Page 6 of What Maple Heard

I drove home that night and sat in my car in the driveway. Be careful, I had thought.

But I had not been careful.

He asked one afternoon when I called him from the studio between classes, about River’s new cleats. I had mentioned casually that I needed to pick some up before his game on Saturday.

The next day, the cleats were at River’s school. Dropped off by Cade. The right size. The right brand.

He had remembered. He had gone out and bought them and dropped them off without saying anything to me first, without asking if it was okay, without making it into a thing that required gratitude or acknowledgment. Just — cleats. At school. Done.

I called him immediately.

He picked up on the second ring.

“You bought River cleats,” I said.

“I thought it would save you a trip.”

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“I know.”

I stood in the middle of my studio between classes, holding my phone, trying to locate the part of me that had a reasonable response to this. It was taking a while to find.

“Were they the right size?” he asked.

“They were the right size.”

“Good.” A pause. Then, quieter, in a slightly different register — the one I had only heard a few times, usually when he thought I wasn’t paying close attention: “Can I ask you something?”

“Yes.”

“His game is Saturday.” Another pause. Longer this time. “Would it be — I mean, if you think it’s too soon, or if River would be uncomfortable, just say so and I completely understand, but I was thinking —“ He stopped. Started again. “Could I come? To the game?”

I had not been prepared for that.

Not the question. The way he asked it. Cade Sonnenberg, who walked into rooms like he owned them, who never once appeared to second-guess himself in public, was stumbling over a sentence about a fourteen-year-old’s soccer game like the answer genuinely mattered to him and he wasn’t sure what it would be.

“You want to come to River’s game,” I said.

“If that’s okay.”

“It’s okay,” I said.

I heard him exhale.

Something in my chest fluttered.

“I’ll see you Saturday,” he said.

“Okay,” I said.

I hung up and stood in the middle of my studio and smiled.

He came to River’s soccer game the following Saturday.

River gave him absolutely nothing. River, when presented with a wealthy man who was clearly interested in being in his sister’s life, had deployed every defensive weapon in his arsenal — the monosyllabic responses, the phone-staring, the brand of teenage body language that communicated I see you and I have decided not to.

Cade took it all without blinking.