on a cocktail napkin that he’d given me the week before, on another drunken night out. I’d blown him off after Lucy labeled him a loser, and I decided she was probably right. But that morning, right after I ate a bowl of grits and a greasy biscuit, I picked up the phone and called him. He answered on the first ring, we went out that night, and we’d been dating ever since.
Only now, with Mrs. Carr’s death as a wake-up call, I realized just how stuck I’d become, how much of a rut I was in. Something really had to be done. I had to find a way to mix things up. Move forward.
I was thinking about all of this one afternoon as I took a long walk around the Walker grounds. Although I was on campus virtually every day including the weekends, I typically only passed between my office in the old field house and the student union center, where I picked up my lunch. In fact, I couldn’t remember the last time I had strolled without purpose, maybe since I had been a student myself a dozen years before. I did an entire loop around the tree-lined grounds, from Wait Chapel on the quad, down to the dorms, over to the science and business centers on the banks of the Brazos River, then past the pillared mansions on Greek Row. I walked and walked, thinking about Mrs. Carr and Coach and Miller, my job and my life.
Then, right when I got back to my office, I saw a note on my desk: Coach Carr would like to see you. I stared at it for a few nervous seconds, wondering what he wanted. Likely he just wanted to talk about the small feature Lucy had asked me to write on her mother’s life for our hometown paper. I had given Coach a very polished draft a few days ago, with a note that said, Let me know what you think. Happy to make any changes. That had to be why he wanted to see me, I decided, as I got up and made my way to the other end of the field house, out the back door, and across the parking lot to the modern, gleaming new football complex. Crossing the marble lobby, I took the spiral staircase up three flights, admiring the shrine to the Broncos, glass cases filled with trophies and banners and photos, then entered the security code to open the doors leading to the coaches’ wing.
When I arrived at the huge corner office, I found Mrs. Heflin, Coach’s longtime secretary and gatekeeper, manning her post. “Go on in, hon,” she said, jovial as ever.
I glanced uneasily at the closed door, usually a sign that he didn’t want to be disturbed.
I nodded, but still knocked quietly, tensing as I heard his familiar bellow to come in. I pushed the door open to find Coach sitting at his desk, listening to Trace Adkins’s “This Ain’t No Love Song.”
“Come on in, girl!” he said, looking up from a depth chart, the starting players listed at the top, the secondary players’ names handwritten below. “Have a seat.”
I sat on the brown leather sofa facing his desk and glanced around at all the framed photos, newspaper articles, and inspirational messages decorating his office. I never got tired of looking at them.
“Morning,” he said, as Brad Paisley started singing “She’s Everything.” I loved Coach’s taste in music, and loved that he still listened to the radio rather than the iPod filled with country songs that Lucy had recently given him, explaining that he liked being surprised by what came on next.
“Good morning,” I said, avoiding his eyes as Brad sang, She’s everything to me.
“So. I read your piece,” he said, pulling it out of a drawer.
The copy was clean, with no marks that I could see, but his expression was blank enough for me to question the direction I had taken. Was it too quirky or colorful? Coach Carr liked things simple and to the point. No bells and whistles, he always said.
“I can change it. It was just my first draft,” I fibbed. “So if there’s anything you don’t like …”
He cut me off. “No changes. It was perfect.”
I lowered my head and thanked him, my cheeks warming.
“Walker is lucky to have you. So am I.”
I smiled, but noticed that, although his words were promising, his expression was somber, troublesome. It was