“Hmm,” Jack said. “I’m not so sure.”
Jack stood, fiddling with the stapler on Charlie’s desk.
“Listen,” he said finally. “About what Rye said at dinner. The meatloaf thing. I’m really sorry.”
Charlie waved it away but Jack caught his hand.
“Seriously. I’ve been thinking about it ever since dinner, and he was right. Why didn’t I help cook? I was thirteen. That’s plenty old enough. But I let you do all that shit for me. I let you...be a parent. It felt good, I guess. That even though Mom and Dad were gone, I still got to have that. I’m sorry I was so selfish.”
Charlie’s stomach lurched and he stood and put his hands on Jack’s shoulders.
“No. You were a kid. And that’s what I wanted—for you to still feel like you had someone taking care of you.”
“I always knew you made sacrifices, Charlie. And I’ve appreciated them so much. I know how hard you worked to help me pay for school, and so many other things. But I didn’t think about it. It’s like... I don’t know, like you did it so automatically and so instantly after they were gone that it never seemed like a choice. It was just the new way things were. We never talked about it. It...”
He bit his lip and Charlie was horrified to hear a catch in his voice that meant Jack was going to cry.
“It was so unfair, C. I didn’t... Why... Why didn’t I help you? Why didn’t you ask for my help? You know I would have, right?”
Jack grabbed his arm and searched his face.
“I know.”
“Then why? I don’t understand. Did you think I couldn’t help?”
“No. Course not, I just... I wanted you to be a kid. You shouldn’t’ve had to do any of that shit.”
He knew what Jack was going to say. That Charlie shouldn’t’ve had to do it either. So he spoke before Jack could.
“Listen, even if I’d gone to UW, I was never gonna go pro. I would’ve wanted to come back here and work with Dad at the store. But you—”
“Are you saying you—you—you just gave up on having a future and decided I got to have one instead?”
Jack’s eyes blazed with anger.
Charlie tried to figure out how to phrase it another way, but he must’ve stayed silent a beat too long because Jack’s expression turned from anger to horror. Then his eyes filled with tears.
“You got the offer, didn’t you? They asked you to play and you turned it down.”
In an instant Charlie was back in Coach Tybee’s office at the end of March, six weeks after their parents died, the trifold papers lying on the desk between them. The poster yelling THERE IS NO I IN TEAM at him from above Coach’s chair.
The assistant coach from UW had spoken with Charlie at the beginning of the season, had come to several games and a practice. He’d made a verbal offer, but Charlie had known that wasn’t a guarantee.
He and his parents were invited down to Laramie in November to see a game, tour the campus, meet with coaches and players, but the snows had come early that year and after rescheduling twice Charlie accepted that a visit wasn’t in the cards.
He’d been disappointed but he’d been to games there before and been on campus. So he just kept his head down, kept working hard, and waited.
When his parents died, the calendar he’d kept such a close eye on for months of recruiting came unstuck, fluttering into a jumble of days and weeks that fell unnoticed around him.
By the time he got into Coach Tybee’s office in March he felt like a different person than the one who’d shaken Assistant Coach Brown’s hand and smiled to himself as he pictured Saturday mornings in a Laramie autumn.
He’d pushed signing until the absolute last moment he could, hoping. But come the end of April he knew. Accepting the offer meant Jack either went to Florida with their grandmother or went into foster care. That he’d either have to sell the store or close it. Sell the house or rent it out.
If he played football for the University of Wyoming, his and Jack’s life and their parents’ legacy in Garnet Run were over.
He had told Jack the offer never came.
“I made a choice,” Charlie said. “I chose to stay here instead of—”
“Charlie!” Jack’s voice shook. “I can’t believe you did that without telling me. Without talking to me, even!”
“And what would you have said? ‘Sure, Charlie, go to college. I’ll move to Florida with Grandma and not see you again for years’?”
Jack gaped. “I—”
“You would’ve hated Florida. You barely tolerated Grandma. I couldn’t have helped you pay for school if I wasn’t working. You would’ve ended up hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt at graduation with no place to live afterward, because I would’ve had to sell the cabin.” He shook his head. “No. There was no way.”