Apples Never Fall

by Liane Moriarty

When she looked at photos of her children when they were little, she sometimes thought, Did I notice how beautiful they were? Was I actually there? Did I just skim the surface of my entire damned life?)

Now Logan competed against Troy by not competing, which was fucking genius. You couldn’t win if only one of you was playing.

Joy stopped bobbing, rinsed off the conditioner, and gave herself a final blast of freezing cold water, which supposedly caused her stem cells to form brown fat instead of white fat, and brown fat was good, apparently.

I used to think this too haha when I was doing research on brown fat

“Good morning, Stability!” cried Joy emotionally. She blushed. “I mean Hannah, I mean Savannah!” Good heavens. Stan, who was sitting at the table eating bacon and eggs and doing the crossword, looked at her over the top of his reading glasses. “Are you having a stroke?”

Losing one’s husband, like so many of life’s milestones, had turned out to be an interesting test of friendship. Debbie had lost friends, like the one who imperiously told her not to “wallow in her grief” when she didn’t want to go to the theater, and she’d deepened her friendship with others, like Sulin, who was not a widow, yet seemed to intuitively understand the way Debbie felt six months after losing Dennis: so raw and sensitive the very air was harsh against her skin. Sulin hadn’t said, “Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you, Debbie.” She’d said, “I’ll pick you up at seven.”

Your girlfriend couldn’t paint with you breathing down her neck.” “I wouldn’t have done that,” said Logan. “She would have felt embarrassed to paint in front of you.” Dave peeled off a piece of chicken from his pizza and spoke with his mouth full. “Especially if she’s only just getting started. That’s the thing about art. It’s so visible.”

She wants to paint but she’s afraid to paint.” “Why would she be afraid to paint?” “In case she’s no good,” said Dave. “In case she can’t get what’s in her head and her heart onto the canvas. Maybe she’s afraid of being afraid. That she’ll be so paralyzed by fear she won’t do a thing, she’ll just stand there with her paintbrush, feeling like a fraud.”

It was kind of a relief not to have to sit and listen to the latest album from an alternative rock band Grant had discovered. You had to listen to the full album in the correct order because that was what the artist intended. Brooke just liked to listen to her favorite song on repeat.

Her only plan had been to investigate Savannah and write an article, “Ten Tips for Back Pain,” in the hope that she could get it placed on a women’s health website. She was trying to “build her profile.” She also needed to do a new “engaging” post on Instagram.

Years ago there had been similarly hyperbolic newspaper stories about the future tennis careers of Brooke and all three of her siblings. It happened all the time. Talented kids turned into ordinary grown-ups: butterflies became moths.

Brooke giggled, and then stopped abruptly, because she realized how the sound and feel of that voluptuous giggle was both familiar and unfamiliar, like something she’d thought she’d packed away forever along with her old schoolbooks and uniform. This had been happening more and more as the weeks went by and Grant’s presence became fainter. Brooke was discovering old habits, old clothes, old music, and now, her old laugh. It was absurd to think she hadn’t laughed in ten years. She certainly had laughed because Grant was funny. So funny. He was proud of his wit. It was important to him that he be recognized as “the funny one” in their relationship.

You can choose the right shot, you can have a good swing and good technique, you can do everything right, and it can still go wrong. No player, no matter how good, makes one hundred percent of their shots.

“In my profession, love means zero,” Stan had said, champagne glass in hand, and he’d waited a moment to be sure everyone got the joke, nodding happily as all the guests groaned. Then he said, “But in life, love means everything. Love wins the match. I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I made the smartest decision of my life when I married Troy’s mother, and I reckon Troy just made the smartest decision of his life when he married this beautiful girl right here. Don’t ever let her go, mate, and welcome to the family, sweetheart.”

“So we’re still going to arrest him,” said Ethan. “We’re still going to arrest him,” said Christina. “And then we’re going to track down this Savannah, whoever the fuck she is, and arrest her too.” “For what?” “For pissing me off,” said Christina. Ethan grinned. “Fair enough.”

Christina had been thinking so much about this woman and her life and her choices, it was as discombobulating as seeing a glamorous movie star in the flesh. Stan Delaney walked like a man in a dream toward his wife and lifted her right off her feet. Her keys crashed to the floor. Stan cried, his hand cradling the back of his wife’s head. He cried like a man cries when he has little or no experience of crying: dry sobs that racked his body. It was the first time Christina had seen Stan Delaney, the man she wanted to convict for his wife’s murder, display even a modicum of emotion. “What in the world?” said Joy Delaney.

“So let me get this straight. You’re saying your dog ate the letter you left,” said Christina. “And your neighbor’s cat ran off with the bloodied T-shirt.” “Lot of pets involved with this case, Detective Khoury,” commented Ethan soberly. “So it seems, Constable Lim.” Christina shot him a look. His eyes danced. She bowed her head and squeezed the bridge of her nose while she considered the absurdity of this case.

The words were not startling, but it felt somehow as if they were witnessing a startlingly intimate conversation, and Christina found herself politely looking away from the couple and at the floorboards. Nico said there were good floorboards waiting beneath the vile carpet in the house they’d just bought. Amazing to think something beautiful could lie beneath the ugliness and all you had to do was peel it away.

That’s how she finally made herself fall back to sleep: by remembering all the glorious moments, one after the other after the other, her children’s ecstatic faces looking for their parents in the stands, looking for their approval, looking for their love, knowing it was there, knowing—she hoped they knew this—that it would always be there, even long after she and Stan were gone, because love like that was infinite.

He wanted to say that it didn’t matter if the kid did or didn’t go all the way, that all that really mattered was that Logan was participating in his life again. He wanted to say that being a coach wasn’t second best or a fallback or a compromise and that Logan could still be part of the beautiful world of tennis, that everyone counted, not just the stars but the coaches and umpires, the weekend warriors and social players, the crazy-eyed parents and the screaming fans whose roars of appreciation lifted the stars to heights they would never otherwise reach.

“You know when I got really good at this, Dad?” and he didn’t wait for Stan to answer. He said it all in a rush. “When I stopped being a show pony. When I put my ego away. When I got consistent and strategic.”

He said, and it was hard to understand him because his voice went a bit wonky for a moment, “Every single thing you taught me on the court, Dad, I use every single day of my life.” He’d never taught the boy to get fucking pedicures, but still, it was nice to hear that. It had been bloody nice to hear that.