“You’re supposed to be on my side.”

“I am on your side. That doesn’t mean I’m on the side of your worst decision.”

Trent looked at the posters of champions on the wall. It was suddenly hard to meet their eyes, even though they were photographs.

“Am I off the team?”

“You’re suspended from competition and training here until you take responsibility. No cameras in the gym. No content. I want you to see a counselor before we discuss returning.”

“My dad pays for half this place.”

Deacon’s face changed, not to anger but to profound disappointment.

“There it is,” he said. “The sentence I was hoping you wouldn’t say.”

He stood and opened the office door.

Trent got up slowly.

At home, Marianne was waiting in the kitchen. She had watched the full clip that afternoon after calling Eli directly. Now she looked at her son as though trying to find the boy who used to apologize when he bumped into a stranger.

“Were you trying to hurt that man?” she asked.

“No.”

“Then why did you hit him?”

“Because he wouldn’t fight.”

Marianne closed her eyes for a moment.

“Listen to what you just said.”

He tried to explain that the crowd had been watching, that Eli was filming, that his father expected him to do something memorable. With each sentence he heard how weak the explanation sounded.

Marianne let him finish.

Then she asked, “If your father told you to walk into the river, would you?”

“That’s not fair.”

“No,” she agreed. “What happened to Mr. Miller wasn’t fair.”

The next morning, Trent found that his sponsor had paused his contract pending review.

Richard told him not to worry. He would make a few calls.

For the first time in his life, Trent wondered whether his father fixing things was the very reason nothing ever stayed fixed.

Chapter Nine: The Man He Had Been

On Wednesday evening, Joseph opened a narrow wooden box he hadn’t touched in almost two years.

Inside were a folded flag, a few medals, photographs, and a notebook with a cracked black cover. Sarah had packed the box before she died, placing each item carefully as though she were preserving not decorations but evidence that different versions of the same person had existed.