“You didn't protect his dad.”
“You got mad.”
Nia laughed.
“That's your good memory?”
“Kind of.”
He shrugged.
“Adults usually tell kids family stuff is more complicated.”
“Like we're too young to know what we heard.”
“You didn't.”
Nia thought about that.
“I did other things wrong.”
“Everybody does.”
He smiled.
“Specific accountability.”
Nia stared.
“Your mother has infected you.”
“Probably.”
They hugged.
She asked first.
Important.
Cameron married at thirty-one.
A woman named Jasmine Lee whom he met through friends in Charlotte.
No sports connection.
Devin loved her immediately because she played pickup basketball.
Nia liked her because she told Devin he fouled too much.
At the wedding, Eli served as one of Cameron’s groomsmen.
Tameka sat beside Nia during the ceremony.
Both cried.
Neither discussed basketball.
Afterward, someone asked how the families knew one another.
Tameka said:
“An accusation and a sprained wrist.”
The stranger looked confused.
Nia said:
“Long story.”
Better.
Cameron and Jasmine had a daughter four years later.
Maya.
When Maya turned six, Cameron signed her up for basketball.
Devin nearly exploded with joy.
Nia looked at him.
“Behave.”
“I have said nothing.”
“Your face is shouting.”
He smiled.
Maya hated basketball.
Three practices.
Done.
She wanted gymnastics.
Devin grieved privately.
Cameron laughed for weeks.
At nine, Maya returned to basketball on her own.
Not because of legacy.
Because two friends joined.
Devin was dead by then.
A heart attack at sixty-eight.
Sudden.
Unfair.
For all the complicated years around sports, Cameron remembered his father with tenderness.
Devin had learned.
That mattered.
His funeral did not turn him into either villain or saint.
Cameron spoke.
“My dad loved basketball before he learned how to love basketball with me.”
People smiled.
“He made mistakes.”
“So did I.”
“He taught me things I kept.”
“He taught me some things by showing me what not to keep.”
“Eventually he learned the difference.”
Nia cried hardest at that.
Because it was true.
After the funeral, Cameron found an old box in Devin’s apartment.
Inside were newspaper clippings from his college years.
A photograph of nineteen-year-old Devin in uniform.
An ankle brace.
A letter from his coach informing him that athletic aid would be reviewed because he was unable to compete.
Cameron read the letter twice.
For the first time, his father’s obsession had a physical object.
Not excuse.
Context.
He gave the box to Nia.
She looked at the old photograph.
“He was beautiful.”
Cameron laughed.
“Mom.”
“What?”
“You were divorced twenty years.”
“Eyes still work.”
They laughed.
Then Nia touched the coach’s letter.
“I think part of him stayed nineteen.”
Cameron nodded.
“Yeah.”