When he handed it back, Maisie read the message.
For Maisie and Gavin — keep watching together.
Her lips trembled.
She hugged the ball against her
chest and started crying again.
Cole looked at me with mild panic.
“Did I make it worse?”
I shook my head while wiping my own face.
“Those are good tears.”
Maisie nodded hard.
“The best ones.”
Cole gave her a signed pair of gloves as well, then arranged for us to stand near the tunnel when the team came out.
As players ran past, Maisie screamed until her voice cracked.
For those few minutes, her tears had nothing to do with the accident, the empty chair at home, or all the Sundays she would never have with her dad again.
She was simply eight years old and ridiculously happy.
After the game, we saw Parker near the concourse.
Denise was standing several feet away on her phone.
Parker approached us by himself.
“I’m sorry again,” he said.
Maisie held the football close.
“It’s okay.”
He shook his head.
“My
mom shouldn’t have done that.”
Maisie thought for a moment.
“My dad used to say doing something bad doesn’t mean you have to keep doing it.”
I looked at her.
Gavin had said that about a completely different situation involving a broken kitchen lamp, but I decided not to ruin the moment.
Parker smiled.
“Your dad sounds pretty cool.”
“He was.”
That night, Maisie placed the football on the coffee table beneath Gavin’s framed photograph.
Then she draped his old jersey across the chair where he used to sit.
For a long time, she stared at both.
“Do you think Dad saw today?”
There was no easy answer to that question.
I sat beside her.
“I don’t know.”
She nodded.
“I hope he did.”
“So do I.”
A few weeks later, she wrote Cole a thank-you letter.
At the bottom, she added one sentence:
The football is next to
my dad’s jersey, so we both get to keep it.
Sunday football never became exactly what it used to be.
It couldn’t.
Gavin’s chair was still empty.
