Marsha’s office was bright white, bedecked in fresh flowers and sunlight. I sat on the white-leather-and-chrome chair, and she sat across from me. Elbows on her white wood desk, she steepled her fingers. She had two huge rings on each hand and matching bangle bracelets. Her right eye squinted in my direction, and that side of her lips curved into a smile.

“We all had a feeling you two went back there,” she said.

“Grounds keeping had its privileges.”

“And you need it set up by tonight?”

“I’ll pay for the service and tip whoever has to do extra work to get it done.”

“You bet you will.”

“I need access and privacy.”

“We aim to please, Mister Carmichael.”

We shook on it. As she led me to the door, she said, “She’s worked hard for everyone else over there. It’s nice to see something good happen to her.”

“I may not be all that good.”

“At least Harper won’t have to hit you over the head.” I must have taken too long trying to put her meaning together, because she explained without me having to ask. “You didn’t hear?”

“I just saw her.” What possibly could have happened?

“Gossip travels fast around here.”

She untangled the grapevine on the way to reception. Reggie had gone to the Barrington house to make Catherine his, and when she refused, Harper had done something completely expected and bashed him over the head.

I made light of it, and Marsha promised to have the club set up for me by nightfall.

Everything was going fine, but it wasn’t. It was terrible. I didn’t know how long I stood in that front garden, staring through a rosebush, asking myself what the hell I was doing. I’d disrupted everything.

A bit of yellow was visible at the base of the bush. I reached through the leaves and thorns. A tennis ball. You were supposed to throw it back, but no one was playing nearby. The kid who kept the grounds would take it back to the pro shop and toss it in one of the coach’s baskets.

The pro shop window was manned by a young woman in her teens. I held out the ball.

“Can you toss this in a basket?” I asked. “I found it in the garden.”

“They’re locked up. You can keep it or leave it here.”

I put it on the counter. “Is Irv around?”

She looked puzzled. “Irv?”

“He was… who’s the manager?”

“Oh! You mean the last manager? He died in…” She counted on her fingers.

She told me the year, but it didn’t register. Irv was dead. The guy who’d given all the poor kids jobs. The guy who’d witnessed my first kiss with Catherine. Gone. And I didn’t even know. I should have known.

“Sir?”

“Right. Well.” I took the tennis ball off the counter. “Thanks for your help.”

I walked back to my car in a fugue, clutching the yellow ball in my fist.

No matter what happened in Barrington, no matter how I walked away, no matter how long I stayed, or my success on a mission I couldn’t even define, I couldn’t leave things worse than when I came. I couldn’t leave things undone, unsaid, broken.

I had to face Catherine about everything, and I had to face the town I’d abandoned.

Nothing about Barrington was the same as when I’d left, but maybe some things hadn’t changed. On a Friday afternoon, payday, anyone who wasn’t working would be at Walter’s for burgers, beer, and pool. Or not.

I drove there on autopilot. Walter’s still didn’t have a sign out front, and the parking lot still smelled sour and dusty. Johnny’s motorcycle with its sidecar sat in the lot out front, next to Kyle’s prized Harley. I parked next to Orrin’s pickup truck.

When I walked into the dark room, I felt like an outlaw riding into town. Conversations stopped, but the pool balls continued to roll and click. Faces were lost in shadow. Sunlight shot through the windows, bounced off the dust in the air, and was smothered in darkness before it could brighten the room.

I felt something warm and wet on my fingers.

Percy was licking them. I kneeled and rubbed behind his ears.

“Look who’s buying the next round!” a young voice shouted. It was Damon. When I’d left, he was in fourth grade. I shook his hand.

“You don’t need no more rounds,” Orrin said, leaning on his pool cue.

“They still make burgers here?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Johnny said from the bar. “But the fryer’s been busted, so we get potato chips with it.”

When I shook his hand, I saw Reggie at the other side of the bar with a rectangle of gauze attached to his forehead with a hashtag of tape. I slapped Butthead on the shoulder and gave Kyle a manly hug.

“Thanks for coming this morning,” I said.

“Shouldn’t be such a stranger.”

I ordered a burger, and a beer appeared in front of me. I flipped a credit card on the bar and made a circle with my fingers, indicating I was indeed buying the next round.

I wished I’d worn jeans. I was casual in a sports jacket and button-front shirt, but I should have worn a T-shirt. Sneakers, not shoes. Or work boots that I didn’t own, worn at the right foot, with a history of their own.

“Really, thanks for coming,” I said to the bar at large.

“Had to watch Catherine,” Johnny said. “Make sure you weren’t going to take advantage.”

“Thanks for that too.” I sipped my beer.

The pool game resumed, and though I didn’t expect Reggie to shake my hand or even greet me, he seemed isolated at the other side of the bar.

“What’s up with Reg?”

“His head got in the way of an object at velocity. Mrs. Boden taped him up. She was a nurse in the Korean War. Didn’t take no whining or crying from him,” Johnny said.

“Should he be drinking?”

“A concussion woulda set him straight. But here we are.”

Johnny wasn’t going to tell me what happened, and I wasn’t going to admit I already knew. I wasn’t one of them anymore.

“Here we are,” I said.

“When you going back?” Butthead asked.

“I don’t know.”

“We’re pretty proud of you around here,” Johnny said.

Butthead huffed. “He’s the only one who understands what the fuck you do.”

“Quantitative trading ain’t that hard, asshole.” Johnny turned to me. “Ain’t hard to understand, I mean. If doing it was easy, this dimnut would have the scratch to drink imported beer.”

“Fuck that,” Butthead said. “Buy American.”

“See what I’m saying? Get the fuck out of here while you can,” Johnny said to me. “Place makes you stupid. I’d rather watch you make money from afar.”

“What about Catherine?” I asked impulsively. I was tired of beating around the bush. “What if I took her away?”

“You got my blessing.”

“Everyone south of the train tracks would shit bricks,” Butthead added.

“You’re south of the tracks, shithead,” Johnny mumbled. “What are you going to do the next time you can’t get antibiotics for your little girl? What are you gonna do when she’s not here to feel sorry for your dumb ass?”

“She’s done enough already. If people don’t have their shit together, fuck ‘em. Goes for me too.”

The bravado wasn’t lost on me. I’d entered adulthood with it. Walking into the biggest city in the world with a few hundred dollars in my pocket, ready to take over the world if that was what it took to win a woman I didn’t understand. I’d thought money was important to her, but it wasn’t. Never had been. Her people were important to her. Her tribe. I’d missed the point entirely.

I made eye contact with Reggie. He was still alone.

“I still love her,” I said to Johnny quietly. “But I don’t want to just come in here and cause trouble for anyone.”

“Trust me.” Johnny put his beer down with a deliberation that was punctuation. “We wouldn’t let anything happen to her she didn’t deserve one way or the other. But times are changing. Time she did too.”

“What about you?” I asked as my food came.

He launched into his kids. They’d gone to college and never come back for more than holidays. One thing that came through his story was how proud he was of that exact fact. They’d moved on.

“You miss them?” I asked.

“Every damn day.” With a tip of his chin, he ordered another beer. “Reg looks like he’s gonna have an aneurysm.”

He looked fine to me, but I had to trust Johnny on that. I took my beer and left my seat, crossing from the cool kids’ table to the doghouse.

“Hey,” I said, sitting next to Reggie.

“Fuck off.”

There was no reason to answer him, but I wasn’t walking away either. Not yet. I finished half my beer before he spoke again.

“She needs someone who isn’t leaving.”

“Yeah.”

“Someone who appreciates her. Who isn’t thinking she’s someone she isn’t.”

“You should know.”

In my complacency, he had me by the collar and pushed against the wall in a second. He was an artist and I was a mathematician, but the threat of a bloody fistfight seemed very real.

“She’s not decoration,” he said through his teeth. His eyes were lit by inner fire and his breath was soaked in beer.

Hands appeared on his shoulder. Kyle. Curtis. Johnny, of course. They pulled him off me, but his grip had never been the primary tools of attack. Our eyes were locked like two pit bulls in a ring. I wasn’t letting him get pulled away any more than he was allowing it.

“You took your shot, Reggie,” I said.

“She’s not sixteen anymore. She’s stronger than any of us. And your money? She’s better than every single dollar you got. We all know it. This whole place rides on her back.” He shook off the men holding him. They let him go but stayed close. “Well, I admit it, and I want to do for her. Take care of her. That’s nothing for you, but it’s something for me.” He jabbed his chest hard enough to bend his finger back.

This felt like an extension of my conversation with Johnny and Butthead, but with a little more fire, a little more passion, and a single sentence that shook me.

We all know it.

I’d assumed, without thinking clearly about it, that I could take her away to something better.

But what did better mean?

I’d always thought it meant money, but what would have happened if I’d come for her? If I’d arrived on a white horse, rescuing her when I would have actually been rescuing myself? She wouldn’t have become the woman she is. She wouldn’t have been forged into the patron saint of Barrington.

I went to New York to make a ton of money, because I had to do that before I realized it wasn’t important. If I’d stayed here or come back early, would I ever have understood that? Would I have come to that conclusion at Catherine’s expense? Would she have come to represent everything that would have been wrong with me?

Worse, would I have spent the rest of my life chasing a dollar because that was what I’d been told I was worth?

“I fucked it up,” Reggie continued, throwing himself back in his seat.

“Get up,” Butthead said. “I’m taking you home.”

Reggie kept on. “Fucked it bad, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to just let you have her.” By the last three words, he was shouting.

“It’s not up to you. Or me.”

Johnny put his hand on my shoulder. “You oughta go.”

“You love a saint,” I said, ignoring Johnny. “But she’s not a saint. She’s a living woman.”

“You love a sixteen-year-old heiress. She’s not that anymore either.”

He was right. I’d come here hoping to meet the girl I’d left, but that girl was gone forever. She had been replaced by a woman of greater stature and purpose than I’d had the mind to wish for.

“I’m going to fight for her.” I pointed in Reggie’s face. “Don’t underestimate me.”

Johnny pulled me away. Reggie shook his head and let him take me outside. The sun was low in the southern sky and the afternoon wind rustled the dry grass. Everything was quiet, but nothing was still.

“Do you need a lift back?” he asked when the door shut behind me.

“Nah. Half a beer. Fuck it. Fuck it all. If I have to bulldoze over that guy or anyone for her, I will.”

“Let him cool off. You’d do well to do the same.” He handed me my credit card wrapped in a sales slip. “I grabbed this on the way out.”

“Tell me something.” I took a pen from inside my jacket and leaned on the wall to sign for the round. “Am I stealing her? Do they have something?”

“In his mind.”

“And hers?” I handed him the signed receipt, and he snapped it away.

“If she says there’s nothing, I believe her. She’s not playing games, far as I can see.”

After a shot in the arm, I was left alone in the parking lot.