Chapter 21
BLAKE
The bat cracked, echoing across the bleachers, and a baseball arced high up into the August sun.
Around us—save for a couple of isolated hoots from the opposing team—the crowd groaned.
I lifted up my cap to see the ball sail over the fence at the far end of the Quince Valley Ball Field. “Well, shit.”
Cassandra cringed. “This is not looking good.”
The Greenville Mastiff hitter, who’d already lazily dropped his bat to the ground, jogged around the bases.
“He’s not even their star hitter,” Chelsea said, on Cass’s other side.
“Who’s their star hitter?” I asked.
“I don’t know, that one, I guess?” Chelsea waved her hand at the opposing team’s dugout.
I laughed, but I wasn’t paying much attention to Eli’s championship game, either. I was too distracted by the feel of Cassandra next to me. Her shoulders under my arm; her hair against my cheek. I kissed the top of her head, my heart feeling too big for my damn chest.
Cassandra sighed, sliding her hand onto my knee. “At least losing is better when I’m with my favorite person.”
“Hey,” Chelsea said, looking over accusingly.
“Forget Chelsea, I’m right here,” Jude exclaimed, turning from the bench below us.
“I wite heeya!” Jude’s son Jack, next to him, mimicked his dad, right down to the little hands on his hips.
Cassandra laughed. “Sorry. Never mind my siblings; you’re my favorite person too, Jack.”
Jack beamed.
Jude turned toward him. “At least I’m someone’s favorite person, right, buddy?”
“Who’s favorite?” Jack asked earnestly, and this time, we all laughed.
“I’m honored,” I said into Cassandra’s hair. “But you don’t have to pick me over your siblings.”
“Of course I do,” she said. “Or at least, they can think I do.”
I laughed softly this time, even as a deep, almost painful love for her ran through me.
My heart had never felt so full. But it had only been a week since Cassandra had held it in her hands, when Griffin had ferried her across the water to our island.
That morning I’d held my breath as the boat pulled up and I saw her take in me and then the words I’d spelled out.
I’d still been unsure if the gesture was too much.
It didn’t feel like too much. I’d felt like I could write I love you on the surface of the moon and it wouldn’t adequately express how I felt about her.
Still, I’d willed my damn hands not to shake as the boat crunched up onto the sand and she’d gotten out.
Cassandra had told me she loved me before I left.
But I still didn’t know if I’d taken too long.
And while the words had buoyed me at first, after a time over those months apart, they’d worried me too.
While I was shifting every piece of my life around to make being with her possible—if she’d have me—I’d had to consider the very real possibility that she’d said the words in the heat of the moment.
What if once real distance was between us, both time and miles, she’d realize I wasn’t worth loving in the first place?
But each time I thought that, I’d remind myself that it was my old shit talking. I still might falter, but I knew now that my dad’s never-good-enough rhetoric wasn’t true.
“It was his shitty, harmful-as-hell way of trying to make men out of us,” Conrad had said when I’d visited him and Art last month.
I’d spilled my guts about everything that had happened in Quince Valley, and all my plans going forward.
Running Harrington on my own. Selling my share of everything Lila and I co-owned—the apartment, the house, the business.
“You got the brunt of his shit,” Conrad had said.
I had, I realized, now that I was shining a light on it for the first time.
And I hadn’t taken all that heat by chance, either.
I hadn’t wanted Dad pulling any of that shit on my brothers.
I’d been the one to go to business school.
I was the focus of Dad’s critical energy because I’d followed his path.
I’d had a minor crisis after meeting with Conrad.
Had I even wanted to go into business? Or had that been something I’d wanted to do first to prove myself to Dad, and then to beat him at?
I decided I had wanted to go. I’d enjoyed it, and I was good at it.
I loved what I did now. Dad may have influenced my decision, but in the end, it was a good one. And it was mine.
A few days after I got home from Conrad’s place, I’d heard Dad had hired Goldman to help with his hotels.
Before everything, I would have taken that as a victory.
I would have gleefully raised a glass to his failure, the hurt still burning in me like something molten.
But now, having forgiven him—and finally understanding that my real happiness and love don’t thrive on his or anyone else’s failures—I just felt sad for him.
He didn’t know what real happiness was like.
He’d destroyed his chance at having it with his sons.
He’d lost it with Mom, long before she lost her memory. He didn’t have what I had.
The love of a brilliant, beautiful, kind woman who loved him back.
So on that island, standing there with my overworked heart going off like a jackhammer in my chest, my arms aching from hauling logs, all I could see was Cassandra. All I knew was Cassandra. My beautiful, fierce, windblown-Kelly-McGillis-hair Cassandra.
And when she came to me and told me she loved me too?
That was it. I was a goner.
Hers was a love I wasn’t going to squander.
“I love you,” I whispered above her head now, too quiet to hear.
Still, she leaned into me, nuzzling my neck with her hair as if she understood anyway.
Until Chelsea sucked in a breath.
We both followed her gaze to a couple of guys at the end of Jude’s row. They were standing, their foam seats and cups in hand.
“They can’t leave!” Chelsea exclaimed. She sounded indignant. “Liam! Tug!” she called. “It’s only the third inning! Don’t give up on them so fast!”
The pair of guys, who’d started making their way across the bleachers toward the steps, looked over at us. The one in behind grimaced. “It’s too painful.”
“Why do you care so much?” Cass asked her sister.
“Look at Eli and Seamus,” she said. “They’re so upset.”
Over on third base, Eli tossed his hat on the ground, not even trying to hide his displeasure.
Seamus, who Eli had dragged along last week when he helped me hook up the banner on the bridge, was a little less dramatic.
He stood at second, head hung low for a moment as the next guy came up to the plate.
I got the feeling if Seamus’s baseball pants had pockets and he wasn’t wearing a glove, he would have shoved his hands in them.
“Boo!” Jude said to the guys trying to leave. He threw a piece of popcorn at them as they passed us, which the guy at the back batted away, looking guilty.
Little Jack tossed a handful of popcorn too, only his reach wasn’t quite as strong, and the pieces tumbled off the backs of the people sitting in front of them.
Jack giggled as they turned around, brows knitted.
“Sorry,” Jude apologized, but he was doing a poor job of holding in his laughter too.
“That guy’s not wrong,” I said, while Jude gently admonished his son. “It’s hard to watch.”
This was supposed to be a championship game, but the Quince Valley team seemed to have lost confidence early on.
The coach, who’d just called for a timeout, went to confer with his pitcher.
Jude stood up, stretching.
“Not you, too?” Cass asked.
“I’m just going to take Jack to the concession.”
“I’ll go,” Chelsea said, tucking her phone in her pocket. “I need some water.” She’d promised Cassandra she wasn’t hungover, but she’d shown up in dark sunglasses and a wide-brimmed hat, complaining about the sun being ‘too loud’.
“No,” Jude said. “I’m on it.”
“It’s fine, I—”
“Relax, I’ll get you your water.”
It was then I noticed the woman standing over by the food service area. Even from this far away, I could tell she was looking at us, her hand up in a little wave.
Chelsea sighed and leaned back against the chain link fence behind us. “Fine. Extra ice, please.”
Jude turned to us. “You guys want—” he began, but Jack let out an excited whoop—he’d spotted the woman too. She must have been waving at him. He began climbing around people's legs to get to the stairs.
“Buddy, slow down!” Jude called, running after him.
“Who’s she?” I asked after they’d left.
I wasn’t sure Cassandra had heard me. She was gripping my knee now, assessing the situation with narrowed eyes.
“Nora,” Chelsea said for her. “The Quince Valley Town librarian. Which is funny, considering I don’t think Jude’s been in a library since… ever.”
“He takes Jack to story time there,” Cass said, bringing her attention partway back to us. “I think they’re just friends. Actually, that’s thanks to you,” she said to me.
Chelsea, meanwhile, had gone back to her phone.
“Me?” I asked, surprised.
“You’re the one who suggested Jude start going to the library to look in the archives. He’s really into this Eleanor Cleary ghost story.”
“He’s not the only one,” I said, remembering now that Lila insisted I tell her whatever they find out about the cipher. “Lila’s pretty invested too.”
Cass laughed. “Really? She seems so… practical.”
“She is. But ghosts or no, it’s a cool mystery.”
For a moment, we sat in silence, and I knew Cass was thinking about Lila. Her brows had slanted the same way on the beach that morning when she’d asked what happened with her.
“Lila came out to her parents,” I’d told her. Lila had given me permission to share with Cass. No more secrets, she’d said. “It didn’t go great. Her mom is working on getting there, but her dad’s not speaking to her.”
My heart hurt thinking about it now. It was the thing Lila had been trying to avoid her whole adult life. But you can’t run away from that kind of pain.