Chapter 5 Brooks
Brooks
Iheard the crunch of gravel before I saw the car. I should have known better than to start making dinner before my ex-wife dropped off our daughter. Unlike most people, Allie had a knack for being early to everything.
It was one of the few things that we had always had in common. That and a love for Thai food, hence the vegan coconut curry soup currently simmering on the stove.
I switched off the burner and moved the stockpot to the back of the stove, away from tiny hands. Carolina was six going on precocious, and her latest passion was cooking. Baking, actually. Her mom had introduced her to The Great British Baking Show during the holidays, and now she was obsessed.
Damn, my little girl was growing up fast. One second, she’d been playing make-believe with Barbie, and the next we were whipping up meringue in her KitchenAid mixer. Her “Roasters’ red” mixer, of course, because Carolina was nothing if not her daddy’s biggest fan.
I snagged my hoodie off the sectional and headed out the door. Allie’s hatchback eased around the bend the moment I stepped outside.
My lips twitched when Carolina’s tiny fingers pressed against the back-seat window, reaching out for me. Carolina hated the car. She always had. Even as a baby, she could never sleep through a drive. It was one of the main reasons Allie had stopped bringing her to my games when she’d been little.
But she was old enough to know better now. Which was why she waited until her mom unbuckled her from her booster seat before leaping out onto the pavement, a glass jar clutched to her chest like she was smuggling something precious.
Her sneakers thudded against the concrete. “Daddy!” she cried out. “It’s bubbling today.”
I caught her up in a half-hug with one arm, careful not to jostle whatever culinary experiment she was so proudly carrying.
“What is?” I asked.
She held the jar up between us. It was full of what looked like gooey, beige paste, with some suspicious fizz at the top.
“My sourdough starter.”
She said it as though that cleared everything up. The only thing missing was a perfunctory eye roll. Hopefully, if I had it my way, we were still a few years away from that.
“Oh, this is the thing you bake bread with.”
“Yes,” she said, practically vibrating in my arms. “We have to name it.”
I squinted at the jar. “It’s bread mix.”
She gasped like I’d said something sacrilegious.
“It’s alive, Daddy.”
Allie walked up just then, laughing under her breath. She looked like she always did when she dropped Carolina off—comfortable, casual, like she was fresh from the beach, when in actuality she lived forty minutes across the river in Washington.
She wore an old denim jacket I vaguely remembered from back when we’d still been married, the sleeves pushed up to her elbows. Half of her box braids had been piled into a bun atop her head, while the rest hung past her shoulders.
She looked older, sure—we both did—but it suited her.
It was hard to believe that this was the same woman who, at one point in time, would spend hours straightening her hair, worrying about what she wore, buying heels she never walked in.
That version of Allie had been beautiful too, but it was the kind of beauty that took effort.
This version—natural hair, running shoes, and a faded Roasters hoodie underneath the jacket—was the kind that stuck.
The kind that made me remember how much growing up we both had done over the past decade. And how some of that had happened apart.
“That starter has been in my fridge all week,” she said, nodding her head toward the jar. “It needs feeding every twelve hours.”
“And a name, too, apparently,” I grumbled under my breath.
“I suggested Bread Sheeran, but she wasn’t amused.”
I choked back a laugh. Allie gave me a look that said, “Can you believe the things we do for this tiny human we created?”
“Go hug your mom, cutie.”
Carolina didn’t need telling twice. She wrapped her arms tight around Allie’s waist, pressing her face into her mom’s middle like she was trying to memorize her shape.
I watched them from my spot on the porch, my lips kicking up in a sideways smile.
Carolina might have had Allie’s mouth—and the wicked sarcasm that came with it—and her thick, brown-almost-black curls, but those long, gangly limbs and constant need to be in motion were all me.
Just last week, she had bounced herself into a near coma on the trampoline in my backyard, and I had the photos to prove it.
Sometimes it startled me, seeing us both so clearly in her.
The way she got quiet when she was frustrated—me. The way she happy-danced when she tasted something delicious—Allie. She was a living, breathing, fully baked (pun intended) amalgamation of our best and worst qualities.
Allie smoothed a hand over the back of Carolina’s head, kissing the top with the same kind of quiet ritual she always used when saying goodbye.
I knew the feeling well.
Each drop-off and pickup came with its own small weight, a lingering reminder of the life we had built together and then promptly divided down the middle. But we made it work better than most, so I couldn’t complain.
“Have fun with Daddy,” Allie said, pressing one last kiss to Carolina’s forehead. “Mitchell and I will pick you up on Tuesday.”
“Okay!”
“I love you.”
“Love you, too, Mommy.”
Carolina darted past both of us and into the house, carrying her sourdough starter like a peace offering.
“Stove is hot, cutie,” I called after her. “Hands off.”
I left the door open behind her, allowing the scent of warm pine and rain-soaked pavement to drift inside.
The house was my own personal fortress, tucked back behind a winding gravel road, half an hour from the stadium, and surrounded by forest on three sides. Secluded, peaceful. Truthfully, it was the way I preferred it—I had never been much of a city boy.
Out here, the sound of the world felt muted.
Fewer cars, fewer crowds, nothing but crows and the occasional low groan of branches shifting in the wind.
Oh, and my friendly neighborhood rabbit, whom I had taken to calling Randolph.
He was a cute fucker, though I was still salty about the havoc he had wreaked on my garden beds last year.
After years of living out of hotel rooms, and then in a high-rise, being in a place where I could hear the rain hit the roof and not a damn thing else felt like a kind of luxury I hadn’t earned but desperately needed.
Four bedrooms was probably too much for one man, but when Carolina was here—running barefoot across the hardwoods, pretending the trees were dragons or that the driveway was a moat full of crocodiles, because if you asked her, her daddy lived in a castle—it felt less like a fortress of solitude and more like home.
“What are we cooking up tonight?” Allie asked. “Smells delicious.”
“Coconut curry soup. You’re welcome to join us.”
Her lips scrunched up as she weighed her options. “I really should head back before the rain picks up.” She quickly added, “But if you feel like you have to send Carolina home with leftovers on Tuesday, you won’t hear me complaining.”
I nodded.
She continued lingering on the steps. There was something else she wanted to talk about. She had that look—subtle, patient, like she was choosing her words before she said them.
“What’s up, Allie?”
“We were talking about her birthday party this morning,” she said.
The season had just started last week. Carolina had been born at the end of May, so we were still a few months out from any party plans.
“It’s a little early, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but I wanted to put it on your radar now because she wants to have it here this year.”
That landed harder than it should have.
We both knew that this was about a lot more than a birthday party.
What Allie wasn’t saying, what she was too nice to say, was that I had missed enough already.
Too many firsts, too many birthdays blurred together in FaceTime calls from hotel bathrooms and stadium tunnels with the sounds of batting practice in the background.
I’d missed her second birthday because of a wrist fracture during a grueling one-hundred-degree game in Arizona. Had missed her fourth when a rain delay had turned into a double-header.
Worst of all, I had missed her birth—the whole fucking thing—because I’d been squatting behind the plate in Kansas City, two thousand miles away, trying to close out a no hitter.
I remembered the call coming in during the seventh inning.
I hadn’t seen it until after the Champagne had already been popped, and by then, I’d had two things to celebrate.
In all my years of ball, nothing could have prepared me for that moment, for the mix of joy and guilt.
Allie had understood; she’d always known this was a part of the game—pun intended. But that didn’t make it okay.
I must have watched the footage she’d sent me a thousand times, memorized every moment.
Her voice in the hospital room, Carolina’s newborn cries, my name whispered like a question.
I had always told myself I was doing it for her—for both of them—chasing the contracts, keeping the endorsements coming in, building a future for us.
But Carolina didn’t care about any game stats or World Series rings, even if she did like the way they “sparkled.” No, all she wanted was for her daddy to blow up a few balloons and cut her goddamn birthday cake.
So that was exactly what I was going to do.
“I can make that work.”
She arched her brow. “Are you sure? Because it’s just as easy for us to have it at our place, and I don’t want you to commit to it if you don’t think you can—”
“I can,” I snapped, much more harshly than she deserved. “Sorry, what I meant to say is that I would love to have her party here, and since I know about it so far in advance, there’s no reason I can’t make that happen.”
Allie studied me for a second, then smiled. It wasn’t the old smile—the one I had fallen in love with years ago—but it was one I was more familiar with these days. Something steadier.
Teamwork.
“She wants to do a baking theme,” Allie relayed. “I’m talking about a dozen first graders, covered in frosting, rainbow sprinkles everywhere. Think you can handle it?”
I scoffed. “Please”
“Is that a yes?”
“Allie, I manage a locker room full of grown men who eat sunflower seeds out of each other’s cleats and whip each other with towels. I think I can handle a few sugar-hyped first graders.”
“Famous last words.” She grinned, tossing her keys from one hand to the other. “Just wait until one of them cries because their cupcake collapsed. Or someone licks the communal spatula.”
“Sounds like the 2016 postseason bullpen.”
She laughed, the sound short and warm, and I caught the edge of it in my chest.
“Alright, coach,” she said. “You’re on the hook now. We can discuss the details later.”
I leaned my hip against the porch rail and looked at her. “Thanks for this, Allie.”
She tilted her head. “The party?”
“Yeah. And just . . . for letting her choose this.”
Letting me do this.
Allie shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal, even though we both knew it was. “It’s what she wants. She’s old enough to know now.”
That landed too. She was old enough now. To notice who showed up, to remember who didn’t.
“I won’t let her down,” I vowed, quieter this time.
“I know,” she said, softer still. “I wouldn’t have said anything if I didn’t think you were ready. She notices the effort. We both do.”
There was a beat of quiet, the kind that might have lingered too long if Carolina’s voice hadn’t floated out from beyond the doorway just then.
“Daddy, I’m hungry! And we need to name my starter.”
I looked at Allie. “Do we really need to name the dough?”
She held her hands out defensively in front of her. “Hey, I was voted out of the naming committee days ago. She’s all yours now, so start thinking . . . yeasty.”
“What the fuck does that even mean?”
She winked and started back for the car. “Night, coach.”
I stood there for another minute or two even after her car rolled away, just listening.
The hum of the forest, the distant knock of cabinet doors opening and closing, the giddy voice of a six-year-old ready to conquer the culinary world.
And somewhere, in the middle of it, a jar of living dough demanding a name.
I stepped inside and closed the door behind me.
This was the life I used to be afraid of missing, and now nothing could tear me away. No missed flights, no excuses.
I took a breath, rolled up my sleeves, and braced myself.
“Alright, chef,” I called out toward the kitchen. “Let’s name this blob.”