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“I’m glad we did this,” Jenny Wolf said.

“Same.”

“Please find out who did this to my brother.”

“What about your father?”

“Thomas first.”

Cantor said, “You’re good at what you do. I’m good at what I do.”

Somehow they were close to each other.

“You want to come in?” Cantor said.

Sixty-Two

I SAT BY MYSELFin the stands on Sunday to watch the Rams game.

I’d asked Cantor to join me, but he said he had work of his own to do, as he kept trying to compile as complete a list as he could of Thomas’s guests and the waitstaff who were in the suite one week ago and interview them one by one.

Even after a week, Thomas’s suite was still considered a crime scene. My brother. The general manager of the Wolves. His suite. Crime scene.

“He had a lot of friends,” Cantor had said to me the night before.

“Nobody had more friends than Thomas did,” I’d said. “Some of them were even real friends.”

There was a moment of silence for Thomas before the game. I saw his smiling face on the giant screens above the end zones and started to cry all over again. All of a sudden, the Wolves were leading the league in moments of silence.

After that the Wolves proceeded to play their worst game of the season, as our winning streak—and mine—came to an end. Against what he said was his own better judgment, Ryan had decided to start Ted Skyler at quarterback. It took one quarter for that decision to turn into a complete disaster. Ted fumbled once. In our next series, he threw an interception that was returned for a touchdown. Then he threw another interception. By the end of the quarter, we were losing 21–0.

Even Money McGee couldn’t bring us all the way back this time. At halftime, I’d left my seat and taken the elevator upstairs and sat in my office alone and watched the rest of the game on television.

At least for a few hours today, I wasn’t a grieving sister. I turned my brain back on and went back to being a boss. At that moment an extremely pissed-off boss. But even that was a relief, a way to not continue to obsess about Thomas.

I was still in my office forty-five minutes after the game had ended when my ex-husband came storming in.

“Do you and your boyfriend think I’m going to continue to let you humiliate me this way after everything I’ve done for this franchise?”

“Lower your voice,” I said.

“Or what?”

“And you know he’s not my boyfriend, Ted.”

“Just your hero. The Mike Tyson of football coaches.”

“You want to sit down and calm down?” I said. “Or just keep shouting at me?”

“This won’t take long.”

At least there’s some good news today.

“Have you spoken to Ryan about this?” I said.

“I’ve got nothing to say to him.”

“He’s your coach.”