You Will Know Me Read Online Free PDF Page B

sale to buy competition tees, preshrunk.
    “Tell you what,” Teddy said, “why don’t you show them the Eric Knox charm?”
    And Eric did, inviting them to the house for dinner, making his famous (only) dish, Cajun gumbo, extra hot sauce, and drawing each of them out with earnest questions, lavishing them with attention. Within days, an election was called just for him. Four votes were cast and Eric was the new president of the BelStars Boosters.
    “We’ve always hoped Eric would get involved,” Kirsten Siefert, the booster secretary, said, adding snidely, “I guess this is what it took.”
    Within days of the election, the BelStars Boosters issued a calendar of revenue generators: summer camp, free gym days for the community, party-room rentals, a car wash, smoothie days, a pro shop carved out of the parent lounge. And Eric recruited sponsors, a local dry cleaner, a tanning salon, their logos splashed over leotards, water bottles, tracksuits.
    But most important of all, he got Gwen.
    Gwen Weaver, the owner of a fleet of parking lots and of Weaver’s Wagons, a mini-chain of family-style restaurants that would prove perfect for cost-free pizza parties, fund-raisers, booster meeting sites. The woman who had single-handedly funded a new junior-high gym floor when her daughter was still in elementary school. Her daughter, Lacey, happened to be an aspiring gymnast.
    “She’s the one we want,” Eric had said, pointing Gwen out to Katie at a town meet.
    The serious-looking woman with the ash-blond bob and the cat’s-eye sunglasses. When she removed them, scanning the gym, Katie was reminded of something Drew had told her: Never make eye contact with a wolf. The wolf will take it as a challenge.
     “First we poach the daughter,” Teddy said, joining them, nearly rubbing his hands. “Then we make the mama treasurer. After that, nature takes its course.”
    And so, a dinner was arranged.
    Shaking her head in wonder, Katie watched as Eric put on his crispest white shirt, his sole tie (later, Gwen bought him a second, a woven silk one that came in a long green box, when he was honored with State Booster of the Year). He even polished his best shoes with his dad’s old shine box.
    When he came home a few hours later, a little drunk, his face bright, nearly pumping his fist like he never did, even at big competitions, Katie had to laugh a little.
    “She’s in,” he shouted, spinning Katie around the bedroom, her head knocking the lamp, the lamp rolling across the floor and sparking as if in joint celebration.
    Her husband, like a military general, fortifying the flanks. Or, in this case, after a few more wine-soaked dinners with Gwen, maybe more like an ace salesman. A confidence man. A gigolo. Because the long meals always turned, at some point, to talk of the poor state of the tumbling mats, the spring floor, the vault table, and, most of all, of the need for a landing pit.
    So Gwen emptied those deep, silk-lined pockets, and they got a new elite spring floor, new mats, new fiberglass bars to replace the wooden ones, new everything.
    All that was left was the pit.
    There was a dinner party at Gwen’s home, a cherry-walled wonder so grand that Katie felt as if the hushed click of her modest heels on the floor was in bad taste.
    She hadn’t even wanted to go. She dreaded leaving Devon alone these days, her daughter emerging from her dark bedroom only to take showers, her shoulders hunched, hair covering her face, as if she were no longer a gymnast at all.
    “Gwen,” Eric said, training those gray eyes on her, “look what BelStars has done for Devon. She’s on track to compete nationally. Your daughter can bloom here. We can do this, together. We can make BelStars a place all our girls feel challenged and supported, motivated and inspired. There’s only one thing stopping us. One investment we need to make, together.”
    “And what is that, Eric?” Gwen said, eyes narrowing.
    “What else?” he said, smiling