But then he heard her say, “Are you sure? We’d love to have the company.”

Lucas heard her inviting him to dinner, then heard a slight pause.

“Okay,” she said. “But if you change your mind, you know it’s no problem for me to set an extra place.”

When Lucas walked into the kitchen she said, “I guess you heard?”

“I did.”

She shook her head. “The new normal.”

“It must be the normal he wants,” Lucas said.

“I don’t think any of us wants this,” she said.

The game against the Owls was a lot like their first game of the season: They dug a big hole for themselves early. They were playing solid defense, but not solid enough, as it turned out. The Owls just couldn’t miss. Most of the scoring damage was being done by their two guards, Gary Cullen and Len Shenfeld. They were both big, they could both shoot, they could both handle the ball. If you were just watching the game from the stands in the Oakdale Y, you would have had a hard time deciding which one was the point guard and which one was the shooting guard. It made Lucas remember something else Gramps liked to talk about when he got into his way-back machine:

They were both just guards. Not point guards. Not shooting guards.

Just guards.

During every time-out in the first half, as the Wolves couldn’t dent the Owls’ fourteen-point lead, Gramps would say the same thing:

“We’re fine.”

Lucas didn’t think they were. Their zone press hadn’t worked this time. Gary Cullen and Len Shenfeld were just too good with the ball. Even when the Wolves would have one of them trapped in the backcourt, they would find a way to make a pass over the top of the defense, and the Owls would end up with another easy basket.

They were the ones playing basketball the right way today.

A lot righter than us, Lucas thought.

Their lead was still twelve halfway through the third quarter. The Wolves were shooting a little better by then, the Owls shooting a little worse. But Lucas knew that if something didn’t change, and soon, the Wolves were about to lose their first game of the season.

Maybe it was just one of those days. Maybe the other team was just better today, no matter how much the Wolves tried to change things up.

Only Lucas just wasn’t ready to concede that.

At the end of a time-out the Owls had called, Lucas said to Gramps, “We should try what we worked on in practice the other night.”

“We worked on a lot of things,” Gramps said.

The other Wolves players in the game were already walking back on the court. It was just Lucas and Gramps. Talking basketball. Trying to figure it out.

For now, things were the way they used to be.