CHAPTER EIGHT
Adalyn
My Flames credentials had been suspended.
I hit the key again, balancing the laptop on my knees as I sat on the bleachers.
Your username or password do not match any user in our system.
I reentered everything again, refreshed the portal, disconnected and connected the laptop to the hotspot on my phone. Same message.
My stomach twisted.
This couldn’t be happening. Not without a warning of some kind. This…
“Miss Adalyn?”
I looked up from that blue pop-up window that was sending waves of dread up and down my body, finding one of the kids. “María Camila Vasquez, right? You brought me the ice yesterday.” Ice that hadn’t stopped a section of skin from turning dark—just for a few days, Grandpa Moe had said—and had led me to cover my face in makeup this morning. Just like Cameron had predicted. Ugh.
María seemed a little confused for a second, so I pulled the roster out of the stack of files Josie had handed to me yesterday and that I had spent all morning studying. There was information about the Six Hills Little League—named that way because the best teams of six adjacent counties took part—a game schedule, tentative dates for the teams that made it to playoffs, and the pièce de résistance: the reason why the Green Warriors had qualified. They were the only U10 soccer team in this county.
I scanned the printed list. “Yes,” I said, checking the photo of the nine-year-old and glancing up at her. “María Camila Vasquez. You look a little younger in the roster, but it has to be you.”
“Just María is okay,” she declared, her cheeks turning pink. “Nobody calls me María Camila anymore. Except for my dad maybe. And that’s only when he’s really angry at me because I sneaked out to play with Brandy instead of doing my chores. He doesn’t care that Brandy is lonely, and that’s why I sneak out to see her.” I opened my mouth but found I had nothing to say, which María took as an invitation to continue. “She kinda reminds me of Dad sometimes. I think they could be friends, but Dad is always so busy with the farm that he has no time to play with anyone. Not even me.” Something seemed to occur to her. “I could bring her over if you want to meet her.”
I blinked at her for a second. “Oh… Hmm. Is Brandy your friend?” I eyed the roster again. “I guess… I guess she could try out for the team if she wants, but I’d need to check the U10 guidelines to see how many players the team can have on the roster. How old is she?”
“About…” She stuck out her hands and counted on fingers. “Six…?”
“She might be too young to try.” I started shifting through the stack Josie had given me. “I must have the regulation somewhere. Hold on. Chelsea is seven, anyway. So maybe…”
“She’s big for her age, though. When you compare her to any of the other goats.”
My hands came to a halt. “Goats?”
“Brandy’s a goat.” María grinned. “She’s also blind. And suffers from anxiety.” A pause. “Hmm, maybe she’s five months old and not six. I’m not sure now.”
God. It took me a moment to gather myself because, how had I gotten here? To the point where I was telling a kid her anxious six- or five-month-old blind goat couldn’t apply to the soccer team?
I set down the stack of papers. “I think there’s no place for Brandy in the Green Warriors. Unfortunately.”
María nodded, nothing but understanding behind her eyes and that smile pointed at me. In silence. For a very long time.
I cleared my throat. “So… Did you want something?”
“Ah, yes.” Her expression brightened. “Everyone’s scared of you, so they sent me here as representative of the team.”
Shock and dread flashed through me.
Scared. The kids were scared of me. I pushed aside how that made me feel. “Well, that’s understandable. Not everyone likes strangers and that video wasn’t the best introduction.”
“I like you, though,” she countered. “I think you’re pretty and I love your clothes. And I don’t think you have a resting witch face, like the rest do.”
I started to scoff but covered it with a cough. “That’s very kind of you, thank you, María.”
“You’re welcome.” María nodded, her smile splitting even wider. “I also think that we don’t really need Mr. Camelback.”
That time I couldn’t muffle my reaction. I snorted. Mr. Camelback. “And why is that?”
“Because you should coach us. Just like I said yesterday. Have you thought about it?”
“Oh.” My shoulders tensed. “No, no. I don’t think that’s a good idea. I’ll look for a new coach, though.” Josie had said nobody was particularly excited about soccer but there had to be someone in this town who could coach a group of children. I’d do the rest. I’d start with the parents coming to pick up the girls later today. Some had given me a few skeptical glances at drop-off, when they’d discovered Cameron wasn’t around, but Josie had been here to appease them.
“I think it’s the best idea ever,” María insisted. “It won’t be hard for you. Chelsea and I googled you and you work for, like, a real team. Our last coach was Grandpa Moe, and I’m sure you’ll be much better at it than him. He’s fun, but one time he called a corner kick a touchdown when Juniper sent the ball off the field.”
I chewed on that information. No wonder Josie had been so keen on recruiting Cameron. “Is that what the team sent you to ask me?”
“Oh no, they sent me to talk to you about the plan to get Mr. Camomile back, but I think we should boycott the plan and do our own thing. We’ll be… a two-person team. Like Wednesday and Thing. Oh, can I be Wednesday?”
I… “What?”
María’s mouth opened but my phone rang.
“Hold on, this could be Miami.” I fished the device out of my purse and saw my father’s name on the screen. My father never called. Hope flickered in my chest. Maybe they’d realized I was needed in the office. Maybe I wasn’t all that disposable. “María, how about you go back to the girls and do some warm-up drills while I get this? Maybe… make a line with some cones and try to jog the ball between them? I’ll be watching from here.”
She turned around with a cheery “Okay!” and dashed back to the group that had gathered in the middle of the field.
I looked back at the ringing phone for an instant, then picked up.
“Dad—”
“Ay mi, Adalyn,” was immediately bellowed.
“Mom?”
“Adalyn, mi amor, dime que estás bien,” my mother all but screamed into the phone.
I stumbled back into the bleachers. “Mom, what are you doing in Dad’s office?”
“Don’t Mom me,” she warned in that thick accent that she’d never lost. “You know how much I don’t like that. Mom this, Mom that.” A dramatic huff. “That’s all I get after I find out that your father has kidnapped you.”
“Maricela,” I heard my father say in the back. “I haven’t kidnapped her, Jesus. I merely—”
But Maricela Reyes was angry, and when she was, there was one thing you couldn’t bring up.
“Do not bring Jesus into this!” she spat at my father. “Are you telling me you’re not keeping my only daughter somewhere against her will?” she continued, and I swore, I could perfectly see her clutching her chest in outrage. “Es mi única hija, Andrew. Mi sangre. Si mi santa abuela viera esto, nunca te lo perdonaría. Si…”
And so my mother went on and on about how my father didn’t know anything about the real values of blood and family. In Spanish, of course, which was my mother’s default when she was upset.
“Maricela,” my father pleaded on the other side of the line. “English, please. I don’t understand you when you get like that.”
I had to bite back the urge to defend my mother. But after years, I’d learned to stay quiet when they argued like this.
“And whose fault is that, huh?” she spat back. “Maybe if you’d ever made the effort, but no. Nunca. Porque tú…”
And so she went on again.
I exhaled long and deep, blocking out an argument I knew well. This was exactly what my father had wanted to avoid by keeping my mother in the dark. A conflict. One that always managed to find me in the middle, which was why I had agreed to his demand. It didn’t matter that my parents had never been married; on occasions like this, I knew what having divorced parents was like.
“Mom,” I said after a few moments. And when it went unacknowledged, I said, in Spanish, just like she always encouraged me, “Mami, por favor.”
As expected, that got me her attention. “I’m sorry. I just worry about you, Adalyn,” she said, her voice softening and my father immediately forgotten. “Are you okay?”
“Of course I am,” I lied. And because there was no point in burdening my mother with things she couldn’t help with, I added, “I promise. I’m perfectly fine.”
“No mientas, Adalyn.”
Ugh. She knew me too well. “I’m not lying,” I insisted, brightening my tone and feeling like a total fraud. “This is just a work trip.” I had to swallow before continuing, and even that way, my voice wavered. “Everything’s going great and there’s nothing for you to worry about.”
A thick silence followed my statement.
“See?” I heard my father tell her. “She’s okay. She’s also an adult, for crying out loud. You’re smothering her.”
I heard another of my mother’s gasps, followed by rushed steps and a door closing.
“Hello?” I asked into the phone. “Mami?”
“Your father is being annoying,” my mother announced. “Like always. That’s why I never married him.” She clicked her tongue. “I went into the bathroom of his office because I don’t want you saying things you don’t mean because he is listening.”
That… stung. But I didn’t think I had the heart to argue it. “It would mean a lot if you could trust me.”
“Trust,” she huffed, but it wasn’t with malice. “Then why didn’t you say anything? And why is your father not telling me where you are? Why did I have to come here to find out that you had left Miami?”
“What are you doing in the facilities?” I dodged. My mother never set foot in the stadium. She barely ever left Coral Gables.
“I came looking for you. After I saw that horrible, awful video. I was talking to Matthew, you know, during our weekly call and he—”
“I’m going to murder him, I—”
“Adalyn Elisa Reyes.”
“Sorry,” I said, even though Matthew was still going to hear about this. A gulp of air left my lips forcefully. “I’m also sorry about not telling you I was leaving. And about the video.” My eyelids flickered closed for an instant. “What I did is inexcusable.”
“Inexcusable.” A trail of curses in Spanish I didn’t catch left her mouth. “You’re my daughter. There’s nothing you can do that I will not excuse. And that Paul? He always had a mouth on him. What did he say to you, huh?” Something in my stomach twisted. Paul hadn’t said anything. The worst he’d done was be in my way when I’d… lost it. “You know what? I don’t even want to know. I’m going to go down to wherever he is and tell him that he’s old enough to look for a real job. You know, one that doesn’t involve costumes with feathers.”
“Please don’t,” I said, biting back a groan. “And he’s a performer, you know that. We pay him well for what he does.”
“Too much, probably. I would like to see him in a restaurant’s kitchen. Now, that’s hard work. Not swaying his ass for a crowd.”
“Mom.” I groaned. “You used to be in the entertainment industry. You modeled. That’s not so different from what Paul does.”
“And I was in many kitchens before that. Ugly, filthy kitchens at that. I bet that boy hasn’t lifted a finger in his life.”
“I… There’s…” No point in discussing this. “There’s something I need to talk to Dad about. Can you please pass him the phone?”
Maricela Reyes sighed the sigh that told me she wasn’t done with me. “Work. It’s always work. ¿Y qué hago con los pastelitos que te traje? I thought they’d cheer you up. The internet is so mean. The comments under your video are—”
“Kelly will love them,” I interjected. I did not want to hear about what the internet was saying. “Give the sweets to her.”
“Fine, I will. And I love you, okay? Call me if you need me, ¿sí?”
“I promise,” I lied again. I wouldn’t need anyone but myself to get out of this.
There was some noise on the line as she returned to my father, and then, his voice cut a curt, “Yes?”
“I…” I started, making the mistake to trail off for a second too long.
“Adalyn, I don’t have all day.”
I squared my shoulders, even if my father couldn’t see me. “I thought you were calling to update me on the status of… things there. In Miami.”
“It was your mother calling.” A pause. “And I remember very clearly telling you to give all your focus to the assignment.”
“If there’s anything that I can do from here, I—”
“You’re not needed over here, Adalyn. Your assistant is handling things. And I was very specific: no remote work.”
That sliver of hope was snuffed right out, leaving me with a hollow spot in the middle of my gut. “Is that why my access to the system has been revoked?”
“Yes,” he answered quickly. “You’ll reach out to David if there’s something urgent that needs my attention. You must still have his private number from when you two… were involved.” Involved seemed to be a stretch now that I’d learned what I had. “Anything that’s not urgent, you will account and detail and record to—” He stopped himself with an irritated sigh. “Have you not read the memo?”
The one-page memo about the Green Warriors where it was not specified that the team was a recreational U10? I had. Now. A little too late apparently. “Yes, I have.”
“Then you know what to do. We’re sponsoring the team now, so think of it as an extension of the Flames. I expect to get a good story out of this. You should arrange for a few journalists to write about how much good we are doing for a rural community. Create a success story out of it.” Another sigh. “This is a waste of time. Everything should be obvious to you, Adalyn.”
I felt myself sink into the bleachers. Maybe it should be. “Speaking of the team, though, the, um, Green Warriors. It’s… not what I expected.” I waited for him to say something, and when he didn’t I felt the need to fill in the silence. “The accommodation is also less than ideal, unfortunately. The cabin is—”
“What exactly are you trying to tell me, Adalyn?”
“That…” I could have said a hundred possible things. I used to be someone who worked well under pressure, so I knew I could have come up with smart, well-reasoned arguments as to why this whole thing was… ridiculous. Way under my paycheck. But instead I blurted, “My accommodation is subpar and I’m supposed to work with a children’s team.”
A bitter burst of laughter echoed in the line. “Well. You lasted all of twenty-four hours before giving up.”
The words felt like a blow to the middle of my chest. And for whatever reason, my head decided to throw a very similar statement back at my face. Cameron’s. I don’t think you will make it a single night there.
“I don’t blame you,” my father continued. “Leaving behind the comfort of the life I’ve provided for you is not easy. So fine, I’ll send you somewhere else. Have a pick, Underwood Holdings has enough options to keep you busy until this blows over. I always believed you’d be better suited for real estate anyway.”
All the blood left my face, dropping to my feet with a swoosh. “But that’s not what I want. You know that.”
“What do you want then?” he asked me even though he knew the answer to that: the Miami Flames. My job. My life. Respect from him and David. He pressed, “Run back home? You can. Contrary to what your mother said, I have no intention of keeping you there against your will. But I can’t give you your job at the Flames back. Your face is still dangling around like we’re a bad joke.”
A bad joke.
My throat dried. My heart was pounding. Everything from that day came rushing back. I felt cold and warm, all at once. “I’m not running back home. I can do this. I will fix this.”
“That’s what I want to hear,” he said, and I hated the relief that half-hearted comment made me feel. “Now, if you don’t mind, I need to go search for your mother before she wreaks havoc in the office.”
And before I could say another word, the call ended.
My hand fell to my side as I blinked, staring into empty space.
I remained like that for long time, I wasn’t sure if it was a minute or five. I tried to find peace in the September crisp air, slowly bringing the pounding in my chest to a normal pace, searching for the comfort of the late afternoon sun on my face. It felt good. Or as good as something could feel when one was standing on the real—seven feet under bottom—rock bottom.
A bird chirped in the distance, the sound echoing through the absolute silence surrounding me.
I frowned from my post at the bleachers.
Why were we in absolute silence?
My eyes dashed to the spot where the team had been but found no one there. No kids in tutus doing cartwheels, no incessant chatter, no one lying on the grass.
Panic entered my system in one powerful and overwhelming wave. Phone in hand, I jerked up and climbed down the bleachers at supersonic speed.
“Hello?” I called, my growing desperation loud in my voice. “Girls?”
But no one answered.
I speed-walked along the sidelines, my gaze searching every corner and edge in the facilities. Where in the world were they? I couldn’t believe I’d just lost a whole team’s worth of children. God. This was a new low. This was also why I wasn’t fit to be their coach. I didn’t belong on the sidelines and I was useless with kids. If they’d wandered out into the nearby woods or the street, I’d never forgive myself. I—
A loud noise followed by a burst of giggles came from the opposite direction, and I immediately veered that way. The supply shed? More clattering sounds followed the first one, as if all sorts of things were crashing against the ground, making me speed up and wish I wasn’t wearing a pair of heeled sandals that were digging into the grass.
“Please don’t be hurt. Please don’t be bruised or bleeding or…”
I came to a stop the moment I spotted a ball rolling out of the shed. The metallic doors were thrown wide open, one of them was hanging off its hinges, and hushed voices came from inside. Another ball rolled out. Then a third. And a fourth.
Chest heaving, I ventured inside. The space was larger than it seemed—it had a tall ceiling and it was at least half the size of my cottage—and… all kinds of things were scattered on the floor. Vests were spilling out of cabinets. Cones were scrambled on the ground, nets filled with balls that had seen better times were strewn all over the place. There were even cardboard boxes with other sports’ equipment.
It was a mess. And in the middle of it all, there were the girls.
The giggling came to an abrupt stop.
Making an effort to settle my breathing, I asked as calmly as I could, “Is anyone hurt?”
They all shook their heads.
“No bruises? No bleeding? Nothing? Everyone’s whole?”
They all nodded.
Only then, I let myself relax.
The girl with the short, auburn hair, Juniper Higgins, as per the roster I had memorized, stepped forward. She hugged her middle. “Miss Adalyn, I tried to stop them, but they wouldn’t listen.”
“Juni!” one of them complained. “Snitches get stitches.”
Juniper flushed. “It’s the truth. I told you we would get in trouble. And now Miss Adalyn is looking furious.”
“I’m not furious,” I said. Not at them. I was angry at myself.
Someone whispered, “But she always looks like that.” That seemed to get a grumble of agreement, bringing a different kind of heat to my cheeks. “Didn’t you see the video?”
Something in my stomach soured.
“She’s not the monster she seems on that video!” a muffled voice countered, dragging my eyes to a corner and finding María with a yellow cone locked over her head.
“Oh God. How did that even happen?” I walked to her and tried to extricate the thing off her shoulders, but it wouldn’t come off. Shoot. “It’s not coming out.” I groaned. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” María answered. “See? Would a monster try to help me?”
“Butt-kisser” was murmured.
“Okay,” I said. “Rule number one: no name-calling in the team, okay?” I took the reluctant group grumble as a yes and continued my attempt to free María from the cone. “And I’m not angry. Or furious. I was…” I pulled at the thing but it remained stuck. “Worried.”
Unlike they believed, I wasn’t a monster. I might not be good with kids, but I’d never forgive myself if something happened to them because of my own irresponsibility.
The same kid whispered, “That’s what all grown-ups say, but we get in trouble no matter what.” She turned her head toward Juniper and said more loudly, “You’re so getting stitches.”
“Rule number two,” I dictated with a hand in the air. “No one is getting stitches.”
Except maybe me. This was all my fault.
In my haste to take control of things, I’d clearly miscalculated and misjudged the situation. The fact that these were kids wouldn’t make my job here easier or my workload beneath what I was used to back in Miami.
It’d probably be the opposite.
And now I had a kid stuck in a cone and a supply-room pandemonium.
Giving up on María for an instant, I braced my hands on my hips. If I wanted to make a success story, like my father had put it, out of this I didn’t just need someone to look after them during practice. I needed a coach. Someone who would make a difference. Someone—
A group gasp startled me back into reality.
Then, a deep voice that drawled words in an accent I was growing very familiar with said, “What in God’s name happened here?”
I whirled my head, hoping to find Cameron’s eyes wide and full of horror as he took in the state of the shed. But they weren’t. He was looking straight at me.
And to both of our surprise, I answered, “Oh, hi, Coach.”