“Sure!” she told me, and eventually, another woman joined in, one of the Woodsmen wives who had played soccer in college. She turned out to be funny, not mean like some of the other married ladies, and we had a very nice conversation as we watched the action on the field. The football game didn’t turn into anything like the bloodbath that Katie had feared. At the very end, the players were mostly joking around, and the coaches came in to play also, laughing at each other.
“Let’s bring him out!” the announcer boomed over the PA. I knew who they meant. “Let’s thrill this crowd and give them one more look at Warren Wilde on the football field!”
“Excuse me,” I said, totally interrupting what Teagan, another new acquaintance, was telling me about the difficulties she had suffered while trying to get her baby to breastfeed. I wasn’t that sorry to stop her terrible story, and I didn’t want to see my father back on the field. Not at all.
The crowd started to cheer, which meant that he was on his way. “Sorry, I need to go,” I said, standing and grabbing my stuff. I started to push to get myself through the crowd.
“Camdyn, hold on!” Danielle called. “Freddy and I are having people over tonight. You and César should come!”
“Thanks, yes, bye, Daisy, bye, Katie, bye,” I said hurriedly, and got myself out of the bleachers just as everyone started getting up to give Warren Wilde a standing ovation. Screw him and his stupid fans. They had no idea what he was really like. He wasn’t a hero, he was a liar.
I wandered past some of the charity booths, which only had a few people there now. Most of them seemed to be employees straightening up their materials and taking down signs. I stopped in front of one, looking at a pamphlet they hadn’t cleaned up yet.
“Hi there,” the woman standing at the counter said to me. “Are you interested in learning more about our organization?”
“Um, yeah,” I said. I looked at the picture on the paper in my hand, a little girl hiding her face. You could see that she was crying. “Did you guys get a lot of donations today?”
“It was a great day for us. We’re always so glad when the Woodsmen call. The team is our major benefactor and because of them, we’re able to help hundreds more abused kids in northern Michigan.”
“Just with physical abuse?” I asked casually.
“No, unfortunately, we deal with all different kinds of suffering. Neglect, emotional and sexual abuse, other traumas.” She sighed. “It’s difficult for people to hear what goes on in their communities, often right next door, without them knowing.”
“What about adults? Do you do anything for them?”
“We don’t treat adults directly, but we do offer resources to anyone in need. We’re happy to help.” She looked at me, and at my coat, which didn’t quite zip over the baby bump. I shifted the blankets in front of me. “Would you—”
“No, no,” I said quickly. “I should get going.” I put the pamphlet in my purse. “I’m really glad that you guys got attention to your cause today.”
“We have a twenty-four hour help line number printed on the brochure,” she told me, and pointed to my purse. “Just in case.”
I nodded and hurried away, but I didn’t get too far before I heard my name. “Camdyn!”
“Hi, Dan.” The Woodsmen team CEO walked up smiling, and kept it up, even when his eyes dropped to my stomach and he saw the bump. “Great game,” I told him, ignoring the elephant in the room. Or the baby, as the case was with me. I moved the blankets again for camouflage. “That was really fun.”
“It was good,” he agreed. “I bet you saw some of your own suggestions out here today. We didn’t have the time to plan for a major event, but we managed to get a sizable crowd and keep them happy.”
I kept my eyes peeled over his shoulder for any signs of Warren Wilde, but the coast appeared clear. “I was glad to help out the Woodsmen. You know, I have a ton of ideas. I’m at a demographic you guys need to reach more, too, judging from the look of people in the bleachers here today. I’m younger,” I specified. “You need to reach out to younger fans.”
“I understood your meaning,” Dan said, sounding a little sour. “We’ve been working on our imaging…”
“I can help you with that,” I told him. “I can really help.” I had given this a lot of thought. “In fact, I think you should hire me to do it. I would be a cross-departmental liaison,” I explained. César had worked with me to come up with the terminology. “You need someone to communicate with marketing, branding, media, community relations—actually, across all the divisions in the Woodsmen front office. Not someone to head the departments, but there to make sure that they all work together. I think I’d be perfect in that role.”
He laughed. “Really,” he said. “That’s an interesting suggestion.”
“Everyone is working hard to make changes,” I told him, “but I can see, when I talk to different Woodsmen employees, that they’re not working together as well as they should. Like today, with the cheerleaders.” This was a perfect example. “Someone should have remembered that the squad was going to have a new name to go along with the new Woodsmen imaging, but instead, they showed up and had to put electrical tape over where it said ‘Dames’ on the backs of their jackets.” It wasn’t a classy look, but neither were the rest of their uniforms—there wasn’t enough electrical tape in the world to cover all those rhinestones.
“I did see their jackets.” Dan frowned.
“You should speak to some of the people
