My Foolish Heart (18 page)

The patients lingering in the common areas could reduce him to tears. Some of them lost inside themselves, others with enough faculties to lift their eyes, question his presence. Nursing homes always smelled aged, as if life had left the inhabitants long behind.

Someone had pasted a football helmet decal on Coach Presley's door, and he heard voices as he pushed the door open with his knock.

He nearly dropped with relief seeing Dan look up from the man's bedside. Caleb met Dan's eyes, found inside them a hint of compassion.

“Hey, Caleb,” Dan said. “Glad you could stop by.”

Behind Dan, through the picture window, the sun blazed over the lake, bright and glorious in the milky blue sky. A television hung above the bed, the sound muted—Caleb glanced at it and recognized old reruns from the NFL channel. Beside the bed perched a picture of Issy and a woman Caleb could only imagine had been Coach's beautiful wife, with her long dark hair, big smile, sitting on the steps of their home. Finally he looked at the coach. He swallowed before forming a smile.

Why had he thought this was a good idea? Meet the coach, introduce himself? He'd blame it on Dan, who had suggested the visit again after practice this morning.

Coach Presley looked a thousand years older than he should, his body bony and limp in his bed, attached to a ventilator, the skin on his lifeless arms flappy, his hair thinned and white. Caleb stifled the urge to turn and run.

That could have been him. He could have been the one to go through the windshield of the Humvee, to lie broken and gasping for breath on the side of the road. It could have been him puffing and exhaling and blinking just to communicate.

He'd only lost a leg. And a partial one at that. And so what if he'd been burned? He'd kept most of his fingers, his mobility. And God had spared his face.

“Howdy, Coach. I'm Caleb Knight. I'm trying out for . . . well, your job.” He wasn't sure—was he supposed to shake his hand? It lay limp beside Presley's body. He grabbed a chair. “Do you mind if I sit down?”

The man had Issy's eyes. Or rather, Issy had his eyes, gray-blue and deep and looking inside him even as he smiled. He could trace Issy's sculptured face, too, the edge of a tough jaw, despite the folds of skin around Presley's neck.

“Go ahead . . . son.” Presley's voice emerged from a distance, as if trapped inside his body, and it died at the end. He hadn't considered the man's inability to talk. Caleb glanced at Dan.

“Because of his trach, he can only talk as the ventilator expels the air from his lungs. So it has to be short and sweet. And he can't modulate his voice, so you might have to lean close to hear him.”

Caleb scooted up his chair. “I just wanted to come by and introduce myself. I, uh . . . I know I can never take your place, but I wanted to tell you that I'll do my best for the team. You left quite a legacy.”

The ventilator drew the air from Coach's lungs. “Meet my daughter?”

Caleb glanced at Dan.

“I mentioned you two were neighbors,” Dan said.

“Yes. I have. She's, uh, a very pretty girl.” Oh, good grief; he sounded like he might be in high school.

The coach's gaze moved to Dan, and he smiled. For a second, Caleb saw a spark of the coach who had heralded his team to state championship glory—tough, smart, and savvy.

“I recapped this week of practice for him, filled him in on the little competition the town has going on,” Dan said. “I hope it's okay—I told him about lunch on Sunday. I'm glad you made it by.”

The respirator made a round as Caleb wiped his hands on his pant legs.

“Where are you from?”

“Southern Minnesota. Played running back for a small town. We won our state championship for our division.”

“College scholarship?”

“No. I . . .” He glanced again at Dan. “I was fast, but I wasn't the big leagues. I would have barely gotten off the bench for Ohio State. So I found a college that let me play and taught me the fundamentals of coaching. I got my degree in teaching there—psychology. My dream has always been to coach high school football.”

His leg had begun to ache and now he longed to put it up, straight, on a chair. “The National Guard helped foot the bill for college, so I went to Iraq straight after. I had planned to finish my commitment, then come back and find a school where I could coach.”

Coach waited until his ventilator wheezed the breath out. “Get hurt there?”

Had he been rubbing his leg too much? Caleb eased back in his chair, folded his hands. Coach might be just the man to whom Caleb could tell his secrets. But what if the old coach rooted for Brewster?

Despite the concern in the man's eyes, and with Dan sitting here, Caleb ducked the truth of his injury. “I did. But it doesn't interfere with my coaching.”

Coach considered him, and Caleb looked away. Dan too wore a strange expression.

Finally, “You want to help my team?”

It was the longest sentence yet, and it spilled out almost as a gasp, desperation in his tone.

“Yes, actually. Yes.” Caleb sat up and leaned forward. “I really do. I've always wanted to coach a small-town team, like mine. I want to help mold boys into honorable and courageous young men, and football is a great way to do that. I hope to lead the Huskies to a state championship. Or three.” Nothing fake about his smile this time.

Coach nodded, blinked, and from his eye, moisture dribbled down his cheek. Caleb's own therapist back at Walter Reed warned him that trauma injuries could weaken a man's emotional threshold. Caleb himself could tear up at a Hallmark movie. Still, the coach's emotions made him turn away.

Dan still wore that strange expression. Like he and Coach Presley shared an inside secret. “Coach here has been praying for someone like you for a long time, Caleb,” he said. “A very long time.”

10

A person shouldn't be allowed to grill while his neighbor worked in the yard. Especially when Issy still had a bed of pansies to deadhead before she could go in, grab a flimsy grilled cheese sandwich, and hang out in the forum for an hour or two before her show. That always gave the ratings a boost—Miss Foolish Heart's appearance on the message boards.

She needed her online friends after today's grilling from Rachelle. Say hello? Stop thinking about what the town thought of her, how to make her world safe? Rachelle made everything sound so easy. Try living with her memories and see how safe the world felt.

Her stomach growled. Issy tried to ignore the aroma, as well as the country twang lifting over the fence into her yard, followed by Duncan's excited barking.

Figures the dog preferred Coach Knight-in-Shining-Armor to her. She only fed him donuts. She'd seen the coach feed him a couple burgers. Cheater.

She'd bet BoyNextDoor wasn't a dog stealer. Okay, fine, so her neighbor hadn't actually stolen his own dog from her, but Duncan had spent the day in her shade, on her porch, eating her leftovers.

BoyNextDoor probably had his own dog. Something pedestrian and well behaved. A miniature schnauzer or a poodle. Even a collie. Named . . . maybe Frank. Or Harold. Something all-American.

She threw the dead flowers into her compost bin and gave it a stir. The odor made her turn away, toward the scent of dinner.

Maybe tonight BoyNextDoor was outside, throwing a Frisbee to his collie named Frank, after making a flank steak. And a nice arugula salad with pine nuts and raspberry vinaigrette. Maybe he was sitting on his front steps, waving to the neighbor in his suburb of . . . Chicago? Maybe Grayslake? Or Schaumburg?

In some strange way, knowing that Coach Knight was grilling hamburgers on the other side of the fence and playing with his dog stirred an almost-sweet warmth in her stomach.

Sort of like how she felt when Lucy showed up after work to chat.

Or a picnic on the front porch.

Or when she logged online, found her favorite people in the forum, or on the phone line. What if BoyNextDoor came on the show tonight?

See, this was why she shouldn't date. If she looked forward to seeing online or hearing the voice of a man she'd never formally met—a man whose real name she didn't even know—how could she be trusted to remain calm and keep her head around a man she actually liked
and
met in person?

Not that she liked BoyNextDoor. No, she just wanted to watch her ratings spike again. Every time he called in, activity exploded on her forum boards. Better, online memberships had nearly doubled this week over last.

BoyNextDoor was simply good for
My Foolish Heart
.

Most of all, he wasn't a living, breathing soul who could watch her unravel right before his eyes.

Even if that soul did . . . clean up.

She'd snagged a look at Coach Knight climbing out of his pickup earlier and something inside her simply . . . stopped. He looked . . .

Well, what was the man doing in Deep Haven? With that tan, chiseled jaw, his beard clipped to a smart goatee, wearing khakis—he probably had a meeting with the school board or the bank.

Still, he was certainly no BoyNextDoor. BoyNextDoor would be trying to find ways to meet the girl of his dreams. Make her smile.

Ask her out on a date.

She reached in past the thick, spiny stalks of her rugosa to yank the last of the weeds from the soil. “Ow!”

Watch those wild roses, honey. They have a bite.

Her mother's voice sank into her mind, a bitter warning that could bring tears to her eyes. She dropped the weeds into the bucket.

The sun had risen, hot, unforgiving, the breeze barely tempering that Labor Day weekend.

“I know how to weed a garden, Mother. I just don't know why we have to get up at the crack of dawn on the last day of my vacation.”

Her mother had leaned back, her face shaded by a garden hat, and wiped her tanned arm across her brow. “I just wanted to spend more time with you before you left. We never see you anymore. I miss you.”

After all these years, her mother still spoke with an accent, one that suggested she'd lived life in some exotic location. Indeed, had her father not played football in Italy, he and Gabriella would have never met.

“I miss you too, Mama,” Issy had replied. Only, well, the two years since college graduation had felt a little like flying. Issy had poured herself into her journalism degree and landed a job at a cable station in Duluth, writing scripts and working as a producer. But what she really wanted was to be in front of the camera, doing a talk show about current issues. Books. Movies. Even, if she had to, sports.

“You'll be back for homecoming?”

Issy moved away from the roses to pinch the dead buds of the pansies into the bucket. “I'll try.”

She didn't have to turn to see her mother's lips press together in a tight, hold-her-tongue line.

“I just don't love Deep Haven like you do, Mama. It's so small. Everyone knows everyone.”

“That's the charm, honey. But perhaps you'll come home for your father's game, not the town.”

Her mother didn't play fair. Yes, she would do anything for her father, including driving home three hours for a Friday night football game. Especially now that his championship team had graduated.

Indeed, she loved football too. Loved to watch him stalk the sideline. Loved to listen to him coach his players. Even loved his Thursday night burger and ice cream parties in her mother's backyard, the game of touch football in the front yard.

“I'll try.”

“Good. Come here and smell these Pilgrim roses.” Her mother snipped off a bloom, held it out to Issy.

“You're not taking them all off, are you?”

“I'm pruning them down so they'll produce more blooms.”

“Ouch.”

“Yes, but I promise, it'll come back fuller.” She had stood, kissed her daughter on her forehead, leaving Issy standing in the sunlight, a line of sweat dribbling down her back.

Her mother hadn't lived to see how the roses bloomed again, double in size.

“Roger! Come back here!”

Issy heard a thump next to her and turned to see a football stuck in her burning bush. “Hey!”

A second later, Duncan blasted into a loose board in her father's impenetrable fence. He wiggled his beefy body through the opening and plowed headfirst into the burning bush, emerging with the football in his mouth.

“Duncan!” Issy stood. The dog trotted over. Peered up at her, then dropped the football at her feet. Spittle and slime slid off the brown hide. He backed away, his tail wagging.

“I'm not throwing that.”

“Please?”

She looked over, at the escape hatch. Her now-groomed neighbor had stuck his head through the fence.

“At least I know how he got into my yard.”

Coach Knight made a face. “I promise, I had nothing to do with this.”

She picked up the football, ignoring the slime, glad she wore gardening gloves. “And this?”

“Sorry. My throw got off. It bounced on the fence and angled into your yard.” He glanced at the dog. “C'mere, Roger.”

Roger? The dog so did not look like a Roger. “Duncan. We call him Duncan over here.”

“We? You and your hosta?”

“They've earned the right, I think.”

He grinned, and for a second, she felt her heartbeat in her chest. She lined her fingers up against the laces.

“Uh . . . do you want a burger? It's my brother's secret recipe. Herb butter in the middle.”

Her stomach roared. Traitor. “Oh . . . uh, no thanks. I have to get to work.”

“On a Friday night?”

“Yeah, actually. I work from home. But . . . maybe . . .” She swallowed, pushing the words out fast. “I'll take a rain check?” She added a smile. No need to break his heart, right?

“Rain check it is.”

She held out the ball.

He stuck his hand through the fence. “Pitch it to me.”