I had fourteen years and nineteen dollars an hour. Grady had blood and a Range Rover.
I did not know. At four in the morning on the fourteenth of March, 2026, standing in my kitchen, I did not know.
The championship was at Dunmoor Coliseum, which holds about four thousand people, and it was full.
Grady came in at 6:40 in a navy suit.
I want to be fair and accurate: he looked good. He’s forty-three and he looked like the kind of man who has a guy for his suits.
He came down the aisle to the second row behind our bench, which is where I sit, which is where I have sat for four years, and he sat down two seats away from me.
He put out his hand.
I shook it, because there were people watching and because my son was eighty feet away doing layup lines.
And he leaned over and said, quietly, with a smile:
“It’s time he remembered who his real father is.”
I said nothing. There was nothing available to say that wouldn’t have ended up on somebody’s phone.
The game was close the whole way. Amari had ten points, which is under his average, and eight assists, which is over it, and he made two free throws with forty seconds left.
