"Tala wants to hold a press conference and tell every camera in the building that the documents are forged and you've never manipulated her and anyone who believes otherwise can go to hell. I've talked her down from that. We're working on approved language."
"What language?"
Bisi reads me the statement. I listen.
At two in the afternoon, between the twelfth and thirteenth holes of the final round, a reporter from the Golf Channel reads Tala's public statement during the broadcast.
"Tala Sarmiento has released a statement regarding the strategy-document allegations. The statement reads:I support a thorough investigation and have full confidence in the process. I am focused on competing at the highest level and will cooperate fully with tour officials."
I hear it on the television in my hotel room. I'm watching the broadcast because I cannot stop myself from watching Tala play, even now, even from behind a locked door, even with my name scrolling across the bottom of the screen alongside the wordscandal.
She's playing well. The interim caddie is a veteran named Marcus who worked with Tala for two events earlier in the year. He's competent. He's not me. But Tala is following the strategy — the strategy I wrote, in the notebook that someonephotographed and altered — and she's making correct decisions on every hole.
She doesn't need me beside the bag.
That should be a comfort. It is not.
I support a thorough investigation and have full confidence in the process.
Full confidence in the process.
Not in me.
In the process.
The careful, lawyer-approved, sponsor-safe language of a woman who has been advised to protect her commercial relationships during a period of uncertainty. The language of someone who is choosing the center of the green because the aggressive shot — defending me publicly, naming the forgery, risking the sponsors — is a forty-percent play that her advisors have recommended against.
I understand the calculation. I understand that Bisi is doing her job. I understand that Tala is in the middle of a major championship and that a press statement released during the final round is not the appropriate venue for an emotional defense of a woman she's sleeping with.
I understand all of this.
And what I hear is:I will support you when it is safe to support you. When the process has determined the truth. When the risk of defending you no longer exceeds the risk of remaining neutral.
I hear conditional trust.
I hear the thing Keoni warned me about — the version of Tala who believes in people only when believing is costless.
I turn off the television. I sit in the dark.
My hands are shaking. My phone is ringing. I don't answer.
The process will determine the truth. The investigation will clear me. The fabricated documents will be identified and theperson who altered them will be found and my integrity will be restored through official channels and legal mechanisms and the careful, methodical operation of systems designed to establish facts.
And Tala Sarmiento will support the process.
Not me.
The process.
I press my palms flat against my thighs. I count the seconds between breaths. I sit in a hotel room at Pebble Beach while the woman I love plays the final round of a major using the strategy I built, and I wait for the process to tell her what she should already know.
The room is quiet.
My hands shake.
Nobody comes.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
