"Everybody thinks that's why I quit," Wyn said. "My dad. Torin. Coach, I think. Everybody thinks I missed a penalty and broke. Like I was made of glass. My dad told Torin that, I know he did. Don't be like your brother. He couldn't handle it. He cracked." He turned the empty foil over in his fingers. "That's not what happened."
"What happened?"
Wyn was quiet for a while.
"When it went over," he said, "I was standing there watching it go into the field. And everybody behind me was making that sound, that groan, and the Walnut Creek parents were screaming. And I felt." He stopped. "I felt relieved. Like somebody had opened a window in a room I didn't know was closed. It was over. I didn't have to win. I didn't have to go to Stanford and be Wyn Brackett for four more years with my dad in the stands with a stopwatch. I'd been feeling like that for a year, Tavo. A whole year. I didn't have a word for it. And then the ball went over the bar, and I had the word. The word was done."
He looked at Tavo.
"I didn't miss on purpose. I want you to know that. I've thought about it a lot. I tried. I tried as hard as I've ever tried at anything. But when I missed, I was glad. And that scared me worse than anything had ever scared me. So I quit. Three weeks later. I told my dad at dinner and he threw a plate at the wall. Not at me. At the wall. Torin was ten. He was at the table." Wyn put the foil down. "I moved out when I was eighteen. I got on at Sorensen. I've been there five years. I like it. It's quiet at night. You stand on the floor and the grain comes in from the trucks and goes up the leg and it's just a sound, all night. Nobody's counting anything."
"Why don't you go to Torin's games?"
Wyn shook his head.
"Because when I'm there, I'm the lesson," he said. "Every time I've ever been in the same room with them since, my dad looks at me and then he looks at Torin, and I can see him thinking it. Don't be like your brother. If I go to Torin's game, I'm standing at the fence like a warning sign. I figured the best thing I could do for him was not be there. Let him be his own thing. Let my dad forget about me and just see Torin." He shrugged. "I figured that was the one thing I could give him."
Tavo looked at him. He thought about Torin by the pinny pile that afternoon, saying, Not one game.
"He doesn't think you're giving him anything," he said. "He thinks you left."
Wyn's face did something complicated.
"He said that?"