I wondered what Jill did now. She was one of only two women pros at Little Wood Country Club. Was SAY a full-time job for her by now? I thought back to our meeting the first time, that athlete’s posture and ease, the kind of woman who would never loosen the top button on her pants. How years later, Belinda, then a high school sophomore, giggled when she confided how horrified her mother was that her daughter would decide to give up varsity tennis for cheerleading. It had been a rebel move that united us—Belinda, Stefan and me. Jep was equally nonplussed when Stefan, a running back who as a junior was already being scouted, let it be known that he wasn’t interested in making a film reel of his best action because he was not going to play college ball. In fact, he had decided that junior year would be his last season. I remembered the night that it all came to a head: Stefan finally said, “Dad, I love football. But I don’t love it enough. Guys in college, they’re going to be bigger and stronger not to mention meaner than me, and I don’t even want to think about getting hurt or hurting somebody else. I just don’t have that killer instinct.”

Those last words would echo back to us in the years that followed.

I thought more about Jill. If my prayers were answered and the attention to Stefan’s case melted away with time, would the purpose of Jill’s life melt away as well? Belinda had been her only. Her husband, a minister, died years ago when Belinda was small in a skiing mishap just after a big financial scandal broke at his church. For every hour I’d cursed my literature students as spoiled illiterates back when I was a newly-minted PhD, I now blessed my teaching position that had at least given me a handhold in the ordinary world. I still had that job and my son, still had my husband and my family, mostly nearby, however fraught the circumstances. So I still had cause for hope. And when it came to hope, I was hopeless. Optimism was my opiate. Obsession was my default. I would will things to go my way. I would muster every known force to make it so.