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“We can’t allow our secrets to get out.”

“No,” Danny said, “we can’t have that, can we, Mother?”

Forty-One

“I DIDN’T EXPECT TOstill be here for breakfast,” Ryan Morrissey said.

“When you told me why you were here, I didn’t expect you to, either,” I said.

He looked as if he’d slept in his clothes because he had, even though there were a few moments around two in the morning, after we were both all talked out, when I thought it might be touch and go where he’d end up sleeping. And whether he’d be alone.

“It’s like the line in that television commercial,” I said. “Life comes at you fast.”

“Like a blitzing linebacker.”

“You had a lot to drink,” I said.

“We both had a lot to drink.”

We were having coffee in the kitchen. I asked if there was anything else I could get him. He said more coffee. He said the last couch he’d slept on had been the one in his old office at Wolves Stadium, the couch on which he was being accused of forcing himself on one of the secretaries there when he still worked for Rich Kopka.

“I didn’t know they’d play this dirty,” Ryan said.

“Unfortunately, that makes just one of us.”

“I didn’t do anything that woman says I did.”

“I like you, Ryan. And I listened to you for a long time last night before we got solidly into the wine. But you have to know that’s what all men say.”

“But you know me.”

“I’ve known men longer. Including the ones in my own family. There was something with Jack about ten years ago that my father magically made disappear.”

“Was it true?”

“He said at the time that he didn’t do anything the woman said he did.”

“How did it go away?”

“How do you think? Money changed hands.”

“That won’t work with this,” Ryan Morrissey said.

“It won’t come to that,” I said.

“How can you be sure?”

“Leave that to me.”

“Jenny, for the last time, he made the whole thing up and got her to go along with it.”

“And for the last time, I’m the defense attorney, not the prosecutor, remember?”

“Money must have changed hands withher,” Ryan said.

“Gee, youthink?”

Her. Donna Kilgore. She’d been the secretary for all the assistant coaches before Ryan had punched out the head coach. I’d met her a couple of times. Smart, pretty, ambitious as hell—you figured that out in five minutes. I always suspected she’d had something going with my brother Danny, not that I could ever prove it.