Chapter 14
The shoulder was loose by seven thirty.
Beck stood in center field and waited for Brady to hit another. The morning was warm and clear, the marsh behind the facility catching the early light, the grass still wet under his spikes.
Brady swung the fungo. A line drive into the right-center gap, slicing away from Beck on a flat trajectory.
Beck broke left, read the angle, closed on it in four strides and caught it chest high on his backhand.
The throw came back clean. Hard. Through the cutoff area and into Luke's glove behind second base.
No lag.
Luke caught it and held it and glanced at Brady. Brady made a note on his clipboard.
"Again," Beck said.
Brady hit another. Deep this time, over Beck's head toward the warning track.
Beck turned and ran and the ball came down over his right shoulder and he caught it at full extension and the throw came back and it was accurate and it was on time and the lag that had lived in the joint since March was quiet.
Not gone. Quiet.
Six weeks. Reeves had said twelve, reassess at six.
This was the week. Beck had known it was coming since Monday, had felt it in the quality of his sleep, his mind going to the shoulder before his feet hit the floor each morning.
The evaluation was Thursday. Imaging, range of motion, velocity readings, the full diagnostic.
Everything he'd done since he stepped off the plane was pointed at this week.
But the week had also become something else. Something that had nothing to do with the shoulder.
Jon's voice on the porch, easy, offhanded, a man mentioning a thing he wanted mentioned: Next Friday is her birthday. She'll never tell you.
Beck had held that sentence for days. He hadn't told Kirstin he knew. He hadn't asked anyone else about it. He'd just kept it, turning it over the same as he turned a baseball when he was thinking, reading it.
Friday. He had until Friday.
Brady hit him six more. Beck ran them all down. The routes were clean. The closing speed was real. The arm was present in a way it hadn't been three weeks ago, the ball coming out of his hand with intent, with direction, with the thing that separated a throw from a toss.
Luke jogged out to center. Cap backward, coffee long gone, fifteen years of major league grass in his posture, moving like the field still remembered him.
"That's eight for eight," Luke said. "Arm looks right."
"Feels right."
"Thursday's going to be fine."
"I know."
"Then stop looking like that."
Beck pulled his glove off and pushed his hand through his hair. The curls were damp from the work. "I'm not looking like anything."
"You're looking like a guy who's about to get good news and isn't sure he wants it."
Beck didn't answer that. Luke let him not answer it. They walked off the field together, Beck's shoulder warm and loose, the ache in the joint the good kind now, the kind that meant the muscles had worked and the work had meant something.
Brady was at the bench, clipboard under his arm, Diet Mountain Dew in his hand. He'd already put the fungo away. He'd already raked the area behind the screen. Brady cleaned up like he coached, quietly, before anyone noticed it needed doing.
"Velocity's up," Brady said. "I don't have a gun on it but the carry's different. Thursday'll give us numbers."
"Good."
"You eating?"
"Not yet."
"Go eat. We've got band work at ten."
Beck went inside. The training room was cold from the AC and he sat on the table and iced his shoulder and ate a protein bar and checked his phone. A text from Kirstin, sent at six forty-five.
Good morning. Hudson peed on my rug.
He'd dropped Hudson off last night. She'd offered. She liked having the dog when Beck had early sessions, and Hudson had decided weeks ago that Kirstin's house was his second home, the beach spot his personal territory, the rug by her couch the place where he slept best.
Which rug?
The one I like.
He's marking his territory.
He can mark his territory outside like a civilized animal.
Beck smiled. He put the phone down. The ice pack dripped onto the table and he adjusted it and leaned back and closed his eyes.
Friday. Her birthday. He had an idea. Not a plan yet. An idea. Something small. Something that didn't require a crowd or a production or anyone other than the two of them. Something that told her he'd been paying attention.
The door to the training room opened. He sat up.
Morgan was in the doorway. Addison was behind her.
They weren't smiling.
Morgan's Jeep and Addison's Defender were in the lot.
Beck saw them through the window as he followed the women down the hallway toward the main office.
Morgan was walking with purpose, the clipboard she always carried tucked against her chest, her phone in her other hand.
Addison was beside her, quiet, the precision of her stride telling Beck everything the women's faces hadn't.
This was business.
Luke was already in the office, sitting on the edge of the desk, cap backward, one foot on the floor. Brady was leaning against the filing cabinet with his arms crossed.
"Sit down," Luke said. To Beck. Not to the room.
Beck sat. The chair was the metal folding kind that lived in the office for meetings that didn't happen often.
The room was small. Filing cabinet, desk, Brady's clipboard on the counter, a whiteboard on the wall with the week's schedule.
The window faced the parking lot. The sun was coming through it and hitting the floor at an angle that put a stripe of light across Beck's shoes.
Morgan set her clipboard on the desk. She glanced at Addison. Addison nodded.
"We started getting calls at the office this morning," Morgan said. "Eight o'clock. Then eight fifteen. Then eight thirty."
Beck's eyes went to Luke. Luke's face was still.
"Teams," Morgan said. "Scouts. Asking about the six-week evaluation. Asking about access. Asking about you."
The room didn't change. The light on the floor didn't move. Brady's arms stayed crossed. But something in the air tightened, a dugout tension, the charge that runs through a room when the lineup card comes back different than expected.
"How many?" Luke said.
Morgan opened the clipboard. "St. Louis called first. Then Tampa Bay. Then Houston. San Francisco. Washington. Minnesota. Chicago."
Seven names. Seven organizations. Each one landed in the room like a pitch landing in a catcher's glove, contact, arrival, something with weight behind it.
Luke was doing the math. His mind worked in baseball terms and seven teams calling a small event planning office on a barrier island in Georgia at eight in the morning was not normal.
That was the baseball world deciding something was worth seeing.
That was the machine turning its attention toward Ellery Cove.
"Seven teams," Brady said. His voice was level. "In one morning."
"Eight," Morgan said.
The room waited.
Morgan turned to Beck. Not to Luke, not to Brady, not to Addison. To Beck.
"I just got off the phone with the Yankees."
The word landed different than the other seven.
It landed in Beck's chest and it landed in his hands and it landed in a place he hadn't visited in over a year, a place that smelled like grass at Yankee Stadium and a crowd losing its mind when a ball leaves the yard in the Bronx and a bat that tells you before you finish the swing that it's gone.
He'd hit a ball into the third deck at Yankee Stadium.
Upper deck, right field, a fastball up and in that he'd turned on so hard the bat cracked.
He'd stood at home plate for half a second too long, watching it, and the truth was he couldn't move.
His legs wouldn't carry him. The sound was still in his ears and the ball was still climbing and the stadium was making a noise that wasn't cheering exactly, it was something older than that, something that the building itself seemed to produce.
He'd never told anyone what that felt like. Not his parents. Not Trevor. Not Luke or Brady.
And standing in Jon's booth at the Shrimp Festival, watching a six-year-old walk away with a pink bear, his arm around Kirstin, Hudson at their feet, the island warm and easy and unconcerned with the third deck at Yankee Stadium. That had felt better.
"Beck," Addison said. Her voice was calm.
Professional. This was Addison running a meeting, not Addison having a conversation.
"Riley/Banks manages the facility's outside inquiries.
We told every scout the same thing. The evaluation is Thursday.
We need to talk to you and Luke and Brady before we respond to anything else. "
"Okay."
"This is your decision," she said. "Not ours. We can set up a workout. Open it to all eight teams. Let them watch. Or we can keep Thursday closed and handle it however you want to handle it."
Beck turned to Luke. Luke was watching him with the expression he'd had in the diner, the morning after the release, when Beck had said can I just not know for a minute? Patient. Present. Not pushing.
Beck turned to Brady. Brady's arms were still crossed. His face was giving nothing. That was Brady's way of giving everything, because a face that gave nothing was a face working hard not to show what it was thinking.
"It's your call, Beck," Luke said.
The ball was in the pocket of his jacket, hanging on the hook by the door.
He'd been carrying it for weeks. He didn't reach for it now.
He didn't need to. The seams were there from across the room, the leather, a baseball picked up off the turf of a cage where two kids had figured something out because he'd shown them where to put their feet.
He thought about Kirstin. Not the conversation he'd have with her later. Not her face when he told her. Just her. At the Shrimp Festival, both arms around a ridiculous bear, happy. Saying maybe tomorrow to Addison and looking at him and the word meaning something larger than dinner.
"Set it up," he said.
Morgan wrote something on her clipboard. Addison pulled her phone out. Luke stood up from the desk.
Brady hadn't moved. His arms were still crossed. His Diet Mountain Dew was on the counter behind him, untouched.
Beck met his eyes. Brady held the look for a second. Two. Then Brady uncrossed his arms and picked up his clipboard.
"Band work in twenty," Brady said. "Let's go."
Luke put his hand on Beck's shoulder as he passed. Didn't say anything. Didn't need to.
Beck sat in the folding chair for another minute after the room emptied. The stripe of light had moved across the floor. His phone was in his pocket. The ice on his shoulder had melted thirty minutes ago.
He took his phone out.
Can I come by tonight? Need to tell you about something.
The dots appeared almost immediately.
Everything okay?
He thought about it. Thought about the Yankees and the seven other teams and Thursday and the evaluation and the shoulder that was finally doing what he'd asked it to do. Thought about Friday. Her birthday. The thing Jon had told him that she'd never tell him herself.
Yeah. Everything's okay. Just need to see you.
I'll be home by six. I'm keeping Hudson as collateral.
Beck put his phone in his pocket. He stood up from the folding chair. The office was empty. The whiteboard had Thursday's schedule on it and by next week it would have something else, something larger, eight organizations and what they wanted.
He walked down the hallway toward the field. Through the window at the end, Brady was already out there, setting up the band station, quiet and efficient, the same patient preparation he brought to everything.
Beck stopped at the hook by the door. His jacket was hanging there. He reached into the pocket and his fingers closed around the baseball. The seams were familiar. The leather was warm from the building.
He held it for a second. Then he put it back.
He pushed through the door and walked out into the morning and the sun hit his face and the marsh was bright behind the field and Brady was waiting for him with a resistance band and a clipboard.
"Let's work," Beck said.
Brady handed him the band.
They got to work.