Chapter 28
Asher
The pitching machine spits another one at me, inside and low, and I get under it just enough to lift it into the netting. The ball hits, drops, then rolls back toward the bucket with the others.
I reset my feet, then tap the plate. The cage smells like rubber and cut grass and somebody's menthol rub three stations down.
It's the last stretch before we fly home. Half the roster's out here in the morning heat, taking cuts they don't need to take because the alternative is another day in a hotel staring at the ceiling. I get it. I've stared at a lot of ceilings this trip.
Sanchez is two cages over, narrating his swing like there's a camera on him. Off to the side, Knox is throwing a side session—silent, methodical—dropping every pitch into the same square foot of the catcher's mitt. Nobody's keeping score.
The machine loads. I swing. Connect clean this time, the good ring of it traveling up through my hands.
My phone goes off in my back pocket.
I step out of the box, peeling the batting glove off with my teeth, and dig it out. Her name on the screen does the thing it always does. Lights me up from the inside like I'm sixteen and stupid.
I'd checked my phone twice in the last ten minutes, hoping she'd call.
"Hey, doll." I press my shoulder into the chain link, grinning at nothing. "I was just thinking about you."
"Asher?"
It's one word. My name. But it cracks down the middle, a hairline, the kind you'd miss if you weren't already tuned to her.
I straighten off the fence. "Audrey, what's wrong? Did something happen?"
There's breathing on the line. An uneven pull of air, in and not all the way out.
"Are you okay? Are the kids okay?" The bat's still in my hand. I set it against the net, slow, like sudden movement might startle whatever this is. "Talk to me, hun. I'll come straight home if I need to."
"No." There’s a wet sound, swallowed. "No, it's okay."
It's not okay. I hear the shaky breath again and close my eyes and just listen to it, trying to read her through a thousand miles of nothing.
"I miss you though," she says, voice wobbling.
"I miss you too." I keep my voice low, even, the way you talk to something that might bolt. "Talk to me, honey. I can tell something's wrong."
I wait. I can hear her gathering it. The little hitch before the hard thing, the one I've learned the shape of over dozens of late phone calls.
"Some of the ladies at church found out about us."
My hand finds the chain link and curls into it. The wire bites cold lines into my fingers.
"What did they say to you?"
"It’s fine, Asher. They don't know you. I tried telling them. I tried to say that you're not what they think, but they wouldn't even let me get the words out. They just kept—"
"Audrey." My fingers tighten. The fence gives a soft metal groan. "What did they say to you?"
She takes a breath. "They don't think I should be in the play anymore." Her voice drops. "They think it's inappropriate. Me, playing Eve, while there's a man coming and going from my house."
Something goes hot and tight in my chest. I look down and my knuckles have gone white through the links.
"Son of a—" I bite it off. "Sorry. Sorry."
Sanchez glances over from the other cage. I turn my back to him, drop my forehead almost to the chain link.
"What do you want to do?" I make myself unclench one finger at a time. I know what I think, but what she thinks matters more.
She's quiet. Down the line, I can hear the dishwasher running. She’s in her kitchen. I can see it. The little table, the light through the window over the sink, the spot where I drew dogs for Sophie.
"I don't want us to be a secret anymore."
The bat could hit the concrete right now, and I wouldn't hear it.
I push off the fence. "Audrey." My pulse is loud in my ears. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?"
I've replayed this conversation so many times I don't trust it when it finally happens.
"Yes." She laughs, and it comes out broken and bright at the same time, tears and a smile fighting for the same breath. "I don't want to hide you anymore, Asher."
The sound that comes out of me isn't a word. It's a whoop, loud, the kind that bounces off the metal and the concrete and carries all the way down the row.
Knox holds up mid-windup. Sanchez turns fully around. Three or four heads come up from buckets of balls, looking for whatever just went right.
I shrug at them, one-handed, phone still pinned to my ear. I don't care. I couldn’t care less.
"Where's your church at, doe eyes?"
"Why?" Her voice is wary now. I can picture the exact tilt of her head.
"Cuz I'm taking my girlfriend to church." I'm grinning so wide my face hurts. "And if anybody's got something to say about it, they can say it to me. Trust me, doll. Once they get a look at us together, nobody's saying a word to you again."
She laughs through the tears, full this time, the broken edge gone out of it.
"I'll be on the first plane home Saturday morning," I say. "I'll come straight over."
"Okay." She takes a breath, steadier. "Okay."
We hang up. I stand there in the cage with the phone in my hand and the machine waiting, the whole row pretending not to watch me.
Sanchez finally breaks the silence, leaning out of his cage. "Girlfriend?"
"Yeah." I pick the bat back up. Roll my shoulders. Step into the box. "Girlfriend."
The machine fires. I drive it into the back of the net so hard the whole frame shudders.
I pull up to the curb a little before nine, two hours off the plane, my bag still in the trunk.
She's already on the porch.
She comes down the steps before I've got the engine off. By the time I'm rounding the hood, she's already there. Her arms go around me, full, both of them, her face pressed into my chest.
Right here. On the sidewalk. The Saturday street wide open around us, the neighbor's sprinkler ticking across the way, somebody's garage door grinding up two houses down.
She doesn't look at any of it. Doesn't track the porch across the street, doesn't go stiff at the car that rolls past slowly behind me, doesn't pull back to put a respectable foot of daylight between us. She just holds on, out here, in front of God and the whole neighborhood.
I wrap her up and feel the weight of it settle in. I tuck my chin over the top of her head and press my mouth into her hair.
"Hi," I say into it.
"Hi." Her voice is muffled against my shirt.
We stand there a second longer than two people usually stand on a sidewalk. I let her be the one to step back.
"Come in," she says, and takes my hand, and that's the thing that gets me—the casual certainty of it, out in the open, leading me up her front walk like she's done it a thousand times.
Inside, the coffee's already going. The kitchen smells like grounds and something cinnamon, and the morning light's doing the thing it does through that window over the sink, laying a long warm stripe across the floor.
A blur comes out of the living room and hits me at hip height.
Eli's got both arms locked around my middle, looking up, accusing. “You were gone a long time.”
"I know, squirt." I get a hand on his head. "Sorry about that. I'm back now, though."
He decides that's enough. "Good," he says and grins. He peels off, going back the way he came with a stuffed something under his arm.
Audrey watches him go, then looks back at me. There's color in her face. Her hair's down. She looks like she actually slept.
"You hungry? I can make you something."
"I'm good." I follow her into the kitchen. "I'll take some coffee though, if you've got it."
"Yep. Sit down, and I'll get it."
I catch her by the wrist before she can turn for the cupboard. Press a kiss to her temple, slow.
"I've got it. You sit."
She gives me a look, the one with the eyebrow, but she goes. Settles into her chair at the table with her own mug already there, both hands coming around it.
I find the cupboard. Pull down a mug—dark blue, chip on the handle. The coffee's in the pot and the milk's in the door of the fridge where it always is. I know this kitchen now.
I'm reaching for the milk when the doorway fills.
Sophie stops dead at the threshold, half a step from running into me. Pajama shorts, the concert t-shirt I got her that’s a little too big, hair flat on one side from sleep.
"Hey, kid."
I close the fridge door.
She doesn't move. Doesn't say a word. I stand there with the mug in my hand between us, and her eyes come up to my face and just stop there.
Then her chin goes.
It happens all at once. The mouth, the eyes, the whole small face folding in on itself, and the first sound out of her is the worst one—that high, broken hitch a kid makes when they've been holding something a long time and it finally gets out.
I set the mug down on the counter.
Across the kitchen, Audrey's already halfway out of her chair, hands flat on the table.
I catch her eye and lift one hand, barely. I've got this. She lowers back down, slow, watching.
I step toward Sophie. She won't look up now, head down, shoulders going. I stop in front of her, close, not sure what my hands are supposed to do, only knowing that I need to be exactly here, not anywhere else.
She hits me.
A small fist into my stomach, just below the ribs. Then again, harder. Then both of them, a flurry of them, little useless thumps against my middle, her face screwed up and the tears coming faster with every one.
I don't catch her wrists. I don't step back. I just let her.
When the punches start to slow, when they go from hitting to just pressing, I reach down and pull her in.
She comes against my chest, and the fight goes out of her all at once. Her arms come up, locking around my middle, and she holds on like the floor is gone.
I get a hand on the back of her head. Hold her there.
She says something into my shirt. I have to bend to catch it.
"Everyone leaves." Wavering, soaked, barely a voice at all.
My throat closes.
"Dad." A shaky breath. "Nate." Another. "You."
The breath gets knocked out of me.
Christ. She'd been bracing for it the entire time.
I should have thought of this. The trip, the month, being gone so long. To Eli, it was a long time. To her, it was the test she'd been waiting her whole short life to watch somebody fail.
My eyes are burning. I blink, and it doesn't help.
"I've got you, Soph." I keep my voice down where only she can hear it. "It's okay. I've got you."
She hiccups, that wet stutter, her whole back jumping with it. The front of my shirt is warm and damp where her face is pressed.
I tighten my arms.
"I'm not going anywhere, little fawn."
The hitching eases. Just a fraction. She burrows in harder, fists knotted in the back of my shirt now, holding instead of hitting.
I look up.
Audrey hasn't moved. She's still in her chair, both hands locked white around the coffee mug, and the tears are running down her face without a sound, without her wiping them, like she's afraid that moving will end it.
I hold her daughter against my chest, and I look right at her when I say it again.
"I'm not going anywhere."
I'm not talking to Sophie anymore. I'm talking to all three of them. To the woman at the table, and the boy down the hall, and the girl with her fists in my shirt. And I mean it.
Sophie goes quiet against me. Just breathing now, ragged, slowing.
The coffee waits on the counter. The light moves across the floor. I squeeze my eyes shut and let the heat behind them spill over. Then a chair scrapes, and Audrey's there, arms coming around the both of us, Sophie pressed warm between us, her face turned up into the side of my neck.
I hold my girls in her kitchen and let the promise sink the rest of the way in.