The change of subjects threw him. “Yeah, sure. What about it?”

“He cheated, my dad said. Thomson. I mean, they all did. People think it just happens now with steroids. But those old New York Giants were stealing signs. Other pitchers scuffed up the baseball. That guy who ran the Celtics, the one who drafted you, he intentionally made it extra hot in the visiting team’s locker rooms. Maybe it’s not cheating. Maybe it’s just looking for the edge.”

“And you looked for the edge?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“I spread rumors about my competitor. I made her out to be more of a slut than she was. I tried to ruin her focus by adding stress to her life. I told you that her baby was probably not Brad’s.”

“You weren’t the only one who told me that. And I knew Kitty on my own. I didn’t base my opinion on what you told me anyway. She was a mess, right?”

“So was I.”

“But you weren’t manipulating my brother. You weren’t leading him on and then sleeping around with a bunch of other guys.”

“But I was all too ready to tell you about that, wasn’t I?” Suzze nestled her head in closer to his chest. “You know what I didn’t tell you?”

“What?”

“Kitty also loved your brother. Truly and deeply. When they were broken up, her play suffered. Her heart wasn’t in it. I pushed her into partying more. I keep telling her that Brad wasn’t for her, that she should play the field.”

Myron thought back to the happy photographs of Kitty, Brad, and Mickey on her Facebook and wondered what could have been. He tried to let his mind settle on those blissful images, but the mind goes where it wants. Right now the mind was veering back to the video of Kitty and Ponytail in that private room at Three Downing. “Kitty made her own mistakes,” he said, hearing the bitterness in his tone. “What you said or didn’t say made no difference. She lied to Brad about everything. She lied about her drug use. She lied to him about my role in their little drama. She even lied about being on the pill.”

But as he said that last part, something in his own words didn’t mesh. Here Kitty was, on the verge of being the next Martina, Chrissie, Steffi, Serena, Venus—and she ends up getting pregnant. Maybe it was, as she claimed, an accident. Anyone who took middle school health class knows that the pill doesn’t work 100 percent of the time. But Myron had never given that excuse an iota of plausibility.

“Does Lex know all this?” he asked.

“All?” She smiled. “No.”

“He told me that was the big issue. People have secrets and those secrets fester and then destroy trust. You can’t have a good relationship without total transparency. You need to know all your spouse’s secrets.”

“Lex said that?”

“Yes.”

“That’s sweet,” she said. “But he’s wrong again.”

“How’s that?”