Penwell stepped onto the tee and checked his watch. "Eighteen. Par five. Five hundred twenty-one yards. Out of bounds left. Water short right of the green. Play away."
Zuri teed her ball. The driver felt the way it always felt in her hands: heavy with history, light with possibility. She thought of Reed Callahan handing it to Pop. She thought of Pop on the back steps. She thought of Clifford pointing at it that morning as if price were a verdict.
She did not look at him this time. She did not need the smirk. She had already told him to watch.
The drive was not her longest of the day. It was her straightest. Center cut. Two hundred twenty-eight yards. The kind of ball that made arguments look small.
Brayden hit past her again. Mei-Lin hit short and safe. Sebastian hit a high draw that made him grin in spite of everything.
XIV.
The eighteenth green at Pinecrest sat below the clubhouse veranda, where members took lunch and watched finishes the way other people watched fireworks. By the time the final group reached their second shots, the veranda was full. Patrice Langston was not on it. She was still at Mercy South. But Pop had left his stool and walked, for the first time all day, as far forward as the ropes allowed. He stood with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on Zuri's ball.
Zuri had one hundred ninety-four yards to the pin. She could lay up. She could also go.
Pop's voice in her head said *tempo*. Her own voice said *take your turn*.
She pulled a four-hybrid. The swing was the swing she had made ten thousand times on the municipal range at dusk. The ball flew on a line so pure that even Clifford Haskins, standing near the scoring table, forgot to arrange his face. It landed on the front of the green, hopped twice, and stopped eighteen feet from the cup.
The veranda made a noise Pinecrest did not usually make for junior girls with olive canvas bags.
Brayden went for it too, long and proud, and found the bunker short right. Mei-Lin laid up and wedged to twelve feet. Sebastian laid up, wedged to twenty, and looked as happy as a boy four over had any right to look.
Brayden's bunker shot ran eight feet past. He missed the putt. Bogey. One over for the tournament.
Mei-Lin missed her birdie, made par, finished one over.
Sebastian lagged to two feet, tapped in for par, finished four over, and raised both arms as if he had won the Cup itself. In a way that mattered, he had won the version of the day he needed.
Zuri stood over eighteen feet for eagle and the tournament.
She did not need eagle. Two putts for birdie would win by five. But the line was there, soft left to right, the kind of putt Pop had made her practice until her back ached. She took one breath. She heard, somewhere behind the ropes, Clifford say something to Hollis Greer that she could not catch and did not want.
She rolled it.