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It was three thirty. Practice normally began at four. I was going to miss that most of all. It was the teacher in me. I liked practices better than games.

“You don’t have to explain anything to me, Joey,” I said. “Youdidn’t do anything.The kidsdidn’t do anything. This is all on me. I talk to my players all the time about making good choices.”

“Who puts a picture like that on the front page of a newspaper?”

“My brother.”

“To sell papers?”

“To sell me out is more like it.”

In addition to being smart and funny and someone who, I was told, had been a great English teacher, Joey Rubino loved the school from which he had graduated. I thought it was his best quality.

“Got a lot of calls today, as you might imagine,” he said.

I smiled now.“Might?”

“The cancel culture. Full speed ahead.”

There were pictures on the table behind him of his wife and children, three beautiful little girls. I sat there across from him and wondered what it was like for them, growing up in a normal family and having a normal childhood, with a father who didn’t constantly pit them against one another.

“I did my best to explain to the parents that I thought we had to do better than handing out some sort of death sentence for the worst moment of someone’s public life,” he said.

“It’s funny, Joey. Until a couple of weeks ago I hadn’t had a public life since I was married to Ted Skyler.”

He was taking his time with this, I could see, wanting to let me down gently. It wasn’t my place to rush him. He had to do this his own way, even though we both knew how this particular movie was going to end.

When we finally did make our way there, I was just going to ask him if I could meet with the players before cleaning out my office.

“Unfortunately, the parents didn’t want to hear it. They already had the scarlet letter on you.”

I smiled again. “I bet I know where, too.”

As awkward as this was for both of us, that got a chuckle out of him.

“For what it’s worth, I never got fired before.”

Joey Rubino looked confused.

“Who said anything about firing you?”

Twenty-Seven

OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS,I knew people wanted me to issue some kind of statement. Beg for forgiveness in the court of public opinion. But I wasn’t playing that game, especially over something that had happened when I was a freshman in college. I certainly wasn’t going to stand in front of the cameras and say that if I offended anybody, I wanted to apologize.

Every time I saw one of those press conferences, I found myself screaming at the television.

Youdidoffend us, you moron. It’swhyyou’re apologizing!

Everybody except Supreme Court justices had weighed in by now, from the commissioner to my fellow owners to every exploding head in sports television. But my favorite comment had come from one of my own players, Andre DeWitt, who simply said, “We already knew she was badass. We didn’t need no damn pictures to convince us.”

Every day I drove past crowds of reporters when I left the parking lot at the stadium and past reporters when I got home. I smiled and waved. And said nothing. There was a crowd of reporters waiting for me at Hunters Point on Saturday after the kids won again. When it was time for me to leave the school grounds, my players—the ones who had gone to their principal and said they’d all quit the season if he even thought about firing me—formed a circle around me as I walked to my car.

The only difference for me when I took my usual seats for the Wolves game—Joey Rubino was my guest—was the two security guys stationed at the top of section F to keep the media away while we watched Ryan Morrissey win his first game as head coach.

When the game ended, the security guys walked me over to the elevator and stayed with me while I went downstairs to see Ryan in the office that used to belong to Rich Kopka.

“You did good, Coach,” I said.