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Cole opened his mouth.
“That’s Big Cole,” Charlotte said from the back seat, working her seatbelt. “He’s not my dad. My dad’s the goalie.” She got the buckle in and looked up. “But he’s my family. So he’s allowed.”
Cole sat there with the form in his hand and couldn’t get a breath all the way in.
“Oh.” The sub looked at him, then at Charlotte, then back at Cole. “Well, good enough for me. Nice to meet you, Cole.”
“You too.”
“Can we get the good crackers?” Charlotte asked.
“Yeah.” Cole folded the form and set it on the dash. His hand wasn’t steady. “We can get the crackers.”
He rolled the window up and pulled out of the line. He didn’t say anything the length of the school road.
“I have to explain you a lot,” Charlotte said. She was looking out her window. “People think you’re my dad. It’s ’cause you’re always there.”
The light at Main turned red. He stopped at it.
“You can tell them I’m family,” he said. “That works for me.”
“I know.” She said it like he was silly. “That’s what I said.”
His eyes stung. He kept them on the light until it changed.
They got the crackers.
Ford was home by five. Cole set the form on the counter. Charlotte told him at dinner before Cole could, with her mouth full.
“The sub thought Cole was you.”
Ford looked up from his plate. “Did she?”
“I told her he’s not my dad. He’s my family.” She went back to her chicken. “She said okay.”
Ford looked at Cole. He held the look a beat longer than he should have with her at the table. Cole felt it land. He looked at the form on the counter so he wouldn’t reach for him.
After she was down, Ford signed it at the counter and stuck it in the front pocket of her backpack. Then he came and sat on the couch, close enough that their knees touched, with the Chicago game on and the sound off.
“She told you the short version,” Cole said.
“Is there a long one?”
“She said she has to explain me a lot.” Cole was looking at the TV. “People think I’m her dad. She says it’s because I’m always there.”
Ford didn’t say anything. He reached over and picked Cole’s hand up off the cushion between them and held it.
“She’s got you dead to rights,” he said. “You are always there.”
“Yeah.” Cole looked at their hands. Ford’s was bigger than his, rougher, and he’d have known it anywhere. There was more he wanted to say, but he didn’t have the words for any of it yet. “Turns out I don’t hate it.”
“No.” Ford’s thumb moved over his knuckles. “You don’t.”
They watched the third period like that.
At ten, Ford checked the locks and they went up. Cole walked into his own room and shut the door.
He sat on the edge of the narrow bed with the light off and listened to Ford’s door, then the bathroom, then Ford’s door again. He waited ten more minutes. Then he crossed the hall in his socks.
