Epilogue
October.
The suite was on the third base side, high enough to see the whole field, low enough to hear the crowd. Kirstin stood at the glass with her hands on the railing and watched the grounds crew finish the infield between innings.
Behind her, Luke was standing against the back wall with his arms crossed, watching the field from across the room.
He hadn't sat down since the sixth inning.
Addison was beside him, her hand on his arm, the only person who could keep Luke Banks still when baseball was happening.
Morgan was in a chair by the window, her legs curled under her, her phone face-down on the armrest. She'd stopped checking it in the fourth.
Brady was at the far end of the suite, leaning against the wall, arms crossed, mirroring Luke.
Two men watching a game from the same posture they'd been watching games from their entire lives.
The broadcast cut to commercial between innings. Kirstin glanced at the monitor mounted in the corner of the suite. A graphic filled the screen before the ad break. The Braves logo, the World Series logo, and underneath: Ethan Beck is represented by Riley, Banks & Green. Ellery Cove, Georgia.
Three names on a television screen. Three women who had started in a white clapboard building on the corner of Harbor Road and Main.
Morgan appeared beside her.
"You see it?" Morgan said.
"I see it."
Morgan put her arm through Kirstin's. They stood at the glass and neither of them said anything else because there was nothing else to say.
The ninth inning started.
The first batter walked. The second batter singled to right. The third batter walked on a full count and the bases were loaded and the stadium was on its feet and the noise was pressing against the glass of the suite.
Beck was on deck.
She watched him in the circle. He was swinging the bat in slow loops, loose, easy, his batting helmet low. Not watching the crowd. Not watching the mound. Watching the bat move, feeling it in his hands. Calm in the center of fifty thousand people screaming his name.
Comeback Player of the Year. Led the majors in All-Star votes. The MVP conversation had been his since August. And now Game 7, bases loaded, bottom of the ninth, and Ethan Beck was in the on-deck circle with his eyes on his bat like he was alone on a beach.
The batter ahead of him stepped out of the box. Beck stepped in.
Time was called.
The pitching coach came out of the opposing dugout. He walked to the mound slowly. The catcher met him there. Three men standing on a mound in front of fifty thousand people, trying to figure out how to get one man out.
The crowd wouldn't let them think. The noise was already enormous and then it organized itself. A chant rising from behind home plate, spreading to the baselines, rolling through the upper deck until the whole stadium was pulsing with it.
MVP. MVP. MVP.
Morgan's hand tightened on her arm. Luke stepped to the glass.
Addison was beside him now, her fingers laced through his.
Brady hadn't moved. Brady was watching from the back of the suite with the stillness of a development coach who had built the player standing at the plate and knew what was about to happen.
The pitching coach walked back to the dugout. The catcher squatted. The pitcher set.
Kirstin stopped breathing.
Beck stood in the left-handed box. His bat was still.
His front foot was quiet. The stadium was chanting his name and fifty million people were watching on television and the man at the plate was as still as he'd been on the beach behind Sailor Jon's when he'd knelt in the sand and asked her to marry him.
The pitch came. Curveball. It hung.
Beck swung.
The sound was different from the workout.
Louder. Deeper. A sound that carried over fifty thousand voices and silenced them for a half second before the silence became something else entirely.
The ball left his bat and rose on a line toward right-center field and kept rising and the outfielder took two steps back and stopped because the ball was already past him, past the warning track, past the wall, deep into the bleachers where a thousand people were already standing with their arms raised.
Beck let the bat go. A small flip, easy, the bat turning once in the air and landing on the dirt.
He watched the ball. He stood at the plate and watched it land and then he took a few steps toward first. Walking.
Then the steps lengthened and the trot began and by the time he rounded first the dugout had emptied.
Players spilling over the railing, running toward home plate.
He rounded first. He rounded second. The trot started, easy, and by third base the first teammates reached him, hands on his back, hands on his helmet, and the noise in the stadium was beyond noise.
He crossed home plate and disappeared.
The dogpile swallowed him. Bodies and arms and helmets and the team piling on at home plate and somewhere in the middle of it his batting helmet came off and his curls were visible for a half second before another body landed on top of him and he was gone again.
Kirstin was crying.
She didn't know when she'd started. Her hands were on the glass and her face was wet and Morgan was beside her, crying too, and Addison had her hands over her mouth and Luke's arm was around her and Brady was still at the back of the suite, his arms at his sides now, his chin up, smiling.
The dogpile untangled. Players peeling off, standing, hugging, the celebration spreading across the infield. Beck emerged from the bottom of it. His jersey was untucked. His helmet was gone. His curls were wild and his face was split open and his eyes were up.
He was looking at the suite.
He found her through the glass. Two hundred feet up and a world away from the field and he found her. He put his hand on his chest. He held it there.
She put her hand on the glass.
Luke put his hand on Kirstin's shoulder. "Your husband just became a legend."
The stadium was exploding around him. Confetti was falling. His teammates were spraying champagne. The commissioner was walking toward the field with the trophy.
Ethan Beck was standing at home plate with his hand on his heart, looking at his wife.
They drove home the next morning.
The MVP trophy was in the back seat. Beck had carried it out of the clubhouse at two a.m. wrapped in a towel because he didn't have a case for it and the towel was the first thing he grabbed.
Kirstin had taken a picture of it buckled into the seat like a passenger and sent it to Morgan, who had responded with seven exclamation points and a voice memo that was just screaming.
The island was quiet when they crossed the bridge. Late October. The oaks along Harbor Road were turning. The market was winding down for the season. The harbor was still.
He parked in the driveway. Their driveway. The house that had been hers and then theirs and now just was. Hudson was at the door. The tags jingling. The tail going.
She unlocked the front door and Hudson pushed past her and went straight to Beck and Beck dropped to his knees and let the dog climb into him and the World Series MVP was on the floor of his house being licked by a golden retriever and Kirstin leaned against the doorframe and watched.
The painting was on the wall in the hallway. The woman on the beach, reading, smiling at something private. Kirstin passed it and stopped.
She studied the woman in the painting. The woman held her gaze.
They were the same person now.
She went to the kitchen. She made coffee. She opened her wallet to find a coupon for the bakery on the mainland and the business card was there, in the slot next to Beck's credit card.
Kirstin Green Beck, Esq.
Riley, Banks & Green
Ellery Cove, Georgia
She closed the wallet. She poured two cups.
Beck was on the couch. Hudson was beside him. The MVP trophy was on the coffee table, still wrapped in the towel. His curls were falling across his forehead and his eyes were closed and his right hand was resting on Hudson's back, rising and falling with the dog's breathing.
She sat beside him. She handed him the coffee. He opened his eyes.
"We made it," she said.
He took the coffee. He took a sip. He put his arm around her.
"We did."