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The lawyer shrugged. “Most people in their early thirties don’t anticipate that something like this will happen,” he answered. It was done gently; there was a respectful amount of tact in his answer. But still, I hated it. “I’m sure he thought he had time.”
Behind me was a line of suitcases, filled with my clothes. My home in Dallas had already sold, and my belongings were on a moving truck headed for Florida, where I planned to park my ass in a chair on the beach and read and stare at the ocean and relax. Three decades (plus a few years) and I’d never done that.
Waiting for me there were my newly divorced little sister and her two kids—I’d just bought them a house and was ready to spend quality time with my family for the first time in a decade.
With an aching knee and a bruised ego over not being able to leave the NFL on my own terms, I’d claimed my retirement as something of a second chance. No more working myself to the bone. No more chasing someone else’s elusive idea of winning and being the best. No more punishing my body on the field. Just finally facing the fact that I’d sacrificed my marriage and the possibility of starting a family—an idea that couldn’t survive what I’d been chasing for the last decade.
A relationship that couldn’t survive the truth that my job always seemed more important than her dreams.
This second phase of my life was supposed to be calm and peaceful. Taking care of the people I loved by being present for them.
Not a wreck of a house that I wanted nothing to do with.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a picture on my kitchen counter. The one thing I couldn’t bring myself to pack just yet.
It was the last regular-season game of our senior year, our faces streaked with eye black and sweat and enormous grins. Me and Chris, standing at the fifty-yard line in the Big House. We’d just beaten Ohio State on a last-minute interception by Chris, and life had never felt sweeter.
The future was one wide-open road. Nothing blocking the things we wanted.
We got the careers playing football after college.
Chris found the love of his life and mother of his child—something that had eluded me so far.
And the absolute fucking unfairness of the fact that he was the one gone made me want to split the side of my house in half, just for a place to release some of that anger.
The lawyer remained quiet while I sat at the table in my kitchen and stared dazedly at the picture he couldn’t see.
“Now what?” I ground out. I met his eyes through the monitor. “Now what do I do?”
He took a deep breath. “I’ll be emailing you everything you need, and it will be a lot of information. There will be papers that need to be signed, once we can get in touch with the project manager.”
I sighed. “Okay.”
“Maybe,” he started, “you could head to Traverse City and take a look at the property.”
I laughed. It was a dull, unamused sound. A tension headache bloomed almost instantly, and instead of rubbing at my chest, my fingers pressed over my forehead. If I tried hard enough, I could imagine the iron band squeezing—tighter and tighter and tighter. Vaguely,I wondered if it would eventually burst something that couldn’t be stitched closed.
“The property,” I repeated. “What can you tell me? I don’t remember much about it.”
He hummed. “It’s impressive. Or was,” he corrected. “The main house is pretty wrecked, from what I can tell. But there’s a carriage house where the project manager is meant to live during the renovations. Sits on four acres, has about eighty feet of private waterfront. Everything fell into disrepair when Chris’s grandparents passed away. It sounds like there were various reasons for that.” He paused. “You know as well as I do that most professional football players don’t have multimillion-dollar sponsorship deals. Chris and Amie were smart with their money; they didn’t invest unwisely. This was a risk but one they believed in strongly enough for their future.”
Every word hit a different point of impact in my body, causing strange tremors that echoed in my head and my neck, my stomach and my heart.
“Fucking hell,” I muttered. “Why me?” It wasn’t a question for anyone to answer, certainly not this buttoned-up lawyer whom I didn’t know. I couldn’t even remember his name. But I gave him a searching look anyway. “He didn’t leave a letter? No explanation why he chose me?”
The lawyer sighed. “I wish there was more that I could give you. Something I could do to help.”
“I know. I’m just ... trying to wrap my head around it.”
“These conversations are never easy. Because they’re always tied to something horrible and tragic.” He attempted a smile. “I only met with Chris and Amie once, but they struck me as people who didn’t do anything without thinking through the why.”
My throat went tight and ached when I caught a glimpse of Chris’s face in the photo. That wide, easy smile that he never quite seemed to lose.
I missed my friend.
And in the same moment, I could’ve punched him in the balls for doing something this big without having a single conversation with me about it.
I braced my elbows on the table. “Traverse City, huh?”
