At exactly three thirty, a gun went off and the first event started—the boys’ mile run.
Lulu screamed at the sound. She lurched to her feet and ran back and forth in the bleachers, yelling, “Look at me, Mommy!”
“Where is Michael?” Mila asked worriedly. “I reminded him yesterday. ”
“I’m sure he’s on his way,” Jolene answered. “He better be. ”
Tami shot her an are-you-worried look.
Jolene nodded.
The mile race finished. Then they called the girls’ mile.
Jolene fished her phone out of her purse and dialed Michael’s cell phone. It went straight to voice mail. She tapped her foot nervously.
Come on, Michael … get here on time …
At 4:10, they called Betsy’s event—the hundred-meter dash. Runners, take your spots …
Jolene’s phone rang. It was Michael. She picked up fast. “If you’re in the parking lot, you need to run. They just called her race. ”
“I’m at the jail,” he said. “My client—”
“So you’ll miss it,” she said sharply.
Below, on the track, Betsy approached the starting line. She bent over, placed her palms on the track, fit her feet into the blocks.
“Damn it, Jo—”
The starting gun went off. Jolene said, “I gotta go,” and hung up on him. Getting to her feet, she cheered for Betsy, who was running hard, pumping her arms and legs, giving it her all. Pride washed through Jolene, brought tears to her eyes. “Go, Betsy, go!”
Betsy was the second one across the finish line. Afterward, she bent over, breathing hard, and then she looked up into the stands. She was beaming, her smile triumphant as she looked up at her family.
Slowly, her smile faded. She saw that Michael wasn’t there.
Then she ran off to be with her team.
Jolene sank slowly back onto the bleacher seat. She knew what it was like to need a parent’s attention and be denied, how much that hurt. She had never wanted her children to know that pain. She knew she was overreacting—it was just a track meet, after all—but it was the start. How long would Betsy remember this, be wounded by it? And how easily could Michael have made a different choice?
There was another race—the 220—and Betsy gave it her all, but her sense of triumph was gone; so was her smile. She came in fourth. After that, the races went on and on, and Lulu kept running back and forth in the bleachers, but the three adults just sat there.
“I don’t understand it,” Mila said at last. “I reminded him twice. ”
“I saw your twice and doubled it,” Tami said. “The only way he could legitimately have forgotten was if he had a brain tumor. Sorry, Miz Z, I’m just saying…”
“He is like his father in this,” Mila said. “I begged Theo to come to Michael’s school functions, but he was always working. Their jobs are important. ”
“So is the family,” Jolene said quietly.
Mila sighed. “Yes. This I told his father, too. ”
Lulu twirled in front of Jolene, banging into the seat. Her eyes sparkled in that I’m-either-going-to-scream-or-fall-asleep-any-second kind of way.
When the meet ended at five fifteen, Jolene took Lulu’s small hand in hers and stood. “Well. Let’s go. ”
They made their way down the bleacher steps and onto the field, where athletes from both schools milled around.
“There she is,” Lulu said, pointing to Betsy, who stood alone, beneath the football goalpost.