On a Tuesday in late October, Reed Callahan called the duplex.
He was forty-eight now, selling insurance in Charlotte, still playing amateur events when his knees allowed. He had seen Zuri's name in a junior golf digest roundup — *Langston wins Pinecrest with Callahan's old stick* — and had tracked down Pop through a mutual friend who still worked the bag room.
"Ezekiel," Callahan said, voice warm with distance. "You still reading greens?"
"I read my granddaughter's," Pop said. "That's enough."
They talked for twenty minutes. Callahan asked to speak to Zuri. She took the phone on the porch steps with her homework half-done beside her.
"I heard you put that driver to work," Callahan said.
"Yes, sir."
"I gave it to your grandfather because he saw a break I didn't. Sounds like you see a few yourself." He paused. "I also heard there was a man on the first tee with opinions about price tags."
Zuri said nothing for a moment. Then: "There was."
"People like that have been on first tees since before I could hit a wedge. Some of them learn. Some of them don't. You don't owe them the lesson." Callahan's voice softened. "You owe the ball a good strike. That's the contract."
"Watch where it lands," Zuri said, half to herself.
Callahan laughed. "That what you told him?"
"Yes."
"Good. Tell him again next time if there is a next time. And Zuri — keep the club until you outgrow it. Then hand it forward. That's the only math that ever made sense to me."
After she hung up, she sat on the steps until the streetlights came on. Patrice called her in for dinner. Pop asked, from the doorway, if Callahan still faded his long irons. Zuri said she had forgotten to ask. Pop smiled as if that were the right kind of forgetting.
XXVI.
Winter came early that year. The municipal course closed its greens and left the range mats out for the stubborn. Zuri hit balls in a beanie and gloves with the fingertips cut off. Mei-Lin joined her on Saturdays. Sebastian came when he was not working a stocking shift at the hardware store. Brayden came twice a month, always alone, always quieter than his swing.