But it happened. That spring, Devon reached Level 10. One of only ninety-six in the state.
“There’s no telling how far we can go now,” said Coach T., watching Devon dive, flip, stick.
A few months later, after placing sixth on beam and bars in the Level 10 Junior Nationals in sunstruck Orlando, she was ranked first among all Level 10s in their home state.
“The greatest day of our life,” Devon said, and everyone laughed at the our, except it was true, wasn’t it?
“A star is born,” announced Coach T., rocking back on his heels, beaming, holding up that dazzling photo of Devon in the local paper—stoic and grand in her snow-white leotard, her dark eyes, Eric’s eyes. Alongside, there was that crackling interview with Coach T., and the next day, BelStars was flooded with new recruits, its coffers swelling.
“Nothing can stop her now,” Coach T. assured Katie and Eric over a celebratory dinner for Devon at Shell Shuckers, the best restaurant in town.
They took up the largest table: all four Knoxes, kindergartner Drew, the shrimp cocktail bigger than his little head, alongside Coach T. and his wife, Tina, and a young woman whom Katie had never met, with hair like Rapunzel’s—that’s what Drew would say later.
“I’d like you all to meet my niece,” Teddy said. “Well, she’s like a daughter to me.”
And that was how they came to know Hailey, whom Coach had taken care of since she was thirteen and going down what Tina euphemistically called “the wrong path.”
“I couldn’t deal with my mom,” Hailey confided, leaning close to Katie. “And she couldn’t deal with me. We were both being brats.”
With Teddy’s help, Hailey had thrived, starting gymnastics, joining the swim team, winning a scholarship, and now soon to graduate from State. Which just showed the kind of man Teddy was, why Devon was in such able, loving hands.
“I was always good on the beam, but I wasn’t anything like Devon,” Hailey added. “And my mom was nothing like you.”
And Katie, maybe a little tipsy, found herself tearing up.
“One more toast to our Devon—the Invincible!” Teddy hurrahed, and Tina hear-heared, jumping in, “So long as she doesn’t grow three inches or get hips,” with a wink.
And everyone laughed, and all eyes turned to Devon, taking her first sip of champagne, a pinched nose, a sly blush, ponytail bobbing, just like before a routine. She drew her index finger across her front teeth, as if it were too sweet.
“Why are you all looking at Devon?” little Drew asked, head darting from one to the next.
And Coach T. laughed.
They all did.
Later that night, their minds racing, their hearts thumping too wildly to sleep, she and Eric sat at the kitchen table and drank dusty bourbon from juice glasses and tried to calm themselves.
It felt as it did after big competitions, when together they’d break it all down, everything that had happened, tell it and retell it until the kitchen table hummed with warmth and achievement.
But this time it took a turn, and here was Eric, his eyes bleary, pained, talking about something a judge had said, and about Devon’s “cross to bear.”
“I’m telling you, he was talking about her foot. That she’d never get that balance perfect, not without two fewer toes on her left foot to even it out.”
Despite countless conversations about Devon’s body, her development, her strength, her preternatural calm and focus, she and Eric almost never talked about her foot. About the accident.
“Oh, Eric,” Katie said, wrapping her hands around his forearms. “Like Coach T. says, she figured out long ago how to compensate and—”
“I think about it sometimes, Katie,” he said, nudging closer toward her.
For a second, Katie thought he might say something, an admission. I can’t believe I didn’t see her. I can’t believe I was so careless—
In all marriages, there are questions you never ask. Instead, Katie could only wonder, less and less as the years went by, how Eric could have left unattended, even for a moment, that relic of a mower, hustled from a garage sale, when he knew it didn’t shut off like it was supposed to. Why he’d taken that chance in spite of the way Devon followed him everywhere, all the time, scurrying after him like an eager, pink-tongued puppy.
“I think about what we did,” he continued.
His words landing fully.
“What we did,” she began, head tilting. “We—”
“She was different before,” Eric said. “Devon was. Before the accident.”
And the we drifted away, forgotten. Bourbon-obscured.
She knew he meant different in ways that went beyond the peculiar maceration at the top of her foot, the places two angel-ear toes had once wiggled.
She wished she weren’t so drunk, could stop a million tiny, pushed-away thoughts from scurrying across her brain. About Devon, about the lonesomeness of her daughter’s life, about—
So she spoke instead, to stop the thoughts.