Trey Phills, 4, puts his hand on the portrait-sized photo.

	David Wesley, left, consoles Kendall Phills, at Bobby Phills' memorial service last January.

"Trey," Kendall Phills says, "who are you looking at in the picture?"

"My daddy and David," Trey says. Then he runs in that rubbery-legged four-year-old way, because it's time to go to Chick-Fil-A.

Trey's Daddy died a year ago. David was with him. David Wesley saw the whole thing in his rear view mirror. And he hates it when someone says he and Bobby Phills were racing that fateful morning, two young rich men in their Porsches, on Tyvola Road in Charlotte.

"We weren't racing," Wesley said this week. "I think the media brought that into play, that we were racing, that we passed each other. I even heard things like our cars touched, another car touched his. When I pulled out from the light, we never passed each other. He was behind me the whole time. And we only passed maybe one, two cars, before the accident."

	Phills

But Bobby Phills was driving too fast, and so was David Wesley, and Phills' car crashed, and he died instantly. And as if the axle of a wheel suddenly gave way, everyone connected to Bobby Phills fell apart. His Hornets teammates. His wife. His community. A year later, the wife and the best friend are putting their hearts back in order, and this is about the two of them doing it together.

The widow is a woman of amazing grace. Her home is a shrine to the life she and her husband had together, and how could it be anything else? Dozens of pictures, of the couple, and their two children. His T-shirts and shorts, stacked up as far as the eye can see. The rack of new suits that came to her home the very day her husband died. Twenty-thousand dollars' worth of new suits. And the grey workout suit and shoes in which he died.

"Master P shoes," she says, quietly.

You would not be human if you didn't wonder if she is angry at David Wesley for at least not stopping her husband from driving so fast, too fast. If she is angry, frankly, that David Wesley lived while her husband died. She is angry. But not with Wesley, who was, and is, her friend.

"Sometimes, I'm walking through the house, and I'll look at a picture of Bobby, and I'll go 'Bobby!,'" Kendall Phills says, the tears at the rims of her eyes. "Because he's supposed to be here, with me and my family. So that's the hard part. And that's the times I get angry. But I'm not angry at God. And I'm definitely not angry at David Wesley."

They have embraced Wesley, the widow and the dead man's family, and by doing so, they saved the man who blamed himself, no matter what they said.

"I felt an uncomfortable sense around people, like they were blaming me," Wesley says of the first days after the accident, including the funeral. "And it was very difficult to be around people and deal with what had gone on. I kind of, I just felt kinda weird. And you know, Kendall said something that really made sense, is that Bobby was Bobby, and he was gonna do what he did. And you know, if the Lord was asking for him, regardless, it was his time, whether I was there or not. Would he have been driving fast that day? Maybe. It didn't have to be me there, too. It was just his time."

This is what that means: Everyone around Charlotte knew that Phills loved his cars, and he loved to drive fast, too fast, and that David Wesley, if not an innocent bystander, was not responsible for what happened.

	“	Sometimes, I'm walking through the house, and I'll look at a picture of Bobby, and I'll go 'Bobby!' Because he's supposed to be here, with me and my family. So that's the hard part. And that's the times I get angry. But I'm not angry at God. And I'm definitely not angry at David Wesley. ”
		— Kendall Phills

"I wanted him to understand that none of us blamed him," coach Paul Silas says. "Bobby was doing something that he shouldn't have done. Long before that happened, I had mentioned that to Bobby, that he needed to slow down. And during that time, after it did happen, I wondered if I wasn't forceful enough, that maybe there was something else I could have done to make him understand. But basically, there was nothing that anybody could do."

"David and Bobby were friends," Kendall Phills says, "David lost his friend, and there's nothing we can do to bring Bobby back. I have a forgiving heart, and for me, I didn't even have to think about it, should I forgive David. Because I never blamed David. So that was a no-brainer for me."

Wesley thinks about it, nonetheless.

"I've heard of accidents where people, you know, cross over the median, flip three or four times and hit a semi, and get out without a scratch," he says. "That very easily could have been him. He could have slid across the road and slid into the field right across the street, if no cars had been coming, and gotten out mad because his Porsche was wrecked. Those are kind of the things that I think about."

The Hornets wanted Wesley to go to Atlanta to see Dr. Lloyd Baccus, the league's medical director of its anti-drug program, for counseling. But Wesley changed his mind, because, as he says, there's no floor plan for how to get through something like this.

"I actually called him," Wesley said. "I set up a time, and at the time, we were going on the road, and (it was a) 'call me when you get back, I'll get in touch' kind of thing, and I just never did. As a matter of fact, I think we went and played Cleveland. And I had a good game. And you know, I think I said to myself, mentally I could focus. My focus wasn't there as long as it needed to be to be consistent at the time, but I said 'I can do this. Just think about it when you think about it, but on the court, just try to be mentally tough.'"

Management wasn't sure. When Wesley's play went up and down in the weeks after the accident, the Hornets planned to ship him to San Antonio for Avery Johnson. At the last minute, Silas nixed the deal.

"I fought against it, because I thought it was the exact wrong thing to do, for his sake, and for ours," Silas says. "We all needed to be together to heal together, and he needed us, we needed him. And had he gone somewhere else, I didn't know what the consequences would be."

Wesley was grateful.

"My reaction to hearing the trade rumors was that's not gonna help me," he says. "Being here around people that know what I'm going through, that are going through a lot of the same emotions that I'm going through, I think it was much better than going to a new city, trying to figure my way around, being mostly by myself. My fiancee and my daughter are here with me. My mother lives an hour and a half away in South Carolina. My grandmother lives an hour away in South Carolina. My buddies live here. So the support group I needed was right here."

	“	I think the biggest thing I just had to realize was that it was OK to laugh again. I think that was one of the hardest things for me to deal with, the fact that it was OK to have fun, to enjoy playing basketball, to get on with it, and I thought about Bobby actually saying, or making fun of me for being so, so gloomy. Because he would definitely want to know what my problem is. ”
		— David Wesley

Killing the trade bought Wesley time. A precious few months to get his head straight. Last July, he got up in front of a judge and told him what happened last January, and the judge found him guilty of reckless driving, but nothing else, and he could get on with his life and his basketball, which are one and the same.

"It was just kind of a good day, bad day thing," he says. "And I think the biggest thing I just had to realize was that it was OK to laugh again. I think that was one of the hardest things for me to deal with, the fact that it was OK to have fun, to enjoy playing basketball, to get on with it, and I thought about Bobby actually saying, or making fun of me for being so, so gloomy. Because he would definitely want to know what my problem is."

At training camp, Silas surprised Wesley twice. First, by moving him to shooting guard, with Baron Davis at the point. Second, by naming him captain, which was Phills' old job.

"Bobby used to come to me when guys needed a day off, and David has assumed that role," Silas says. "I was going to have a film session after our long trip, after the Denver game, and he just told me the guys are tired, they, we didn't need it, and I listened."

Wesley has responded with his best pro season, becoming the Hornets' unlikely go-to guy instead of Jamal Mashburn or Davis or Derrick Coleman. Becoming a tough post-up for opposing twos, with career bests in scoring and field goal percentage, and getting in the grill of guards at the defensive end.

"You watch our tapes, and he's coming off screens and hitting and hitting and hitting, hitting shots," center Elden Campbell says. "I never knew he was that kind of player. I knew he could shoot, but not the way he is now. He's a real pure shooter."

But this week, the talk is not of Wesley's reborn offensive game, and he knows this, and talking about it to all the local and national media actually has been helpful, he says.

He cannot, yet, talk about it with Bobby Phills' son and daughter.

"Trey and Kerstie (2) are still very young, and when I'm sorting out my feelings and what to say, it's kinda tough to talk to kids about death," Wesley says. "You know, us grownups, we don't understand a lot of it. And I think Kendall would be best at talking to them now than I would be. Maybe when they get a little older and they want to know, and they're curious, and then I can tell them, when they have a little bit better understanding."

Which is fine with Kendall. She spends a lot of her days getting the Bobby Phills Scholarship Fund up and running, because Bobby Phills was pre-med at Southern University, and 20 kids will get to go there now because of the $200,000 already in the kitty. She has a joint program with the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund set up, and dozens of players have sent five-figure checks. She sees Wesley and his fiance; they see her and the kids. Wesley's boat is still parked next to Phills' boat on the lake. The kids look at videos of their dad. Trey is already big-time competitive, like his father.

"Over a period of time, it will get easier," she says. "My faith in God has strengthened me tremendously. I have strength that I didn't even know I had, unbelievable, astonishing strength. And that keeps me on fire. That motivates me. I know that I'm going to be OK. Time heals all wounds. And I know that the God that we serve will mend my broken heart."

"Kendall and I talk often," Wesley says. "We lean on each other. We talk about, actually, this year coming up, the anniversary of Bobby's death, we've talked about it, we've shared emotions, thoughts. It's just a, it's a good relationship. It's like we're friends, even though we probably wouldn't be friends if there was no Bobby, but we're friends."

So the pieces are starting to be put back together. Life has to go on. And every time the Hornets have a home game, David Wesley has to drive past the spot on Tyvola Road where his friend died, his best friend on the team. Silas drives by the accident site now and he doesn't feel that burn in his chest anymore. He thinks he's OK.

David Wesley is coming back. Slowly.

"I haven't missed a day, driving past there," he says. "I don't go out of my way to go different routes. It has been a part of getting through this. I figured if I was going a different way, it would bring up in my mind, why am I going this way? Hopefully the more I go past that place, maybe one day I won't think of it. Maybe I'll always think of it. But I'm coming to grips with everything, so it gets a little easier and easier each day."