Chapter 19: Wrong Door, Right Truth
The door swung open before he could knock. The woman standing there was a future echo of Hadley—the same clear eyes, the same smile lines, but etched deeper, softened by time. She wore gardening trousers and a faded Fleetwood Mac t-shirt. Her grin was immediate and disarming.
“Haddie,” she called over her shoulder, not taking her eyes off Eli. “Your grumpy footballer is here.”
Eli stood frozen on the welcome mat, the words ‘Home is where the flowers are’ pressing into his soles. He’d driven across the city with a single, burning image in his head: Hadley in a sunlit studio, dahlias in a jar. This was not that. This was a house. This was a mother.
“I, uh,” he started, but Hadley appeared behind her, wiping her hands on a rag. She had a smudge of what looked like clay on her forehead.
“Mom,” Hadley groaned, but she was smiling. “Eli, this is Rosemary. Mom, this is Elias. Please don’t call him a grumpy footballer to his face.”
“Why not? It’s in all the papers.” Rosemary extended a hand. Her grip was firm, her palms rough. “Come in. You’re letting the air conditioning out.”
He was steered inside before he could protest. The air was cool and carried a blend of lavender, lemon-scented polish, and something earthier—oil paint and turpentine. The hallway was narrow, lined with framed photographs. A younger Hadley with missing teeth. A family shot on a beach. A man with Hadley’s smile in a football kit, his arm around Rosemary.
His eyes tracked it as he passed.
The living room was a comfortable chaos. Books piled on side tables, an afghan thrown over the back of a sagging sofa, and everywhere, art. Watercolors of landscapes, bold abstract pieces, small ceramic figures on the mantel. The floral wallpaper was indeed peeling slightly at the seams.
“Sit,” Rosemary commanded, heading toward what he assumed was the kitchen. “Tea? Or do you only drink sinister protein shakes?”
“Mom.”
“Tea’s fine,” Eli said, his voice finding itself. He sat on the edge of the sofa. It was softer than it looked. He felt colossal and awkward, a piece of industrial machinery dropped into a dollhouse.
Hadley sat in an armchair opposite, tucking her feet beneath her. She looked at home here, porous in a way she wasn’t in his pristine apartment. “You didn’t have to come all the way out here.”
“You sent a picture,” he said, as if that explained the forty-minute drive, the sudden need. “I wanted to see the flowers.”
From the kitchen, the clatter of mugs. “They’re on the windowsill above the sink! Looking tragic!”
Hadley rolled her eyes. “She’s incorrigible.”
“She’s not wrong.” He let himself look around again, at the layers of a lived-in life. It was the antithesis of his own space. “This is where you grew up.”
“Yeah. Still my official address, according to my bank. The studio’s just a rental.” She picked at a thread on the armchair. “It’s a lot, I know.”
“It’s…” He searched for a word that wasn’t a lie. “Loud.”
She laughed. “That’s one way to put it.”
Rosemary returned with a tray bearing three mismatched mugs. The tea smelled of herbs and honey. She handed one to Eli, her gaze assessing. “So. Elias. Haddie says you’re very focused. That you have a system for everything.”
Eli took the mug, feeling the heat seep into his palms. “I try.”
“She also says you make terrible eggs.”
“Mom, for God’s sake.”
A genuine laugh burst out of him, short and surprised. “They were edible.”
“Barely,” Hadley muttered, but she was smiling into her own tea.
Rosemary settled into the other armchair, cradling her mug. The casual interrogation continued, but it lacked malice. She asked about the team, about training, but skirted the usual celebrity questions. She asked about the travel, the strange hotels, what he read on planes. She was peeling back the public layer, not to find the scandal beneath, but to find the mundane man. It was unnerving. No one did that.
He found himself answering. Short sentences at first, then longer ones. He talked about the mind-numbing boredom of airport lounges, his preference for window seats, the novel he’d been trying to finish for six months.
Hadley watched him, silent, a softness in her eyes he wanted to curl into.
“And your family?” Rosemary asked, her tone careful.
The air tightened. He took a sip of tea. “Not around.”
“Ah.” She didn’t push. She simply nodded, as if he’d confirmed something. “Well. You’re here now. Haddie, show him the garden. The dahlias are putting on a show, trying to compete with your young man’s dramatic entrance.”
“He’s not my—” Hadley began, but Eli was already standing.
“I’d like to see them,” he said.
The backyard was small, a wild tangle of color battling against neat vegetable rows. The dahlias were indeed a riot, great exploding stars of crimson and gold and the exact orange from her photo. The air was warm, thick with the scent of hot soil and rosemary.
They stood side by side, not touching.
“She likes you,” Hadley said.
“She’s terrifying.”
“Only if you have something to hide.” Hadley bent, her fingers brushing a velvety petal. “She knows about my dad. How he was. Charming, full of big promises. He’d have charmed his way through tea and then borrowed fifty quid on the way out the door. She’s looking for that.”
Eli absorbed that. The empty chair at the kitchen table. The jersey in the photograph. “Is that why?”
“Part of it.” She straightened. “You’re nothing like him. You’re all follow-through. It throws her off. It throws me off, too.”
He turned to face her. The late sun gilded the clay smudge on her skin. He reached out, his thumb gently rubbing it away. Her breath hitched. “I don’t have a system for this,” he said, his voice low.
“For what?”
“For showing up unannounced. For meeting mothers. For wanting someone to miss me when I’m just at training.” The words were foreign on his tongue, sharp-edged and true.
She leaned into his touch. “So make a new system.”
From the back porch, the creak of the swing. They turned. Rosemary was there, not pretending she wasn’t watching. She held up her mug in a small salute. “The flowers look better with you next to them, Elias,” she called. Then she went back inside, the screen door slapping softly behind her.
Alone again, but the world had shifted. The garden walls felt like an embrace, not a barrier.
“She’s right,” Hadley whispered.
He didn’t kiss her. Not here, not with her mother a silhouette in the kitchen window. He just let his hand slide down to hers, weaving their fingers together. They were sticky from the tea, gritty from the garden soil. It was the most real thing he’d felt in years.
“The match on Saturday,” he said, looking at their joined hands. “It’s a big one. There’ll be press. Lots of it.”
“Okay.”
“I have two tickets. In my box. It’s private, but… people will see you’re there. With me. They’ll start digging.”
He watched her face, braced for the flicker of hesitation, the fear. It didn’t come. She just squeezed his hand. “Let them dig. I’m from solid stock.”
The porch swing creaked again in the quiet. A bee droned past them, heavy with pollen. He brought her hand to his lips, pressing a kiss to her knuckles, a silent promise, a new play called in the moment. The game ahead was suddenly, terrifyingly, about more than football.