Something his beloved golden child never thought I would find. I will get to the contents of that letter.

The spring track season in the valley arrived not with a thaw, but with a wet, bone-chilling drizzle that turned the cinder running lanes behind the high school into a gray, clay-heavy soup.

I ran the eight-hundred-meter intervals alone.

The team practice had ended forty minutes earlier; the yellow school buses had already pulled away, their diesel engines roaring as they hauled the cheerleaders and the varsity sprinters back toward the heated suburban subdivisions on the hill.

I wore my old gray cotton sweatpants, the knees patched with dark denim thread I had stolen from Fiona’s sewing basket, and a faded pair of Nike racing flats that Kostas had bought me from the factory outlet in Scranton after watching me walk four miles through an ice storm to make the morning bake shift.

"Knee drive, Mercer!" a voice barked from the timing shed near the home straightaway.

Coach Miller stepped out from beneath the corrugated tin overhang, holding a mechanical brass stopwatch in his left hand and a half-eaten ham sandwich in his right. He was sixty-two, a former state champion who had spent thirty years teaching junior-high history and watching two generations of entitled valley kids give up the moment their shins started to burn.

"You’re dropping your hips on the third turn," Miller shouted, his voice cutting through the steady patter of the rain against the bleachers. "You run like a girl carrying forty pounds of firewood on her shoulders! Pick your damn eyes up! The finish line doesn't care about your family drama; it only cares about the clock!"

I didn't answer him. I hit the stagger at the four-hundred-meter mark, my lungs burning with the clean, icy air, the mud spraying up against the backs of my calves with a rhythmic shuck-shuck-shuck.

Two minutes, twelve seconds.

I crossed the painted white line, my spikes digging into the cinders, my chest heaving in deep, ragged gasps as I slowed to an easy walk around the curve.

"Two-twelve point four," Miller muttered, clicking the split timer with his thumb. He walked over, handing me a clean white towel that smelled of bleach and gym floorboards. "That’s three seconds faster than your regional qualifying time from last spring. The recruiter from Penn State called my office during fifth period."

I stopped walking, wiping the rain and sweat from my forehead with the rough terrycloth. "What did they say?"

"They said they have two full-ride track scholarships left for the middle-distance squad," Miller said, taking a bite of his sandwich, chewing slowly as he looked out over the empty stadium. "Tuition, room, board, books, and three pairs of spikes a season. But they need the official transcripts and the parental financial release forms signed by the end of next week, or the compliance office releases the funding to a girl from Upper Darby."

The word hit my ears like the sound of an iron gate slamming shut.

Parental financial release.

Under state athletic association rules, any minor or dependent student-athlete receiving an institutional letter of intent was required to submit the primary guardian’s certified federal tax return to verify that no non-standard private booster incentives had been provided.

"Miller," I said, my voice dropping into that quiet, defensive register I hadn't used in two months. "You know my status. The district paperwork lists me as an independent student residing with an emergency caregiver."

"The district paperwork is fine for graduating high school, Nora," Miller said, his tone softening into something that almost resembled sympathy—a look that made my jaw ache with fury. "The NCAA isn't the district. The NCAA operates under federal Title IV guidelines. If Arthur Mercer doesn't sign the dependency waiver or provide his W-2 from his defense consulting firm, the compliance committee flags your file as 'unverified financial support.' They won't touch you. They can't risk an audit."

"He won't sign it," I said flatly.

"Have you asked him?"

"He locked me out of the house in November, Coach. He left me in a car during a blizzard. If I walk up those front steps asking for a signature on a college scholarship, he’ll burn the paper on the kitchen counter just to watch the smoke."

Miller took off his faded blue baseball cap, ran a hand over his bald head, and looked down at his clipboard.

"His truck was parked by the tennis courts forty minutes ago," Miller said quietly.

My heart gave a single, violent leap against my ribs before settling back into its slow, mechanical rhythm. "What?"

"Arthur," Miller pointed with his sandwich toward the western fence of the athletic complex, where the chain-link met the dense hemlock woods. "He sat by the chain-link during your third interval. Had the engine idling. When you came off the back turn and took two seconds off the split, he put it in reverse and backed down the hill toward the bypass."

I turned, staring through the gray rain toward the empty gravel turnout by the fence.

The tire ruts were fresh—two deep, muddy impressions in the gravel where a four-wheel-drive vehicle had turned around with excessive throttle, throwing a fan of dark shale against the base of the fence posts.

"He’s watching you, Nora," Miller added, his voice low and serious. "The whole town knows Jossline dropped out of the community college last week. She wrecked that new sedan your mother bought her, and the insurance company is refusing to payout because she was driving with a suspended permit. Arthur’s pride is taking hits from every direction. Men like him... when their primary investment turns out to be hollow, they start looking around to see what else they can claim."

I handed the wet towel back to him.

"He can look all he wants, Coach," I said, my voice cold and hard as the cinders beneath my feet. "He doesn't own the track."

"What are you going to do about the NCAA waiver?"