The Season Read Online Free

to her?”
    â€œYou have no idea.” He actually kicked at the dirt with his boot.
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œTry and understand,” he said. “She sees it . . . as your birthright. She worries that you’ve been cooped up out here in the country your whole life, away from society, such as it is, and you’ve missed out on . . . well, I’m not sure what. But if you don’t do this thing now, there won’t ever be another chance like it. And whether it matters to you or not, she’s invested, and . . . you can’t just throw it back in her face. It’s just not the way to handle something like this.”
    Frantically I searched for an exit, but none appeared.
    Dad’s a tough guy. I can’t remember him ever asking me for anything. And now he was begging me to do something he knew I detested as a personal favor, to take one for the family team. I realized then that he was desperate like he had never been before, and that his “there will be no peace” explanation was only the tip of some enormous iceberg of entangled negotiated settlements that likely spanned my parents’ entire married life.
    Resigned, I played my sole remaining card.
    â€œI won’t give up soccer, Dad. I’ve only got one more year left.” I gave him my super-earnest “You can’t ask that of me” look. “I can do both. I’ll just have to work harder.”
    â€œThat seems fair,” he said, and I heard myself exhale, unaware until I did that I had been holding my breath.
    â€œI’ll offer terms to your mother.” He gave me that rueful smile I loved so much.
    â€œGood luck,” I croaked.
    Dad waved as he walked toward his truck, a mud-stained F-350. He put the shotgun back on the rack and then, with the door half-open, he looked back.
    â€œHey—thanks.” Straightforward. Honest. That was Dad.
    I choked back tears as he droveoff.

Three
    In Which Megan Reveals a Good Deal More Than She Intended
    I WAS FLYING DOWN MOCKINGBIRD LANE ON MY BIKE just inches from a red light at Fairfield when I realized the black sedan beside me was an unmarked patrol car. I clamped both brakes and the back tire skidded in gravel and I ended up sideways ten feet into the intersection. I put a single Coach slingback sandal down on the gooey asphalt, backed up, and casually glanced at the cop beside me. He looked over, and chuckled. Really, who could blame him? It’s not every day you see a girl on a mountain bike in a Ralph Lauren dress, three-hundred-dollar sandals, and a bike helmet crowned with a giant plastic tiara plastered with rhinestones.
    Sweating like Seabiscuit in the final furlong of the Preakness, I blinked at the clots of mascara clouding my vision and worried my heavily made-up face might suddenly fracture and descend in a mudslide of Malibu proportions. Positive I looked demented, but determined to show a braveface, I smiled sweetly at Officer Jenkins in his air-conditioned cruiser and he, being a generous sort, turned away.
    I had, of course, planned to blow through the light without a second thought, but a split-second calculation told me the time spent defending a ticket from Highland Park’s finest was greater than the duration of the light, so I dutifully paused. That is, if you call jackknifing your bike halfway through an intersection “pausing.”
    Unable to stop myself, I checked my watch. Again. 4:43 p.m. Yikes.
    Just how, I wondered, had I found myself so very late and so very stuck to the seat of my bike? The painful answer was that sadly, all my wounds were self-inflicted. Beginning early that morning I had made a critical error in judgment.
    â€œNo, you take the car,” I said stupidly at 5:20 a.m. Julia and I shared a blue Subaru Forester. It wasn’t flashy, but it was dependable, and Dad chose it based on its impressive safety record.
    â€œYou sure?” Julia murmured. Standing in her