Chapter 23
[Ford]
Surgery in mid-April meant four months recovery at best. Time ticked painfully slow.
I’d been constantly irritable and, at times, irrational about how quickly my body should heal.
And as much as I wanted to lay on my bed, down pain pills, and sleep away my days, I had three little girls counting on me.
Vale stayed in Chicago after that fateful game. She’d been a huge personal help, tending to me while Blake minded my girls.
By the end of May, though, Vale had missed a good portion of Hudson’s baseball season and had put off her own physical therapy clients long enough. She needed to return to Sterling Falls.
“You should come home,” she says only days before she is scheduled to leave.
“I can’t.”
“Can’t? Or won’t?”
Such a simple question left me puzzled.
There wasn’t any real reason to stay in Chicago for the next few months. Ross Davis had come to visit me.
“You need a break. I’m putting you on the IL, indefinitely.”
“You can’t do that.” My arm throbbed. My head ached. I couldn’t be cut from the team.
“I can and I am. You need help here and here and here.” He’d pointed to my chest, my shoulder, and my head. “You’re in a fucked up position but it’s fucking with the team.”
Mental therapy sessions were mandated on top of my injury list status, since professional sports teams no longer took emotional health for granted. As Ross said, I’d need my heart, my arm, and my head in the game, and my head was still messed up when it came to Romero and Felicity.
With all that had happened, Romero had only gotten a three-week suspension for our fight. He started all of this bullshit. With Felicity. With me. But Ross had made up his mind. Between Romero and me, I was the loser.
Thankfully, my divorce was legitimized. I dropped the forgery charges when Felicity dropped her countersuit for extended alimony.
Any alimony for that matter. She’d been given a considerable settlement upon the sale of our home last winter.
With no contest from Felicity, I had full custody of the girls.
One day, she might change her mind about that decision, and I’d leave it up to the girls whether they saw her or not, if Felicity requested a visit.
For now, that concern was on the back burner.
We were free and clear of one another, but my ex-wife was still Romero’s girlfriend, and he was still my teammate and that made for one helluva an awkward hate-triangle.
“The girls have school,” I remind Vale. I’d already taken Zelle and Winnie out of their school during spring training. Zelle had missed her friends and we’d made it back in time for a new softball season for her. Not that I’d get to see many of her games. The disappointment was a constant conflict.
With summer staring me in the face, I didn’t have a plan, and suddenly I had the summer months off.
Originally, I thought our au pair would handle everything with the girls and I’d do my thing as I’d always done, but I’ve also accepted I need to be more present for my girls. I want to be more available for them.
“The training center at the team’s clubhouse is unparalleled,” I continue, as if arguing only with myself. Where would I work out in Sterling Falls? “And my physical therapy sessions are with the team trainer.”
“Really?” Vale lifts her head from where she’s folding my T-shirts.
I hate that she’s doing my laundry because she doesn’t want me lifting a basket of clothes.
Her sarcastic question comes with a stern look, because, hello, she’s a physical therapist, but I’m a shit patient, or so I’m told, and I don’t want that kind of burden on her.
However, watching Vale fold my shirts, I accept I can’t do it alone.
I can’t manage the house and the girls without risking a wrong move and injuring myself all over again.
I’m going to need more support.
“But . . .” I sigh heavily. “Maybe we could use a change of scenery.”
While the girls and I recently moved into this new place, I was getting tired of looking at the four walls of my bedroom. And one yellow rubber duck on my nightstand that I refused to let the girls have.
He was mine.
And I was an idiot.
When Cadence left my place in the beginning of April, I didn’t have the mental bandwidth to process her sudden appearance.
Her concern. I didn’t understand the whole lose-this-number, she-didn’t-change-her-number situation, and I didn’t question it.
I’d pushed her away because otherwise I’d have pulled her too close.
I was lonely and frustrated. The team. My girls.
My arm. If I couldn’t play ball, I had too much time to think.
And when I thought, the fantasies consisted of something that could only ever be one sided. My side.
Or so I’d thought.
Because Cadence came to me. Again. She’d taken care of me that drunken night. She flew to Arizona on opening day to support me. She’d changed her busy schedule in a blink when I was injured. And all I had done was sulk, rage, and hurt her.
The basic rules of baseball apply. Three strikes and you’re out.
Now, I am riding the bench, dragging my feet in the dirt like a sullen player who struck out and lost his chance at a homerun—Cadence.
“How does June third sound, Vale?”
The day after the girls exit school, I’ll be returning to Sterling Falls.
+ + +
The transition wasn’t smooth. Vale had returned home as scheduled. Blake quit as my au pair, and I couldn’t drive, so Judd flew to Chicago to drive us to Sterling Falls.
“Thanks for volunteering, man,” I say, once the SUV is packed and we are loaded within it.
“I was volun-told.”
Crap. “Sorry, man.”
Judd shrugs and fires up the Escalade, then maneuvers out of the city. Once we’ve hit the highway, the girls drift off to sleep. Judd and I are relatively quiet after small talk about my arm and his accounting business.
But an hour in, he breaks the silence. “I’m thinking of asking Heather Remington to marry me.”
Eek. Heather is one of those small-town beauty queens whose daddy is rich and mean.
He runs Remington Autos, a series of car dealerships in the Milton Peak area, and he’s successful because he’s sneaky.
A while back, Judd and Heather connected somehow, although I don’t see the appeal from either side. Judd is too good of a guy for her.
“Why?” The question is sharper than it should be.
Judd purses his lips. “Not too many other prospects for me. Plus, she’s rich and beautiful.”
There is no way my brother is that shallow. “Money and looks shouldn’t be the only thing to recommend her. What about love?”
No one in our family was convinced he loved her, or she loved him. Not that we didn’t think Judd was lovable, but Heather didn’t seem capable of understanding or appreciating our brother. His quiet reserve. The pain he’d suffered from our father. The deep loss he’d felt when our mother died.
Judd is quiet another second before saying, “I’m not certain love is really in the cards for me, and I’m tired of being alone.”
“Is she good to you?”
The silence tells me everything and I don’t like the empty sound. Judd deserves better.
Eventually, he clears his throat. “Speaking of beauty and cash, I heard you had a visitor.”
Cadence. Even being some seven hours from my family, the gossip circulates. Judd’s trying to flip the topic, but I’m flipping it right back.
“Judd, do not marry Heather if you don’t love her.
Without love, there just isn’t anything.
” He must know love is the most important element of a marriage.
He remembers it from our parents before Mom died and Dad turned into the monster he’d become.
“Take it from me, if you don’t have that, you don’t have anything of value. ”
I’d been convinced I’d loved Felicity, but hindsight has opened my eyes.
She was a major-leaguers wife, and a certain notoriety follows that status.
I hadn’t realized how much she valued the position until she moved on to Romero.
Being the adulterous girlfriend doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, though, neither does abandoning your children.
Judd is silent another second, letting my advice stew. With one hand on the steering wheel and the other elbow perched on the window, his thoughtful pose has me thinking our discussion is over.
“I’m not certain I know what love looks like,” he quietly admits.
“Me neither.” After my marriage and subsequent divorce, I did not trust myself to recognize love, but I had this weird inkling in my gut it came in the form of a yellow rubber duck.
And a woman pressing into my back in a motel room, and stealing my lucky cap.
A woman who surprised me at a baseball game, wearing a T-shirt with my name.
A woman flying to my bedside when I’m injured.
Weeks have passed since Cadence’s soothing grapefruit scent invaded my senses.
Months since we joked and laughed together.
Time has moved slowly since I’ve felt something other than anger and loneliness, guilt and inadequacy.
I missed her. God, did I miss her. She wasn’t just another person flitting in and out of my life, like I had accused to her face.
No, like a self-fulfilling prophecy, I had pushed her out, slammed and locked the door.
Now, I was living one of her country songs, drowning in regret and longing for a second chance I didn’t deserve.
Once we reach Sterling Falls and pull up before the rented house, the summer evening is just starting to fade.
The two-story house just outside of the business district is a few blocks from Halle and Knox, though not nearly as big as their place.
Violet is my backup sitter this summer and going to make a nice chunk of change for someone almost sixteen.
Nannies: 7. Number of months needing one: 8. I was a failure at keeping childcare.
Within minutes of Judd parking the car, Knox and Stone arrive to help unpack my SUV. I could have stayed in the big house, but my girls and I were going to need some space and time. Being here was just one of the changes coming their way.
With the final snick of the SUV doors, I stare at the house before me, with its two dormers and large covered front porch, and wonder how I ended up back here.
Home. The place that always felt so wrong, and now, might be very right for all of us.