Chapter 6
Morgan texted at nine.
Lunch. Mainland. Noon. Don't argue.
Kirstin stared at the message from her kitchen, where she was drinking coffee and not starting the renovation.
I didn't say yes.
You didn't say no. See you at noon.
She knew what they wanted to talk about. She went anyway.
They took the Defender. Morgan in the back seat, sunglasses on, already enjoying herself.
"Uh huh," Morgan said before anyone had spoken.
"That's four," Kirstin said.
"I've got an unlimited supply."
They crossed the causeway. The restaurant was a place Morgan knew on the mainland, small, off the main road, the kind of spot where three women could sit in a booth for two hours and nobody would bother them.
"So," Morgan said.
"So."
"Sunday."
"What about Sunday?"
"You went to the Outpost."
"I go to the Outpost all the time."
"With Ethan Beck?"
"We had lunch."
Morgan picked up her water. Took a sip. Set it down. "How was lunch?"
"Fine."
"Fine."
"It was lunch, Morgan. People eat lunch."
"Did he wear the hat?"
Kirstin took a drink of her sweet tea. "He wore the hat."
"And?"
"I told him to take it off."
Addison made a sound. Small. Precise. A single exhale through the nose that communicated more than most people managed in a paragraph.
"It's not a thing," Kirstin said.
"Nobody said it was a thing," Addison said.
"Your nose said it was a thing."
"My nose is supportive."
"Your nose needs a lawyer."
The food came. Kirstin picked up her burger and took a bite and the two women across from her waited with the patience of people who knew that silence was more effective than questions.
"He told me about his dad," Kirstin said.
She hadn't planned to say that.
"His dad calls after every rehab session. Beck lies about the shoulder. His dad knows he's lying. Neither of them talks about it."
Morgan set her fork down.
"He told me how he got Hudson."
She didn't say more than that. She didn't need to. The words sat on the table and Kirstin picked up her tea and put it down.
"I don't know what I'm doing."
"Yes you do," Morgan said.
"I don't date baseball players."
"You keep saying that."
"Because it's true."
"It was true Wednesday. It's Tuesday."
"It's still true Tuesday."
"Is it?"
"He's here for twelve weeks, Morgan. Twelve weeks. And then the shoulder either works or it doesn't, and either way he goes back to his life and I go back to mine and I'm standing behind my dad's bar watching another one leave."
"Another one?" Addison said. Quiet.
Kirstin heard it land. Another one. Like her mother. Like everyone who'd ever left the island and not come back. She hadn't meant to say it that way. She'd meant baseball players. She'd said something else.
"That's not what I meant."
"It's what you said."
"I meant the situation. The temporary thing. He's here to rehab. He's not here to stay."
"You don't know that," Morgan said.
"That's how this works. Everybody loves the island until they don't."
"I love the island," Morgan said. "I was born here."
"Addison wasn't."
"Addison married the island," Addison said. "Addison is referring to herself in the third person because this conversation needs levity."
Kirstin almost gave them one. Almost.
"So it's three hours up the interstate," Morgan said. "If it turns out to be real and his shoulder heals, you really want to throw that away for three hours and a few more years in the sun?"
"Luke's, what, thirty-seven," Kirstin said. "What if he walked in tomorrow and said he was going to Boston for one more year?"
"I'd take my ass to Boston," Addison said. "Put my Mrs. Banks jersey on and watch my man do what he loves one more time."
"You can't know in a week," Kirstin said.
"Sweetheart, I knew in an hour," Morgan said.
The restaurant kept going. Plates. Glasses. The low hum of a Tuesday lunch crowd. Kirstin picked up her burger and put it down and picked up her tea and put that down too.
"I kissed him on the cheek," she said. "At the lighthouse. Sunday."
Morgan's face did something Kirstin had never seen before. It went soft.
"And?" Morgan said.
"And I called him Ethan."
Addison reached across the table and put her hand over Kirstin's.
"So," Addison said. "It's not a thing."
"It's not a thing," Kirstin said.
"Okay," Addison said.
"Okay," Morgan said.
They drove back across the causeway. The island appeared through the windshield, low and green, the trees and the marsh and the water and the bridge, the place Kirstin had chosen over law school and the mainland and every other version of her life.
Morgan's hand came forward from the back seat and squeezed Kirstin's shoulder once.
"For the record," Morgan said. "He ironed that shirt."
"I know," Kirstin said.
"And he dances."
"I know."
"And his dog picked you."
Kirstin watched the island grow closer through the glass.
"I know," she said.
Morgan asked her to drop a contract off at the facility before her shift. Riley/Banks business. Vendor agreement for the fall event series. It would take two minutes.
Kirstin pulled into the lot at three fifteen. Luke's truck. Brady's truck. Beck's truck. A white SUV she didn't recognize. The building was quiet from the outside but the cage lights were on behind the facility and she could hear the crack of a bat before she got out of the car.
She walked toward the building with the contract in her hand. The front door was open. She could leave it on the desk in Addison's office and be gone before anyone knew she was here.
She heard another crack. Then another. A rhythm to it, steady and clean, the sound repeating at intervals that felt almost mechanical.
She stopped at the corner of the building where the walkway opened to the cages.
Beck was hitting.
Luke was behind the L-screen with a bucket of balls, feeding them one at a time, easy and rhythmic. Brady stood behind Beck, arms crossed, his eyes moving between Beck's hands and his shoulder and the ball, reading the swing in pieces, the same focused attention Kirstin brought to reading a room.
The crack came again. The ball jumped off the bat and hit the back of the cage and Beck reset and waited and Luke threw another one and Beck's hands moved and the sound came again. Clean. Sharp. The sound of something done right.
She'd never seen it before. Not like this. She'd watched baseball on TV. She'd seen the highlights, the replays, the slow-motion swings on SportsCenter with the graphics and the commentary.
This was different.
This was a man in a cage with a bat and a bucket of balls and nothing else.
No crowd. No cameras. No commentary. Just the work.
His hands were fast and his hips turned and his weight shifted and the ball went where he wanted it to go every single time.
He wasn't thinking about it. His body knew.
Fifteen years of this, since he was a kid in Ocala, and his body still knew.
She could see the shoulder. She could see it in the follow-through, the left side not finishing as cleanly as the right, the slight catch at the end of the swing that Brady was watching and that Beck was pretending wasn't there.
But the hands. The hands were perfect. The bat speed was something she didn't have language for except fast. Faster than she'd imagined a person could move a piece of wood.
"You know Beck?"
She startled. Dr. Reeves was beside her. She hadn't heard him come up. He was standing with his hands in the pockets of his khakis, watching the cage, relaxed and professional.
"Yeah, we met last week," she said. "I'm just here to drop this off to Luke."
"It's impressive, isn't it?"
"What?"
"To watch someone who's truly elite perform."
Kirstin watched Beck hit another pitch. The crack. The reset. The patience between swings, waiting for Luke to reach into the bucket.
"He might not make it back," Reeves said. Not to her, exactly. To the cage. To the work. "The shoulder may not let him. But the talent." He shook his head once. "The talent was never the question."
Luke threw another one. Beck's hands moved. The ball hit the back of the cage.
Kirstin set the contract on the railing beside the walkway where Luke would find it. She turned and walked to her car. She didn't look back at the cage. She didn't need to. The sound of the bat followed her across the lot.
She sat in the driver's seat. Pulled out her phone.
I know why you'd go to Boston now.
She sent it to Addison.
The heart tapback came back before she started the engine.