Chapter 4
Keep in the best physical condition, keep your eye on the ball and get on top of your plays.
Sweat trickled down Javi’s back and he could not wait to hit the showers.
As he lifted his arm to throw a ball back to Gallegos, he discreetly sniffed his armpit.
Ripe was an understatement. He would have loved to have shed his jersey like half of his teammates had done during practice, but his chest protector would have rubbed his skin raw, so he’d kept it on.
Usually, perspiration dried quickly in the dry Arizona heat, but his gear trapped it, causing him to swelter like he was still at home in humid Florida.
Their stadium was a dome. They could have practiced in the temperature-controlled, air-conditioned environment, yet their manager made them practice outdoors at a private field at least once a week.
After what seemed like endless repetitions, their sadistic manager called an end to the day’s grueling training session.
Javi had performed fine, but his mood was sour.
He wanted to blame the heat—he was certainly dehydrated from it—but he knew that wasn’t the root of his grumpiness.
He wasn’t his usual outgoing and friendly self.
He’d been impatient and irritable with his teammates.
He’d been in funk since the day before when he’d awoken in his San Diego hotel room alone.
He normally slept light, but somehow he’d crashed hard enough for Cami to sneak out without waking him.
She hadn’t even left him a note. All he had was her first name and an obsessive mind that kept replaying every interaction they’d shared.
There was no way she had not noticed the electric chemistry between them.
His only hope was for her to show up at another one of his games.
She’d clearly been a Diamondbacks fan, so he was praying she showed.
He trudged to the cavernous locker room with the rest of his teammates.
They’d barely made it into the air-conditioning when Javi heard the shrill sound of his mother’s unique ringtone echoing through the large facility.
As the guys continued talking, stripping off their clothes and heading off to the showers, Javi grabbed his phone from his locker.
He’d missed the call, and according to the display, it was the tenth he’d missed.
Dread settled in his belly. His mother called daily, but never repeatedly. She normally only called him before she went to bed. Something must have happened. He immediately struck her contact on the phone, and as he waited for the call to connect, he sent up a prayer that she was okay.
He must have looked freaked out, because Callahan Gallegos caught his eye and asked, “You okay?”
Javi pushed his free hand through his sweaty hair while the phone rang. “Man, I don’t know. I missed ten calls from my mom.”
Cal’s face immediately took on a look of concern as he dropped down on the bench across from Javi to untie his cleats. The El Conquistador was a good guy and had quickly become Javi’s closest friend on the team.
His mom’s line picked up and Javi turned away from Cal. He didn’t need anyone seeing him break down if she hit him with bad news, but all Javi could hear was his mother’s uncontrolled squalling. “Mamá? Mamá, what’s wrong?” he pleaded as his gut became a mess of anxiety.
“My sister is dead!” she wailed into the receiver.
It took Javier a moment to absorb what she was telling him.
Then he let out a breath he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding.
This certainly wasn’t good news, and it was very unexpected, but his mother was okay.
At least physically. It was a horrible thought, because emotionally, she sounded wrecked.
He hated being across the country while she was alone in Florida.
Well, technically, his father’s side of the family was in Florida, too, but they were down in Miami.
His mother was a little over ten hours away in Pensacola.
She had a few friends there, but not as many as she’d had when they’d lived in Miami, so she was essentially on her own.
He’d tried to get her to move to Arizona with him, but she’d refused.
She only had a couple of years left at the grocery store where she worked before she could leave with a hefty retirement.
She’d been with the Florida-based company since shortly after she'd arrived in the US, and the chain had even arranged a transfer to a Pensacola store when Javi had been drafted to play Double-A ball there.
She loved her job as a bakery manager, and he had to admit that her company had been great to them.
“Oh, mamá, I am so sorry.” He wasn’t sure what else to say or how he could be of help to her. His Aunt Isla was dead. He’d never met her in person. Occasionally, his mother would get a call from her, but he’d rarely spoken more than a few words to his Aunt Isla or to her daughter.
Poor Lola. He hadn’t even thought about her. His cousin was just a kid, somewhere in her early teens, he thought.
“What happened to her?” he asked.
“She’d been sick, and she hadn’t told me. I wouldn’t even know she had died except the Mother Superior of the orphanage reached out. Lola is with them and has nowhere to go. So they’ll probably take her on as an orphan. Oh, Javi!” his mother wailed as she began to cry again.
Lola was just a young girl. His mom and Isla didn’t have any other family.
And no one knew who Lola’s dad was, not even his Aunt Isla.
Lola was the result of a sexual assault that Aunt Isla had never truly recovered from.
Even Lola’s name meant “sorrows,” a name his aunt had picked because of her own sorrow. He’d never liked that reasoning.
With no options and an illegitimate baby to care for, his Aunt Isla had wanted to turn her life over to the church and join as a nun, but the discernment had been that she could not join the sisters until Lola was grown, and that his aunt’s priority must be the upbringing of her child before she could commit.
However, the priest had taken mercy on Isla, and she’d been hired to work at an orphanage outside Havana that was run mostly by a convent of nuns.
A kind of half-in, half-out measure to allow for the upbringing of Lola while committing herself to the Good Lord’s work.
It had certainly been a nontraditional life, but far better than if Isla had remained a struggling single mom without support. It had also given his aunt a purpose.
He couldn’t imagine what his poor young cousin was feeling, and apparently, his mother was thinking the same thing. “Javi, you have to help me. We need to get guardianship of Lola and bring her here to live with us. I hate for her to truly be a child of the orphanage.”
He hated the idea of that, too. It was bad enough she’d had to live and grow up in one while not actually being an orphan…until now.
Javi hated that he was not in a position to rush home to be with his mother. Trying to comfort her over the phone felt pointless and ineffective. “Mamá, I am so sorry that I cannot leave and come to you right now, but I will find a lawyer and find out what we need to do to get Lola.”
That seemed to calm his mother down. “Gracias, mi hijo.” She sniffled.
Bringing Lola to live with his mother was actually a great idea.
It would make him feel better to know his mother wasn’t alone.
She needed companionship, and Lola could give her that, and an additional purpose for at least a few years.
After more attempts to comfort his mother, he assured her that he would call her back later that evening and ended the call.
He sat on the bench heavily and dropped his head into his hands.
The phone call with his mother had felt like hours to him, but it couldn’t have been more than five or six minutes.
He sat like that until Cal, fresh from the shower with a towel wrapped around his waist, approached and asked, “Bro, you need anything? You okay?”
Javi dropped his head back to look up at his friend. “My aunt died.”
“Oh, dang. I’m sorry. Do you need to catch a flight to Florida?”
“No, she lived in Cuba. My mom is not taking it well. But there is also my little cousin who has no one to care for her. She’s in an orphanage in Havana. I need to see if I can find a lawyer and find some way for my mother to have guardianship of her.”
Cal perked up, and Javi remembered then that Cal had once told him that he came from a family of lawyers.
“Let me call my sister. She may be able to help you. She specializes in family and immigration law. Maybe she could meet with you this afternoon or tomorrow. Go ahead and hit the shower. I’ll call her now,” promised Cal.