Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
FLETCH
My family is already gone by the time I’ve finished showering, shaving, and getting dressed.
The only sounds are my dress heels on the hardwood floors and the soft hum of the refrigerator in the background.
I drape the tuxedo jacket over my arm as I walk around the empty home stunned, but not surprised.
Why would they wait for me?
The thought is bitter. Automatic. If I mattered, someone would have waited for me.
Yeah, it’s Evan’s big day, but even if it weren’t, it sure wouldn’t be mine.
At least I have a text from Mom:
Mom
Hi, sweetie. Sloane called in a panic about the flowers, so your dad and Granddad and I all left to go help. Dad’s keys are on the tray on the kitchen counter, so come whenever you can.
That’s better than telling me to get an Uber, I guess.
Walking through the empty house, a wave of nostalgia crashes into a wall of shame.
Should I be grateful that the family didn’t take down the pictures of Evan and me in uniform from so many games and tournaments?
Or embarrassed? Whatever pride they had in me was conditional, and I didn’t meet the conditions.
I take a peek out of the kitchen window to our huge, snow-covered backyard.
It resembled a training facility more than a yard once, with the batting cage and netting Granddad bragged about installing himself.
He made sure everyone knew he built it, like he owned my sweat. The ghost of the place still haunts me.
I see flashes—Granddad barking at me until my throat burned from swallowing back protests.
My dad watching from the porch, scarred and silent, like he knew exactly how it felt.
A thousand times I was so tired, so drained, I wished Dad would say something.
Stand up for me to Granddad. Tell me I was enough.
Tell me “My favorite thing about baseball is watching you play.”
I drag my eyes from the backyard and find the key tray near the junk drawer next to the fridge. On the side of the fridge is a page of stamps, the number of a landscaper, a reminder for an appointment, and … I laugh darkly.
A paper with the dates of Evan’s upcoming speaking engagements. My parents have it on the board like it’s a game schedule.
Right. Evan is exempted—from blame, from failure, from disappointing them. Life took the game away from him, and that makes him noble. Granddad too—the war took him out. But Dad and me? We lost on our own errors. No exemption. No grace.
I grab Dad’s keys, and they scrape like claws on metal against the tray. The sound grates.
I march through the house to the garage and climb into Dad’s truck, the leather seat cold enough to burn.
Better not keep my family waiting any longer.
This tuxedo fits like a straitjacket, especially around my throat. After I parked, it took me three tries at retying the bow tie before I realized the knot wasn’t the problem—it’s my own gripping panic.
Mom spots me the second I walk through the floral archway at the front of one of Rochester’s oldest churches. The inside smells faintly of old hymnals and beeswax candles. Stained-glass saints catch the pale winter light. Wooden pews creak whenever anyone shifts their weight.
“Oh, good, you got my message,” she says.
“You sent a text, Mom,” I say.
I don’t know if she’s too distracted to register my tone or too used to it. It hurts, either way.
“Right. If you have an extra hand, you can help with the flowers—”
“Even if I had ten extra hands, I couldn’t help with flowers.”
She laughs. Then her eyes stop moving around the room and land on me. She smiles. “I’m so glad you could make it, sweetie.”
For a moment, I feel her words sink in like sunlight after a freeze. But then, she adds, “Evan would have been devastated if you hadn’t.”
I nod slowly, numbly. “Anything for Evan.”
She smiles again, like this is exactly what she wanted to hear.
And it should be. This is his wedding day!
He’s not a rebellious teen with too much talent and not enough sense anymore.
He’s a grown man who’s been to hell and back and turned his life around.
Why am I not proud of him? Happy for him?
Celebrating the love and support he gets?
How dare I be so jealous?
When I was a kid, I was allergic to mosquito bites. A single bite would swell up like a golf ball, and the itch would be so fierce I couldn’t sleep.
My parents stressed, “Never scratch the bites. They’ll only hurt worse.”
“But they’re so itchy!” I would cry.
“You have to ignore them,” they’d say.
I didn’t see how that was possible, but I obeyed, because I always obeyed. A single bite could keep me up for hours, and I would tell myself, ignore the pain, ignore the pain until exhaustion claimed me.
Eventually, I got bit enough that my body adapted, and my reactions became typical—a bump and some itching, but after years of swelling and fire under my skin, the itch felt like nothing.
In the years since my injury, the way my family treats me has felt like that same kind of violent reaction I had to ignore so it didn’t fester. Whatever I do, I cannot scratch it. I assumed that in time, the swelling would lessen, and I could tolerate it.
I was wrong.
It’s only getting worse.
Especially after four days with Poppy, finally connecting the way I’ve always wanted to connect. That longing burns like a fresh bite I can’t stop scratching, no matter how raw it leaves me.
The pain of missing her is swelling, too. And it’s only been a few hours.
But this one has to heal. My body has to adapt. She betrayed me. Lulled me into thinking she was my person, my dugout—the place I could finally breathe between innings.
Sloane’s mom comes into the narthex and flags Mom down. “Gotta run, sweetie. I’ll see you in an hour.”
“Is Dad around?”
“He’s with Evan in the groom’s lounge.”
“Isn’t Evan already dressed?”
“Sloane’s mom told him to take off his tux so she could steam it. Evidently, he got it wrinkled on the drive.”
“That sounds fun for him.”
She pats my hand. “One day, I hope your future mother-in-law will care just a little less than Evan’s.”
It’s supposed to be a joke, but it lands like a jab.
“I should be so lucky.”
Mom points toward the front of the chapel. “Your grandfather is up there, talking to Evan’s groomsmen.” Then her gaze lingers on mine, and her eyebrows pull together. “Did Evan tell you about them?”
“No,” I say, though he’s brought them up a couple of times.
“You should go meet them before the service starts.”
“Does it matter?” I ask.
Her eyes flit past me. “I think it does.”
That’s all she has to say.
I steel myself and walk up the center aisle to where a group of six men are standing. I recognize two of Evan’s old high school friends and three of his college teammates, but there’s a man as broad as a barn with short hair I don’t know talking to my granddad.
“Fletch, man, how are you?” one of the groomsmen says, and I nod, say hi, shake one hand and then the next.
All around us, members of Sloane’s family and her wedding party are setting up candles along the pews and fixing flowers.
The string quartet has just shown up and is tuning, the scraping of strings setting my teeth on edge.
In the corner, someone’s talking with the pastor.
It’s all bustling but contained, except for Granddad’s booming look-at-me laugh when the man he’s speaking to makes a joke.
Granddad claps the man’s shoulder. “You spill beer on your father-in-law’s suit and still stand up to give the toast? Now that’s how a man handles disaster.”
My grandfather’s eyes fall on me, and he gives me a nod. “Ollie, come over. You need to hear this.”
I do as I’m told, approaching the two men dutifully. Granddad loves pushy, arrogant jerks, so I already have my reservations. I learned early on that anyone my granddad wanted me to meet was someone I had no interest in actually knowing.
But this man is in Evan’s wedding party, important enough that my brother wants him present on the most important day of his life. I owe it to Evan to give him a chance.
I reach Granddad’s side, and he’s introducing me before I can even reach out a hand. “This is Ollie, Evan’s brother.” I extend my hand and watch as a hand the size of a catcher’s mitt engulfs mine. My stomach plunges like I’ve just missed a step on the stairs.
“Ollie,” Granddad says, “this is—
“Darren Murphy,” I say at the same time as he does. I yank my hand back like I’ve been burned. “What are you doing here?”
The man flinches and then hunches, like he’s ducking. His mouth opens but no sound comes, like I knocked the air out of him. Shock and outrage rocket through me. “What’s that reaction for, Darren? Afraid I’ll sucker punch you?”
The man has the audacity to wince. I look at Granddad, who’s red with anger. “What are you doing, Ollie?” he snaps.
I look around the church, as if for backup. Surely, someone’s going to jump out from behind a pew and tell me I’m on a hidden camera show, right? Because in no universe does Darren Murphy being here make sense.
“What are you doing, Granddad? What’s going on right now? Why is he here?”
My voice is loud enough to bounce off the rafters back to me. I sound shrill. Unhinged.
And I’m not stopping.
“Darren is our facilities manager,” Granddad hisses. “He works for me. You’d know that, if you’d come home more in the last year.”
A high-pitched ringing starts in my ears, and it only gets louder.
“No,” I say, ignoring Darren.
“I’m so sorry, Ollie,” Darren says in a voice that sounds like a meat grinder. “I didn’t realize—”
“I don’t want to hear from you,” I say, cutting a hand through the air. “You ruined my brother’s life.”
“What are you thinking, talking to him like that?” Granddad barks, defending the man who injured one grandson … over another grandson. Protecting Darren FROM ME.