Neither one of them ever made a big thing of it. And I never pushed.
I thought it was working.
He drove her to every single practice since seventh grade. An hour each way, when her club team practiced in Mankato.
He built her a hitting net out of old fence posts and cargo netting behind the shed.
He sat through every match. He kept stats on a clipboard nobody asked him to keep.
He knows her kill percentage better than her coach does.
And he’d never once called himself her dad.
That last part, I took for respect. I thought he was being careful with her. Giving her room.
I didn’t understand, until that Thursday, that a man can be careful for so long it turns into fear.
