Chapter 45
Luke
“Third inning,” squawks Alan McIntyre through the speakerphone. “Leadoff hitter.”
“Hang on…got it,” I say as I sit at my kitchen table with my laptop open, watching a replay of Mortimer’s game last night against North Park. Our starting pitcher, a junior named Theo Rodrigo, got chased in the fourth after giving up back-to-back jacks.
“Roddy’s not keeping his hand tucked,” I tell him. “When you bring it back, you always keep your knuckles between the ball and your body. He’s opening up too soon. You see that?”
“I do now. Fuckin’-A right I do.”
“You lose control and velo. Okay, next pitch. No. Fuck. C’mon, Roddy.
” I pop sunflower seeds into my mouth, chew them up, spit the shells in the trash can, as I watch Roddy throwing his changeup.
“He’s not selling the change. Keep telling him, it’s a fastball until it’s not.
The leg kick, the stride, should be identical.
Look at him, he looks like he’s about to…
fuckin’ get down on one knee and propose marriage. ”
My phone buzzes. A text message from Allison: I’m here. Need 5 mins.
Yeah, well, I need a lot of things I can’t have. Like a normal sister.
She texts again. I know you’re in there. And I know you’re awake.
I’m busy, I respond.
Doing what? Prepping for your tee-ball lesson tonight? Let me in.
“Mac, I gotta do something. Call you back in five. Go rub one out or something.”
“At my age, that takes more than five minutes.”
When I’m off the call, I walk to the front door.
I crack it open just enough to fill the frame and no more.
The cold morning air slips in around my ankles, sharp as needles.
Allison stands on the porch in a dark coat belted tight, hair perfect, makeup crisp.
She looks like she’s heading into a courtroom.
“Let me in,” she says. The sun is low and bright behind her, throwing long shadows across the frost on the walkway.
“No. Say what you have to say, then leave. Or better yet, just leave—”
“Fine,” she says. She lifts her chin, bracing herself the way she does when she’s about to deliver something that will hit hard. “Trinity,” she says. “Trinity’s mother is Carmela Muller, the one who hit you with her car.”
I don’t answer fast enough for her liking. She reads it right off my face.
“You already know,” she says, blinking. Not a question—more like she’s talking herself through it. “You already knew? How long?”
“Always,” I say. “First time I met her. Last October, at the mara—”
Her hand raps across my face, a good, hard, open-hand slap.
“What’s with you hitting me all the time—”
“You didn’t tell me? Me?”
“Why should I—”
“That woman’s had an agenda from the start!” she cries. “She probably hates all of us.”
“No,” I say.
“She seduced Finley,” she says. “Not that it would’ve taken much effort—”
“Would you quit saying that? She’s not sleeping with Finley. She’s been interviewing him for the documentary. That’s why she meets with him.”
Allison considers that a moment, eyes darting, before her eyebrows rise and her chin dips. “And you believe that?”
“Finley is the last person on earth she’d sleep with,” I say, feeling myself shaking, the rage rising.
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing,” I say. “It means—”
“Tell me why.” Allison grabs a handful of my shirt. “Why is Finley the last—”
“Because he cut the brakes on my bike.”
The words feel satisfying, finally releasing them. Allison steps back, as if jolted with a prod, her mouth closing into a small “o,” her hand frozen in midair.
“Because the accident wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for him,” I go on.
“I wouldn’t have lost my ability to pitch.
Her mother wouldn’t have gone to prison.
A family wouldn’t have been ruined. So no, I’m pretty sure she didn’t pick that guy and decide, ‘Yeah, I’m gonna fuck his brains out.
’ ” I take a breath. “She wants the truth to come out. Everyone made her mother out to be some monster, driving recklessly and drunk. Yeah, okay, she was slightly over the legal limit, but the story sounds a little different when you hear that I was riding wildly out of control and came flying into her path because I had no brakes.”
Allison’s gaze fixes on a spot far away.
“Brake lines were fine when I rode to school,” I say. “But at some point that day they were cut clean through. A clean cut. A deliberate cut. Her lawyers were ready to prove that. Photos, expert testimony—”
“No,” Allison says, her voice firm, finding herself on familiar terrain of law and proof. “If that were true, she would have fought her case. She would have—”
“She pled guilty to DUI,” I say. “Which she was truly guilty of. They had her on that. She took it and the eighteen months. She wasn’t willing to risk up to a twenty-year sentence on the other charges, the reckless driving and all that, which her lawyers said was a possibility, especially with all the bad publicity she got. ”
Allison wraps her arms around herself, feeling the chill.
“You know I’m right about Finley,” I say, “don’t you?”
“No. No.” She steps back off the porch. “I don’t believe it. That can’t be right—”
“Say it, Allison. Say it. Finley did this to me.”
She shakes her head furiously. “She’s poisoning you, Luke. She’s hurt and angry and she wants it to be true.”
I step out onto the porch, a brutal slap of wind finding its way under my shirt. “I was his friend. I always stood by him. When he—that incident at my school last June? The parking lot of my building? The road rage? The man who almost died?”
She nods, her eyes cast downward.
“I risked my career, I risked prison, to pull those security discs from the video room and replace them with blanks. And then I meet Trinity and find out that this is the same guy who could’ve killed me that day on the hill.
” I jab a finger in Allison’s direction.
“And now you, of all people, are protecting him?”
“No—not protecting him. I just don’t believe what she’s trying to convince—”
“Say it!” I shout. “You know it’s true. Finley did this to me. Say it!”
“No—”
“Then leave!” I cry, my anger boiling over. “Don’t talk to me again, Allison. Ever.”
My voice breaks on that last word, emotion clogging my throat.
I step back inside and slam the door behind me.
I walk into the kitchen, do a couple circles, fists clenched, breath coming too fast. I walk into my family room and take it out on one of the couch cushions, punching it over and over until I’ve reached exhaustion, until I’m panting like an animal.
“Fuck this,” I say. “I’ve held on to this long enough.”
I pull out my phone and type a message to Allison:
Did you *really* look hard at the state’s evidence in my case? I think you missed something in that car inventory.
I hit send. It feels good, satisfying. It will cut.
“Let’s see you talk your way out of that one,” I whisper.