Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
FLETCH
Istand just beyond the church doors in the frosty December air—colder on the inside than on the outside—until Darren Murphy tells me the wedding is about to start.
Not my parents. Not my dad or Mom or even an uncle.
Darren Murphy.
How this guy has gone from Public Enemy Number One to my only ally at my brother’s wedding is a mystery. We march down the aisle with our respective bridesmaids and we stand shoulder to shoulder as my brother kisses the bride.
And now, we’re about to sit next to each other at the reception in Oak & Ivy, Granddad’s fancy country club.
Everyone is in the parking lot, piling into cars to get to the country club a quarter of a mile down East Avenue.
My parents pass by with Granddad, and Mom reaches a hand out to me. Gives me a sad smile.
Dad struggles to even look at me.
It’s his shame, I know. Not mine.
It’s not mine.
It just feels like it is.
The sky is an inky dark that seems to swallow all light. It’s only by the amber glow of the streetlamp that I can see snowflakes twisting violently in the wind. Rochester is always cold in winter, but nowhere is it frostier than the icy, disapproving stare of my own grandfather.
I don’t acknowledge him when he passes by, so I should know it’s coming as I pull the truck door open.
“You gonna be able to keep a handle on those emotions?” Granddad asks with a laugh, like this is all in good fun. There was a time where his approval meant the world to me, where I’d do anything to see him give me a nod when I rounded home plate or hear him clap when I threw a runner out at third.
I haven’t felt that approval since the moment I was injured. His disapproval was always so heavy, with a frown feeling like a knee to my chest. But since my surgery, every conversation with him has felt like I’m slowly sinking in quicksand.
And now I’m going under.
“I’ll try, Granddad,” I croak, wishing I were as aloof as everyone thinks I am.
Around us, wedding guests are still trickling out of the church, loading into cars. Some are watching the snow fall. Others are on their phones. But a few have stopped, noticing the tension radiating from us at the far end of the lot.
Granddad chuckles and mutters something under his breath. The wind barely carries it to me. “Knew he never had what it took.”
My eyes fall on that baseball buried in the snow in front of me. I stare at it, cold, piled on, and discarded, knowing exactly how it feels. And my mind catches on to the last time this same sense of intense overwhelm hit, but it’s not the day I was injured.
It’s my signing day.
We’re at one of Granddad’s facilities—free advertising, he called it—with my family, some of Granddad’s staff, and a couple of old teammates … who also worked for Granddad.
Everything was a blur of clicks and flashes. After I signed my contract, my mom was so proud, she was crying. And she handed me a baseball.
“Here,” she said, “Sign this.”
Dad laughed in excitement. I looked at them, uncertain if it was showy of me, if Granddad thought it would “distract” me the way he thought dating, friendships, and even hobbies would.
But he just laughed and said, “Go on and sign it. Could be worth something someday.”
So I signed it and gave it back to Mom, a pit in my stomach.
Why did I have a pit in my stomach?
Shouldn’t that have been one of the best days of my life? Shouldn’t signing a ball for a mother brimming with pride have made me smile and laugh with her?
I had made it.
I’d finally made it.
But … where was it, exactly?
The feeling of that day engulfs me like a blizzard—that sense of staring at a future of moments like that one, pressure heaped on me, impossible standards I’d have to fight to live up to, always wondering if I’d ever be good enough to live up to Granddad’s expectations, the soaring heights of the career he was so sure he’d been robbed of.
He was about to spend the next fifteen years living vicariously through me …
A cold shudder ran over me then as it does now.
Maybe it’s bizarre to have felt discarded when I had so much attention on me throughout my life. It wasn’t me that was discarded—it was my wishes. My choices.
I never wanted to play pro baseball.
The realization is a snowball in the face.
I never wanted to play it, but I did, anyway. Did Granddad know? Could he sense that this was all done out of duty, not the same love and drive he had for the game?
Did he resent me for being better than him all along?
Yes.
The truth washes over me like hot water in an ice bath—shocking, but in the best way. Relief floods me, loosening muscles I didn’t know I’d been tensing for years.
It wasn’t about me. It was never about me.
I wasn’t too weak or too soft or too emotional. I wasn’t a disappointment because I failed.
I was a threat because I succeeded.
Suddenly, every cruel word, every dismissive look, every comparison makes sense. He wasn’t trying to make me better, not fully. He was trying to keep me smaller than him. Because if I could ever accept that I’d arrived—really, truly arrived—it would threaten not just his image, but his legacy.
The weight I’ve been carrying for years lifts enough that I can breathe. I suck in frozen air and it sears my lungs, a clean burn purging me of everything Granddad has dumped there.
I think about Poppy, her annoyed face as she exclaimed, “You literally made it!”
She didn’t say it like I should be proud, but like I should stop being so stupid about it, already.
She was exactly right.
Yeah, I got injured, but I made it to the show. I had my signing day. I made the roster.
I made it.
Granddad’s already reached his car at the far end of the lot, where Dad and Mom are standing, shivering in the cold. It hurts that they’ll never be the ones to stand up for me, but this shame is a cancer, and I need it gone.
“You’re jealous,” I say, the words tearing out of me before I can stop them. My voice cracks the air like a ball shattering a bat.
Granddad stops. Slowly, his hand drops from the car door handle. “Of what?” he calls back, that mocking lilt still in his voice. “Why would I be jealous of you?”
“Because you’ll never know if you had what it took.” My pulse is pounding so loud I barely hear myself. “All these years, you’ve acted like I was the failure, but the truth is you don’t know if you were ever good enough. You never got your shot. I did.”
He turns, that frozen half-smile already spreading. “You call one at bat a shot?”
“It wasn’t one at bat. It was a contract. A jersey. My name on a major league roster—”
“That you lost because you weren’t mentally tough enough!”
“—that I earned because I was. Mentally and physically. It’s everything you never had. And you want to know the craziest part? I like coaching a hundred times more than I ever liked playing.”
“Of course you do. Those who can’t do, teach,” he says with a sneer.
The snow picks up again, swirling around the parking lot lights like dust in a spotlight. My breath fogs the air between us in short, hard puffs.
“But Granddad, didn’t you tell ESPN that you were my ‘personal coach’? You remember the interview on signing day, don’t you? When they asked what my success meant to you, and you said it was a validation of everything you taught me over the years?”
His eyes sharpen like he knows he’s cornered.
“You were a terrible coach,” I say. “I made it in spite of you. You know what good coaches do? They inspire. They empower. They don’t kick you when you’re down, they light a fire under you that gets you moving. You know how I know that? My team won the national championship, Granddad. My team.”
Granddad rounds the car, boots crunching over the packed snow. “Watch your mouth, boy.”
“No,” I say, louder now. “You don’t get to call me that anymore.
You don’t get to call me anything. You acted like baseball was the family business, but we were your products, not your partners.
Dad, me, Evan. We were one failed prototype after the next, modeled after your image, of course.
At least with Evan, you had an excuse. The world had taken your finest product out of commission.
Did it make you feel bigger to make Dad and me feel so small? ”
I glance around and realize we have an audience. Evan’s college roommate. A couple of Mom’s cousins. Even Sloane’s maid of honor is standing by her car, keys dangling from her hand, watching.
And I don’t care.
“Show some respect,” he barks, jabbing a finger toward me.
“For what?” I shoot back. “You broke your own son, and you’ve been trying to break me ever since.”
For a heartbeat, it’s just the wind between us, blowing sharp and hollow. Granddad’s eyes glint like frost.
“I was injured in Vietnam!” he finally explodes, the words echoing across the lot. “You think I chose to quit? I lost everything out there!”
“Then why did you have to make sure we lost it too?”
“I gave you everything I never had! Private coaches, year-round training, the best facilities and equipment—”
“I didn’t want it! You know what I wanted?
Support! Unconditional love! A family who came to watch me play, not win.
I was only useful to you while I was succeeding.
But guess what? That injury was the best thing that ever happened to me!
I was so sick of trying to perform at all costs, I’d gladly get injured again if it meant finally escaping this chokehold you’ve had over me my whole life. ”
The words leave my mouth and hang there, heavy. But I’m not done.
“And you know what else? I met someone this week—a woman who showed me my worth has nothing to do with my old career. You know she took the time to look me up? After only four days, she was more proud of me for coaching than you ever were for me playing.” I laugh bitterly. “I’m such an idiot.”
Granddad steps closer. “You ungrateful little—”
“Enough!”
The voice is sharp enough to cut through ice, but it isn’t mine.
It’s Dad’s.