haphazard ponytail. I was still on a crazy high until I pulled into the driveway and saw Lucy’s car. Panicked, I started to back up, until I spotted her in the front seat looking right at me through the back window. She gave me a little wave, then got out of her car in a navy dress, nude pumps, and a double strand of pearls. She reached into the backseat to unleash Caroline from her car seat before they both walked over to my car. My mind raced for an explanation of why I could be here so early on a Sunday morning as I lavished attention on my goddaughter, buying a few seconds of time.
“Hey, honey! Don’t you look pretty!” I said as Caroline crawled onto my lap and began playing with the buttons on my dash. “I love your dress. And your braids.”
“They’re French braids,” Caroline said. “Mommy did them!”
“Well, oui, oui! She did a great job,” I said, glancing up at Lucy, who gave me a distracted, fast-twitch smile.
Caroline babbled some more random updates about her morning, something about her stuffed bunny named Monkey falling into the sink and getting wet. She then made a rapid transition and asked if I had candy in my car.
“Sure do,” I said, opening my glove compartment and pulling out a roll of cherry Life Savers that I kept there just for her. They were sticky from the sun, having melted into the paper wrapping, but Caroline didn’t mind, shoving two into her mouth. One dropped from her mouth and rolled down the front of her white piqué dress, leaving a red trail before falling onto the driveway. Lucy wearily sighed, as Caroline scrambled down from my lap, plucked the candy off the ground, and inserted it back into her mouth.
“Hey, Luce,” I said as nonchalantly as I could, realizing we’d yet to speak directly to each other. “You going to church?”
“Yeah … But who knows if we’ll ever make it there,” she said, talking more to herself than to me. She sighed again, looking exhausted. “What’s going on with you?”
Clearly she was asking me what I was doing at her father’s house on a Sunday morning, but I shrugged and said, “Oh. Not much.”
“What are you doing here?” she asked, point-blank.
I glanced up at her through my sunglasses and could see that she looked slightly puzzled but not accusatorial or suspicious. I told myself not to be defensive or, worse, lie, as Caroline scampered toward the house. I could see in my peripheral vision that Coach had emerged from the garage. He bent down to scoop up Caroline, then walked toward my car. Right away, I saw that his wedding ring was now on his right hand, a change since last night, and one that made my heart thump in my chest.
Lucy repeated her question. “So? What are you doing here? Just checking on Daddy?”
I considered simply saying yes, but forced myself to be truthful, mumbling that I had left my purse here.
“Your purse?” Lucy said, Coach now standing beside us. “When?”
“Last night,” I said, sneaking a glance at Coach, who looked the way I felt. Uneasy, guilty, totally busted.
“It’s in the kitchen. On the counter,” he said without looking at me, as Caroline reached up and played with the bill of his cap. She knocked it off, revealing a head of messy hair—as messy as short, coarse hair could really be.
“Why is your purse—” Lucy began as Coach cut her off.
“Shea was sweet enough to bring me some tacos last night. After the game. Very nice of her.” He looked at me and said, “Thank you, again.”
“You’re welcome,” I said with a lump in my throat.
Lucy studied her father, then me, then her father again, finally saying, “You don’t look ready for church.”
“Was I supposed to be?”
Lucy shook her head and said, “It’s Sunday morning, isn’t it?”
“Since when do I go to church on Sunday morning if it’s not Easter or Christmas?”
“Since this past Wednesday. When we talked about you going to church with us and you said you’d make every effort to go,” she said, as I wondered if she, too, noticed that his ring had changed hands. Was that part of what she was upset about? Or was it only that I had come over last night? Or merely that her father wasn’t going to church? “Ring a bell?”
“Vaguely,” he said.
“So this is your every effort? Talking about Taco Bell in those clothes at …” Lucy glanced