Parker shrugs. “I carry a lot of baggage. It took me almost a year to find a therapist I was willing to trust. I was diagnosed with OCD, PTSD, a panic disorder. It’s very heavy. I’ve been on and off medication for years. Right now I’m not taking anything. I might be in a few months. I have to accept that the things I carry don’t ever go away. Sometimes I’m just better at carrying them than others.” She lifts her head, looking over my shoulder and into the kitchen. “But I have wonderful help.”

I look back. “Seems Fitz very much enjoys being a girl dad.”

“He’s a greater dad than a quarterback.”

Parker and I sit until it’s Clara’s naptime, which she strongly objects to. Fitz and I return outside while Parker takes their daughter up to her room.

“Do you miss football?”

He throws his head back and laughs. “Of course. Not everything though.”

I point out that he at least left the League on a good note and with a positive legacy.

Fitz agrees. “Who doesn’t want to win a Super Bowl the year they announce their retirement? That was a great way to go, you’re right. The rest of the stuff…” Fitz waves his hand. “I don’t feel great about it. I could’ve said something sooner.”

The retired quarterback is talking about his former coach, James Foller.

“A lot of people said you shouldn’t have said anything at all.”

He nods. “You’re right. That’s because when you win, people don’t care about what it takes to get there. I didn’t. But we should. There isn’t a grey area between tough and abusive coaches. Because the truth is, if it can happen at that level, it’s happening at all levels. The more we let it happen, the more it just becomes written off as the norm. Then it’s expected. And then it becomes even harder to challenge.”

I smile. “That sounds like something your wife has said in one of her speeches outside the Capitol.”

“I learned a lot from her. I still do.”

Fitz has been to the Capitol with Parker many times. I pull out my phone as she takes a seat on the arm of his chair.

“Do you remember the first time?”

The video I show them is cut from just before the earlier one Parker and I watched in the kitchen, the day of her first testimony. Instead, here, the focus and question was posed to Fitz as the two of them walked up the steps of the Capitol.

“Fitz, you once said politics is something you don’t tend to comment on, but you’re at the Capitol today for the hearing⁠—”

“I wasn’t aware child abuse was a political issue. Maybe you know something I don’t.”