Coach Daniels put the contract in front of me, open to page eleven. The signing bonus. One point four million dollars. And under Payee it did not say Tyler Hayes. It said the name of a company I had never heard of.
Under that, in small print, the sole owner of the company. Brad Hayes. Tylers father. The minor-league pitcher who left when Tyler was four and never made it and never came back, until his son made it instead.
Brad had reappeared that spring with a lawyer and a smile and a story about wanting to help manage his boys career. He had set up a company and arranged for Tylers entire signing bonus to be paid into it, a company Brad alone controlled. He was not there to see his son sign. He was there to sign for himself.
Coach Daniels had coached Tyler since he was a boy, had read the contract because Tyler was too trusting to, and had caught page eleven. That was why he called me. He could not watch the mother who drove to every game since Tyler was five get cut out by the father who never drove to one.
Tyler kept me away because he had let his father back in, and some part of him already sensed what Brad was, and he could not bear to have me watch him be used.
We did not make a scene in the steakhouse. The next morning Coach Daniels and a real lawyer, not Brads, sat down with the Rangers. The bonus was rewritten to Tylers own name, in Tylers own account, with no company and no Brad anywhere near it.
Brad said, hey Karen, long time, when he saw me, with that smile that was never nice. It was the last easy day he had with his son.
Tyler plays for the Rangers now. The first thing he bought with his own bonus, in his own name, was a house. For me. He drove me to see it himself.