Chapter 15: Hard Choice

Thursday December 29
The trip home seemed to take forever. Whenever I wanted to be somewhere in a hurry, LA traffic reared its ugly head. Then the plane I was on had mechanical problems, and we had to switch to another flight. That meant that I lost my first-class seat and was sent to the back of the plane in a middle seat. It was either that or wait another day to get home. We landed in Chicago in the early morning, so traffic sucked getting out of the city.

When I finally got home, I found my mom, Angie, and Caryn in the kitchen.

“Good, you’re home. Your dad should here be soon,” Mom said.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Just wait until your dad gets here,” Mom said.

Tim had invited me over before dinner so we could plan the upcoming week. Lexi had come up with some ideas for things we could do on our trip. The whole family arranged to meet us at our house for dinner tonight.

I missed my kids like crazy. My mom had decided to keep them in daycare, despite Peggy being on break. Mom reminded me what it was like to watch them all at the same time, so I didn’t complain, even though we’d hired someone new to help. I’d wanted to swing by daycare to see them, but my mom had sent me a text to tell me to come straight home.

“Do I need to tell Tim I won’t be over?”

“Probably not,” Angie said, not really giving me an answer.

I sent Tim and Wolf a text to let them know I was being held captive. My mind was going a mile a minute as I tried to figure out why Angie was here and how it tied into Mom, Dad, and Caryn. I was happy when the front gate opened, and Dad finally got home. Caryn waited until he’d joined us before she began.

“Megan gave a report on the financials at our weekly staff meeting. We found an anomaly.”

I looked at Dad, and he didn’t look happy. I worried that someone had stolen money.

“Over the last two days, our GoFundMe pages for the two charities have been receiving donations,” Caryn shared.

I was confused.

“That’s good, right?” I asked.

“Normally, I would agree. We average about seventy-five hundred a month for the cancer charity and twenty-five hundred for teen moms,” Caryn said, confirming what I knew. “Since Monday, both charities have pulled in ten thousand each, all small donations, with none greater than five hundred dollars.”

“Did we send out a fundraising letter or get some publicity of some kind?” I asked.

“I asked the same thing,” Dad said.

“No, we haven’t done anything special to spur donations. I had Megan pull the donor list for me. Normally, very few donations are made anonymously. All of these have been,” Caryn said.

“Then your mom got this,” Dad said as he handed me a heavy-duty envelope.

It was sent to the attention of my mom for her charity. I checked, and there was no return address. I opened it, and inside were stacks of hundred-dollar bills with five-thousand-dollar bands around them. On the top was a typed note that said, ‘Hope this helps your charity. Go Blue!’

“Did you count it?” I asked.

“That’s twenty-five-thousand dollars,” Mom answered.

I looked at Angie.

“Where’s yours?” I asked.

Everyone’s head snapped around and stared at her. Angie blushed.

“It’s in the car,” she admitted.

“Go get it,” Dad said, leaving no room for Angie to back out.

“We need to talk about that at some point,” Mom said after she left.

Angie came back in and handed over her envelope. Dad looked inside and then at her.

“Why has one of the bands been broken?” Dad asked.

“I took a couple hundred dollars to buy groceries with,” she said sheepishly.

“If you’re short of money, all you have to do is ask, and you know we would help you,” Mom said, concerned.

That made Angie blush even more. I think everyone knew that Angie made enough to cover her bills. From the way she acted, we all knew she hadn’t been short of cash. I made sure of that when she came to me and asked for a raise last spring. I’d also just prepaid for a bunch of massage certificates for Greg’s business to help them have extra money for Christmas. Angie was just being Angie. I bet Greg would be furious when he found out that she had taken funds designated for the charity. I knew I was, but I had to set that aside for the moment.

“Let’s focus on what matters. Who is all this money coming from, and why did we just receive seventy thousand dollars in donations?” I asked.

“My first and last thoughts were recruiting,” Dad said. “When Caryn called me about the small donations, I thought they might be coming from Oklahoma. The guy who stopped you at the restaurant seemed a little shady. Then the note said ‘Go Blue,’ which made me think Michigan. I dug a little and discovered that Southwest Central State is called the Big Blue Machine.”

I said a really bad word, and no one even flinched.

“This gives that douche at the NCAA his excuse to cause problems,” I explained.

“What are you talking about?” Mom asked.

“I told you about the investigator and his threats if David didn’t ‘cooperate.’ He wants David to help expose what Springbok and Southwest Central State are up to as far as paying recruits to play for them,” Dad reminded her.

“So?” Mom asked. “I thought you got him to back off.”

“More; I called his bluff. I told him that I wouldn’t help with their investigation, and he could basically go pound sand,” I confessed.

Mom gave my dad a look that said he might have left some of the details out. He raised his hands in surrender.

“Hey, you would’ve been proud of him. He took charge and never lost his cool. David made it clear that he’d made his one attempt to get them to slip up. That was when he met with Coach Foster for his in-home visit,” Dad said, defending both himself and me.

“I guarantee you Stewart Chadwick will use this to bone me,” I reiterated.

“He didn’t look happy when he left,” Dad admitted.

“That being said, it looks like we need to deal with this,” Caryn said to get us back on track.

“Why don’t we just take the money and act like it was just a donation?” I suggested.

“You can’t be serious!”

Dad was looking at me as if I’d either grown another head or lost the one I had.

“Think about it. The cost of this is going to end up being more than what we take in after the lawyers get done with us. It would also avoid the whole mess with the NCAA.”

“Is that how you really think we should handle this?” Mom asked.

I wanted to say ‘yes.’ Just sweep it all under the rug and ignore it. It wasn’t only the NCAA that worried me. I was sure the FBI would crawl all over this too. If we messed with them, it could get dangerous. What scared me was that they could basically arrest anyone and say they lied to them. That was a felony and would probably mean jail time. All it took were two parties to give opposing views in interviews. One of them had to be lying, right?

I knew that the FBI ordinarily didn’t do that, but the scary part was, they could. All it would take was someone with an agenda to turn that kind of power into something truly unthinkable. Being in the public eye, I was an easy target if they needed someone to make an example of. When Maddie Addison had warned me not to provide the FBI with the video from our meeting with Stewart Chadwick, it had made a believer out of me. I was afraid she would make me tell them about the money.

I took a deep breath and shook my head. When did I become so cynical? I remembered being appalled when Teddy Wesleyan had more or less accused me of being after his family’s money. That was when his niece had bought me clothes for our date. Looking back, I had no frame of reference for what he must deal with regularly. I’d grown up in a small town and didn’t have any firsthand experience of what could happen. Since then, I’d had to deal with Cal when he tried to take Coby from me. I’d been attacked on a flight when the boxer had tried to strong-arm rob me. I’d had an attempted kidnapping by a gang in Mexico, a recruit’s father attacked me in a bathroom, Zander almost killed me, and Stewart Chadwick threatened my eligibility. Then, finally, Maddie Addison basically scared the crap out of me about the FBI.

Regardless, I knew the difference between right and wrong. The right thing to do was to report it. But at that moment, I understood why people decided against it.

I also knew, probably better even than my parents, what doing the ‘right thing’ would cost me. My fight with the NCAA would go to a whole new level if this weren’t handled correctly. Stewart Chadwick would be out for blood. It was very possible I would never play college ball.

For a brief moment, I was almost relieved. This could help me decide what I would end up doing with my life. Maybe I was destined to just do movies.

Then I had a horrible thought.

“Do you think Wolf and Tim got money?”

“What does that have to do with you reporting this?” Mom asked.

“Because if the NCAA finds out about it, they will eventually look at those two. If they pull my eligibility, they would have to do the same to Wolf and Tim,” I explained.

“Would they really?” Angie asked.

“In a heartbeat,” Dad said. “We need to find that out and call Ms. Dixon and Mr. Morris before we do anything.”

“I’ll set it up,” Caryn said.

“What do we do with the cash?” Mom asked. “We can’t leave it around the house, and I suspect we better not deposit it.”

“Caryn and I will go to the bank and open a safe-deposit box for now,” Dad said.

“I’ll have Megan tally up all the GoFundMe money and make sure it’s accounted for separately,” Caryn assured us.

“Before you go play with your friends, you have to do two things,” Mom said.

I looked at Dad and gave him my best put-out teen look. I mean, seriously—’Go play with your friends’? Was I six?

“I think we should get going,” Dad said to Caryn.

He just didn’t want to be here if my mom and I decided to go at each other.

“Catch Satan’s Spawn and put him in the cat carrier I have in the back of my car. Then I want you to go to your grandmother’s and pick up Duke.”

My grandmother loved my dog, and if she came into town, she would swing by and pick him up. My mom had told me he needed exercise when I wasn’t home, and he could run all over the farm to get it.

On the way to my apartment, I opened my bags and threw a load into the laundry. My housekeeper in LA didn’t come until Friday, so I was on my own to get my clothes clean. When I entered my apartment, the golden kitten was sleeping on the back of the couch. Once I got near him, he opened an eye.

“Hey, there, remember me?” I asked as I reached out to rub his back.

He seemed to like that and began to purr. He wasn’t so bad.

I picked him up, and he rubbed his head against my chest. I loved him up and then put him into the pet carrier. He just curled up and went back to sleep. My mom must have scared him somehow. I took him down to the kitchen, and Mom couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

“Did you have to bash him with a broom and knock him out?” she asked.

“I don’t know what all the fuss was about. He was sleeping on the back of the couch, so I picked him up and put him in there. He seems like a sweet kitty,” I assured her.

“I call bullshit. That kitten is not sweet,” Mom informed me. “Now go get your hound. I’ll finish your laundry.”

That was more than a fair trade. I left before Mom changed her mind.

When I went out back, I found Cassidy waiting for me.

“I’m your security today,” she informed me.

I’d planned to slip out without any security so I could drive the Dodge Challenger SRT Demon. Getting a chance to finally see my buddy Cassidy more than made up for it. I wrapped her in a big hug and kissed her forehead.

“Thank you,” I said for the hundredth time.

She’d been there to stop Aaron when he’d abused my baby boy and my dog. I could never fully repay her for that.

“Your mom sent me a text saying you needed to drive somewhere. Where are we going?” Cassidy asked.

“Grandma Dawson’s farm. She’s dog-sitting, and I have to pick up Duke,” I explained.

“Good, I get to drive through the park.”

The park’s twisty drive was one of my favorites in the Demon. Part of Cassidy’s repayment was a boon I’d granted her to let her drive my car. The sight of Cassidy’s happy anticipation was enough for me to go along with my promise to her. I got in and buckled up.

“Tell me about the tigers,” I said.

I had become an expert at nodding and making agreement sounds when a girl went into a monologue about a topic she was enamored with. Brook had already heard it all from Cassidy and felt she needed to repeat it to me, so I was able to half-tune Cassidy out. Meanwhile, I contemplated how truly messed up getting money from Southwest Central State was. There was a military term that fit this: FUBAR. It stood for F-ed Up Beyond Any Recognition, describing something that was a complete disaster. This situation had all the earmarks of heading there.

“They said I could bring them home if I got a big-enough enclosure,” Cassidy concluded as we pulled into the drive.

“Uh, huh,” I said.

Cassidy reached over and smacked me in the back of the head.

“You didn’t listen to a word I said,” she accused.

“You said you had a good time,” I tried as I quickly got out of the car.

I whistled for my boy. I could hear his frustrated bark that told me something was up. Since Duke didn’t come, I decided I better go see what was up. I found my grandmother wrestling with a goat, trying to get its head unstuck from the fence gate. She saw me, smiled, and then frowned.

“We’ve had problems with the gate getting open and the goats escaping. I finally found the culprit. This one figured out how to stick his head through and unlock it,” she explained.

I had my doubts until he turned his head and licked the knob on the bolt latch. It was one of those that you flipped up the knob and then pulled the bolt back to open the gate. The crafty devil was smart enough to figure it out. His only problem was his head was really stuck between the slats.

“You should attach a board to his horns so he can’t get his head through,” I suggested.

My grandma thought about it for a moment and then smiled.

“Or we could have goat for dinner.”

Cassidy blanched at that idea. I don’t think she ever seriously thought about where the meat at the grocery store came from. I also knew that this wouldn’t be the first goat that had crossed my grandmother and gone on to become a tasty meal.

“Let me try to get him free,” I suggested.

Over the next several minutes, I tried to figure out how to get him free. I had no idea how he’d jammed his head through the gate. I finally had to go get some tools and take the gate apart. The whole time, the goat was crying, and Duke was agitated. I swear that my hound had the biggest heart. He worried about everything.

Once I finally got the goat free, I had a chance to love my puppy up. Cassidy laughed at his antics. There was never a doubt when Duke wanted to let you know he loved you.

While I was putting the fence back together, I saw one of the farmhands take our escape artist into the barn. I didn’t tell Cassidy what he was up to. I was afraid she might stop him.

When I was done, Grandma Dawson invited us into the house. She had hot apple cider and cherry-walnut bars. They were all made from things we grew on the farm.

“Can you adopt me?” Cassidy asked.

“Sweetheart, I adopt all of David’s friends. Feel free to come out anytime,” Grandma Dawson answered.

“How is being Mayor Duke’s proxy going?” I asked.

“I’d forgotten how much fun this could be. Knowing that Duke won’t be running again has allowed me to do stuff that the city council never thought would get done because of the politics involved.”

“I’m almost afraid to ask,” I said.

“The city treasurer came to me and said that they had a backlog of people who owed the town money for one reason or another. Things like unpaid parking tickets, fines for not mowing their yards, or violating other city ordinances. She complained that it would cost us more to try to collect everything than it was worth and wanted to write it off. I had another idea.

“We had an amnesty day where, if they brought in a variety of items for the homeless or children in need, they could have their record cleaned up. But we did say that it was only for those who didn’t have an open ordinance violation on the books. We offered them a chance to get the issue corrected. If they did that, they could take advantage of the donation offer,” she shared.

“How did it go?” I asked.

“It was okay. The ones that didn’t take advantage, we decided to go after. We turned those over to a collection agency. I figured we didn’t need to waste city resources chasing people down for less than $300 a pop. If they weren’t smart enough to show up with at least a pack of gum, then I wasn’t going to worry about them.”

“What else is going on?” I asked.

“We have some serious budget issues. The previous mayor embezzled from the city employees’ pension fund, and we have an obligation to repay that. We’re in the process of figuring out how we’ll do that without having to raise property and/or sales taxes. There’s talk of shutting down the libraries, public pools, and the like. If we do that, Duke’s not going to be very popular,” she admitted.

I noticed that he took the blame when anything went wrong. And I realized that my grandma was using an old political trick: suggest the closure of popular venues or services. The alternative of a ‘small’ tax hike wouldn’t seem so bad in comparison.

My phone rang, and I saw it was Halle James calling.

“What’s up, Buttercup?” I asked when I answered the call.

“Did you forget that you promised to redo the song with me?” she asked back.

“I’m going to blame Lexi for this one,” I said to try to wiggle out of my obligation.

“Nice. Blame your people. You’re starting to sound like a typical Hollywood type.”

“Is there some way I can do it from here? There has to be a local sound studio where I could lay down my track,” I suggested.

“No need,” she said, letting me off the hook. “We were able to piece together audio from your singing lessons with Jett.”

“So, you just wanted to give me a hard time?”

“That, and I’ll be in town tomorrow. I was hoping we could get together and do something.”

“Are we talking bow-chicka-bow-wow, or something else?” I asked.

“David,” Cassidy warned.

I looked up at my grandmother and gave her my innocent face.

She sighed.

“I’m starting to understand why your mother is put out all the time,” Grandma Dawson said with a raised eyebrow.

I would have to learn to mimic that look for my kids. She had years of experience with the ‘put-out mom’ look. As her favorite grandson, I rarely received that from her. That was one of the perks of being a grandparent: you could leave the discipline to the parents.

“If you think you can talk Brook into it, I’m game,” Halle flirted.

That brought a smile to my face, which caused my grandmother and Cassidy to double down on their glares. I snorted out a laugh in response.

“What’s so funny?” Halle asked.

“Cassidy and my grandmother are giving me dirty looks,” I confessed.

“You poor thing. I’ll make it all better when I see you,” Halle teased.

“You better hurry up and get here. I think Cassidy might hurt me, and I need protecting,” I said in a scared little boy voice.

Even my grandmother’s lips twitched as she tried not to smile. Cassidy just ignored me and grabbed another cherry-walnut bar.

“I really do miss you.”

“Good,” I decided. “I’ll let Brook know, and we’ll figure something out.”

She promised to text me when they landed, and I hung up. I looked my grandmother in the eyes.

“Puleeease. Between Uncle John and my dad, I’m sure you’ve heard worse,” I said to defend myself.

She gave me a thoughtful look.

“Thankfully, they grew out of it,” she said.

I wondered what fantasy world she lived in, but decided to keep that question to myself.

When I got home, Cassidy dropped me off. She wasn’t done driving the Demon. I knew exactly how she felt and just let her have her fun. I’d sent a message to Tim and Wolf to let them know when I would be home. They were both waiting for me.

Duke bounded in to tell everyone hello. I saw that our cook/housekeeper was here.

“Hey, Melanie.”

“Welcome home. I made sugar cookies,” she said, pointing at the table.

Tim and Wolf had glasses of milk and were in the process of demolishing the platter of cookies she’d put out.

Duke found the pet crate and was rewarded with a yowl of displeasure from Satan’s Spawn. Everyone flinched. He sounded so much like Precious, it wasn’t funny.

“Take the cookies and that ... that cat and go to your apartment,” Melanie suggested.

“Come on, boys, we’re being kicked out,” I said.

Duke led the way. When we got upstairs, I opened the crate, and Satan’s Spawn jumped into my arms for protection from Duke’s intended puppy scan. I didn’t know any cat that enjoyed being sniffed all over.

“What’s up with you guys?” I asked.

“Looking forward to our trip to LA,” Wolf said.

“I could use some alone time with Tami,” Tim admitted.

Wolf’s face lit up like he’d just discovered electricity or something. I think he caught my momentary twinge. Tim certainly picked up on it.

“Sorry, Dude, but she’s my girlfriend.”

He didn’t sound sorry, and dang it, he was right.

“Eat your cookie like a good boy and leave me alone.” I grinned to let him know I was okay.

Tim laughed.

“There’s not a good bone in this body,” Tim said, trying to act like he was bad to the bone.

“That sucks for you,” Wolf countered with a sly smile.

“Good bones are all I have lately,” Tim shot back.

I choked, spewing cookie everywhere.