Meaning I would not merely be acquitted—I would be publicly exonerated, a victim, not a criminal. I’d lose a season of coaching, but I’d catch on somewhere the next year, I had no doubt.

I didn’t see a hole in the plan. Still, we tested things out first. We removed the drugs from the car right away, of course. Trinity drove the car around for a couple weeks, as she normally would, waiting for the local cops to pull her over. They never did. That confirmed for me what I’d thought all along—the car would be stopped on the highway on the way to Olivet Nazarene. Allison herself had said that weekday highway driving was the m.o. of drug traffickers. So then I just had to pick a Monday, close to the start of the season, to drive on the interstate. Presidents’ Day was two weeks before the start of the season. I put the Oxy in one of Allison’s bags, tossed in a tube of her lipstick, threw the bag in the trunk, and drove to Olivet Nazarene.

Audacious, I realize. But it worked. Alan is the coach. I will be exonerated soon.

And Allison? She’ll pay a heavy price for fucking with other people’s lives.





43


Allison

The day after Luke and I had our blowout, I drive to the Grace Park Recreational Center, where Luke rents a gym three nights a week for private lessons. Right after his suspension, some of the more intense parents in the area, looking to gain an edge for their children’s youth baseball careers, started reaching out to him. The accusations against him aside, the opportunity for individual coaching with a guy of Luke’s pedigree was too good to pass up.

I know he starts at 4 p.m., basically the first full hour after school, and he operates in fifty-minute increments, so I stop by at 4:45 p.m., just a few minutes before the end of his first lesson. Ten minutes will be more than enough time.

I find Luke inside, working with a kid who can’t be more than twelve, showing him the finer points of playing first base while his father looks on. “Your feet are lined up perfectly,” he says to the boy. “You showed him a target. Great. But don’t stretch out before the infielder’s thrown the ball. You don’t know where that ball’s gonna go until it leaves his hand. If you’ve committed straight forward and he throws it wide right or left, you won’t be able to adjust. Wait until you see the path of the ball, then stretch for it. John, throw him a ball to one side.”