Page 97 of Split Decision

"Better every day," I say.

He looks at me the way he does when he's checking whether I mean it. I mean it enough.

Marin approaches. She offers her hand, which I take.

"I'm glad you're recovering well," she says. Her voice is warm without being excessive. She's looking at me with a directness that I'll give her—she doesn't look away, doesn't perform sympathy, doesn't oversell the moment. "I've been thinking about you."

And there it is.

The thing I can't argue with. The thing that's impossible to dismiss and impossible to fully trust. She's been thinking about me. Probably true. Probably genuine. And also—possibly—strategic in a way she might not even recognize as strategic anymore, because the line between who Marin is and what Marin was trained to do may have blurred past the point of her own visibility.

"Thank you," I say.

Luke appears at my shoulder with the specific proximity he uses when he's standing next to me, without looking like he is standing next to me on purpose. I feel his hand at the small of my back, brief and warm.

When Linda distracts Marin for a moment, I turn toward Luke just enough for him to hear me. I keep my voice low and my face neutral. “Don’t let her set the pace.”

“She doesn’t.” His reply is equally low, and his expression gives nothing away.

“We do.”

"Marin," he says, nodding once.

"Luke." She nods back. The exchange is civil. Measured on both sides, for different reasons.

We move toward the dining room.

LUKE

Mack is at dinner, which helps.

He takes up enough space—physically, conversationally—that the table doesn't feel like an interrogation. He tells a story about Shane that has my mother covering her mouthto keep from laughing, my father leaning forward as if he's hearing evidence in court, and Brandon losing his composure entirely at the punchline.

Marin laughs too.

That's the thing about her. She laughs in the right places. She asks Mom about the photographs on the sideboard—genuine curiosity, not performance—and Mom shows her the one from my first amateur fight, which is mortifying, and Marin studies it for a moment and says, "He has the same stance now," and Mom beams.

She's observant. Attentive. She listens the way trained people listen—tracking everything, missing nothing, filing it away for future reference or use.

I watch Andi watch her.

Andi is sitting two seats down from Marin, which is far enough for observation and close enough to hear everything. She's contributing to the conversation naturally—laughing at Mack's story, asking Brandon a question about a project he mentioned, eating with the careful management of someone whose ribs still hurt on the right side when she reaches. But she's also running a second track. I can see it in the slight angle of her attention, the way her eyes move to Marin at the end of each exchange rather than the beginning.

She's not hostile. She's watching.

After dinner, my mother is doing what she does with dessert, which involves approximately seven opinions about whether the coffee is strong enough. Kelly comes downstairs to join us. She's taller than I remember from our last backyard gathering. She’s fifteen now, something settled in her face that wasn't there before. She's wearing a Georgia State sweatshirt that's two sizes too big and carrying a textbook, which means she came down for a reason and found a reason to stay. She stops when she sees the full table.

"I didn't know people were coming," she says. To my mother, not the room.

"I should have told you," Mom says. "Come sit. There's pie."

Kelly's eyes move around the table the way a kid's eyes move when they're doing a quick assessment—who's safe, who's neutral, who's unknown. They land on Brandon, whom she knows. Then on me, whom she knows better. Then Andi, which produces a small nod of recognition. Then Marin, whom she doesn't know.

She sits at the end of the table near my mother and accepts the pie.

"This is Kelly," Brandon says to Marin. "She’s my little sister. She lives here now."

“Actually, she’s my little sister,” I interject and wink at Kelly. She smiles and lowers her face, as usual. But she feels the love from my family, and that’s what matters.