Chapter 49 Mason - Brothers in Arms
MASON Brothers in Arms
This is why I don’t get serious with women, I thought as I stood on the baseball field in what would be the last quiet moments before the onslaught.
If I’d never gotten involved with Daisy, then…
Well, okay. So maybe Daisy wasn’t totally to blame for this situation.
I was the one who found the baby. I was the one who told Drew he was the father without consulting her.
But, again, I’d defend that. I wasn’t going to have poor shell-shocked Sarah taken to the police station when I could fix that situation.
And, no, I hadn’t told the truth one hundred percent.
But I had told like eighty-four percent of the truth.
Was I turning into my mother and Tilley and Elizabeth? Manipulating everything?
I knew I had done the right thing. Or maybe the wrong thing for the right reason?
Even still, that Do not call me ever again from Daisy was painful.
How could she have said that to me, even in a moment of anger?
Amelia had tried to justify her behavior and, yeah, sure, I got it.
Kind of. I had no idea what it was like to be abandoned as a child.
All I had ever known was family who mercilessly, relentlessly rallied around me even in the bad times.
I had embarrassed them. I had made bad decisions.
And they just kept on coming back for more.
And, yes—as Amelia had filled me in on—her finding out I was leaving on TV was not ideal.
But, again, not my fault. I had tried to tell her.
On multiple occasions. I didn’t know what to do.
But I felt like, after practice, after I began to clean up this monstrous mess that our local news anchor had made, I would go over there.
Daisy had acted badly, but so had I. We both had our reasons. And I was beginning to realize that grown-up relationships with baggage were tricky.
As I looked up to the sky, trying to think about how I was going to apologize to the sea of boys who looked up to me, who trusted me, not only for leaving but also for not telling them, a woman with a strut I would know anywhere approached.
“This field really isn’t made for high heels,” Carmen called.
I shook my head. “You aren’t going to charm your way out of this one, Carmen.” I crossed my arms. “You can sugarcoat it any way you want, but you did a bad thing.”
She took the last step toward me, looking genuinely offended. “Mason! I am telling the news! It’s my job.”
Her job. Uh-huh. The local cable access channel paid her like $1,800 a year.
It wasn’t exactly CNN. I was worked up now.
“So why’d you do it, Carmen? Because you couldn’t make me fall in love with you in high school?
Because I wouldn’t marry you and you had to marry Tim—who, by the way, is a million times the husband I’d ever be.
Grow up, Carmen. You messed with people’s lives.
And you might have been trying to hurt me, but you hurt all those boys. And that’s not okay.”
Carmen rolled her eyes and touched my shoulder.
“I know you think I did this on purpose, but I did not. When you told Tim you were resigning, I figured it was common knowledge. Larry had already heard it, and you two don’t exactly run in the same circles.
I was trying to do something nice for you, but I should have asked you first.”
I felt bad. I’d been needlessly mean. “Sorry. I don’t think this is really about you.”
“Oh no?” she asked, raising her eyebrows.
“You aren’t really this pissed about my announcing your news to my eight viewers?
” She could look so innocent under all those eyelashes.
I had known her my whole life. We’d gotten fake IDs together, and, when Sunny (definitely not his real name) down at the Murder Mart—our not-so-affectionate nickname for the rundown convenience store at the edge of town—had gone through the stage where he’d sell to clearly underage girls but not boys, who had always bought beer for me? Carmen.
I scrunched my nose. “I’m assuming Tim told you about the baby?”
She nodded. “Trouble in paradise now?”
I shrugged. “Kind of. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just not cut out for relationships.”
She studied me. “I don’t know, Mase. You’ve got potential.” She paused. “Look, here’s the thing you’ve never really understood about women. We have wild hormones and sometimes we massively overreact. And usually all we need is a hug and to be told that we’re right and you’re sorry.”
“But what if it isn’t my fault?”
“Oh, honey, that has nothing to do with anything. If the mail is late being delivered, and she’s upset, she’s right, and you’re sorry.”
I wanted to keep being mad at her, but she made it so darn hard. “I’m sorry. She’s right.”
Carmen clapped. “See! We’ll make a husband out of you yet.”
“Poor Tim.”
“Oh,” Carmen said suggestively, “I make it up to Tim in ways you never got to experience.” She winked at me, and we both laughed.
“You’re right, and I’m sorry?”
She put her hand to her heart. “Why, Mason Thaysden, I am a married woman.” She wiggled her left hand at me.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed kids trailing down from the school. Drew appeared first.
Carmen saw him too. “Sorry!” she whispered. “For real. I am. But I’m going to make myself scarce.”
Drew’s face was stone-cold as he approached me. “Man,” I said, “I kind of thought you were the only one who wouldn’t be mad at me today, seeing as how I’m dissing everyone else to go be with you.”
Drew shook his head. “Dude, you knew that was my baby, and you didn’t say a thing.”
I put my hand up. “Drew, to be fair, I just found out. I was going to tell you. I swear I was. But you’d worked your whole life for this one meeting, and Maisy was safe with Daisy, and I couldn’t see the harm in waiting two more days to tell you the truth.
Why sacrifice your whole future for something that wasn’t totally affecting you in the moment? ”
Man, I really was becoming more and more like my mother. Justification central. “And then I found out right after that, so you never had a chance to tell me?”
“Right,” I said. I only added “allegedly” in my mind, since, yeah, I had kind of told Daisy I wouldn’t tell.
But I never would have stuck with that. I thought of that crazy-eyed Alex Murdaugh saying, on the stand at his murder trial, “What a tangled web we weave.” I’d done some questionable stuff these past few weeks, but so far I had murdered zero family members, so I guessed I was still a better person than someone.
“Can you forgive me?” I asked.
“I can,” Drew said. “But my mom…” He shook his head. “Man, it was a night at the Christianson house. Let me tell you. She’s saying all this stuff about how she’s going to make me stay home to raise the baby, that I have to be responsible for my actions, and Sarah and I are getting married and—”
I put my hand on his shoulder. “Look. I’ll help with your mom, okay?
We’ll figure something out that makes sense for everyone.
” If there was one thing I knew about Cheryl Christianson it was that she was at least equally if not more invested in Drew’s future as a baseball star than Andy, Drew, and I were.
When they needed extra money for camps and private lessons, she took on a part-time job.
From peewee league to now, that woman had never missed one game, home, away, travel.
Nothing. Her big dream had been to go to Carolina, but her family didn’t have the money, and she didn’t quite qualify for a need-based scholarship.
So she had gone to a small private college that had offered her a full ride instead.
And she wasn’t going to let her son miss out on his dream.
She was pissed, but there was a zero percent chance she was going to trade his future once they had gotten the prize they’d been chasing.
The other boys started funneling onto the field, and I thought I was going to throw up.
As they all continued coming down, no one said one word.
Usually trying to get these kids to calm down was the hardest part.
Drew took his spot among the crowd, so as not to appear to be on my team.
I couldn’t blame him. When they were all present and accounted for, I began.
“Men, you are my cavalry, my brothers in arms, and I have let you down.”
I tried to look at each of them. I wanted to explain that I hadn’t meant for them to find out from the rumor mill, but it just seemed like a cop-out. And it was beside the point. They weren’t mad because I hadn’t told them; they were mad because I was leaving them. And I understood.
“It is my job to lead you into battle each week, and every day I stand here before you, I preach honesty, integrity, sportsmanship, leadership—and I did not practice what I preached this week. I won’t defend my actions.
All I can ask is that you can find it in your hearts to forgive me.
” I paused, my nerves catching up with me—no one was more intimidating than a group of teenagers—and began pacing.
“What I want for all of us is to pull together, to bring home a championship, to be the team that everyone has expected us to be this year in the county, in the state, in the nation. But I also know that it is impossible to give your best to a leader you cannot trust. And so, if I need to step aside for the good of the team, I am prepared to do that.”
I stopped pacing and looked at them. And Kevin, a leader on this field, said, “Coach, if you leave us before we bring home one last championship together, we will never forgive you.”
Luke, the heroic fishing freshman who had a lot of potential, said, “Coach, I’m here to learn as much as I can from you until you have to leave.”
And then they all started chiming in. “We’ll come see you in Chapel Hill!” and “Drew needs you more than we do!” and “We’re going to carry on your legacy.”
There was some unfamiliar misting in my eyes. “Men,” I said. “You are the finest group of athletes I’ve ever had the privilege of coaching. And I’m going to give you my very best for every last moment of this season. Okay?”
“Okay!” they repeated together.
“Then let’s get this practice started!”
They all huddled up, hands together in the air, and, as was our custom, Drew called, “One, two, three,” and, in unison, the boys and I called, “Marlins!” Then Kevin said, “Four, five, six,” and we responded, “Family!”
As I called out orders, I felt relieved.
But that word reverberated in my head. Family.
These boys were my family. I knew they couldn’t trust me right now, that they still felt that I had left them when they needed me most. But they would forgive me because they loved me, and because they knew how much I loved them.
And it occurred to me that I had been so excited about my next chapter that I hadn’t fully considered how impossible it would feel to leave the one I was in.