Chapter 24
The facility was quiet at six in the morning.
Beck sat on the bench behind the backstop and turned a baseball in his hands.
The field was dark, the marsh beyond it just beginning to separate from the sky, the first gray light catching the tops of the grass.
The air was cool for November, not cold, a morning the island only produced when the season turned and the tourists left and the place belonged to the people who stayed.
He'd been sitting here for twenty minutes. He'd come early because the facility at six was the place where his mind worked best. No scouts. No phone calls. No card in his jacket pocket. Just the field and the ball and the quiet.
The back door opened. Brady came out carrying two Diet Mountain Dews. He handed one to Beck and sat on the bench beside him. He didn't say anything. He opened his drink and took a sip and looked at the field.
A minute passed.
The door opened again. Luke came out with his coffee. He didn't sit on the bench. He sat on the bucket of balls near the backstop, cap backward, one foot on the turf. He'd had conversations in dugouts his whole life and he knew the best ones started with silence.
Two minutes passed. The marsh birds were waking up. The sky was separating into layers, gray and pink, the sun still below the tree line.
"You shoot Boston down?" Luke said.
"Yeah."
"When?"
"Yesterday. Called Jerry myself."
"How'd he take it?"
"Better than I expected. Said he understood. Said the offer stands if things change."
Luke nodded. Brady took a sip of his Diet Mountain Dew.
"Things aren't going to change," Beck said.
"I know," Luke said. "Boston was never the play."
The field was getting lighter. The base paths were visible now, the chalk lines Luke had laid down last week, crisp and white against the turf.
The mound. The plate. The distances that Beck had been running since September, ninety feet and sixty feet six inches, the geometry of a game he'd been playing since he was old enough to swing.
"Beck," Brady said. His voice was quiet. The voice he used when he was about to say something that mattered. "You're back."
Beck turned the ball in his hands. The seams under his fingers. The leather warm from his grip.
"I know the reports say?—"
"I'm not talking about the reports." Brady set his drink on the bench.
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "I'm talking about what I've seen every morning for three months.
Your arm is back. Your bat never left. Your routes are the same as they were when you were twenty-five.
I've watched you work with kids in that cage and I've watched you take BP against Luke's best stuff and I've watched you run down balls in the gap that most center fielders don't get to. "
Brady paused. He picked his words carefully because Brady always picked his words carefully.
"You're not rehabbing anymore. You're a ballplayer who happens to be on an island instead of a roster."
The sun broke the tree line. The light hit the outfield grass and the green came up all at once, bright and wet, the morning dew catching the first rays.
Beck watched it happen and felt the thing he'd been feeling since the workout.
Since the scouts. Since Jerry's card landed on the table beside his water glass.
He wanted it.
He wanted to play. He wanted a lineup card with his name on it.
He wanted a clubhouse and a road trip and a game that mattered in September.
He wanted to stand in a batter's box with forty thousand people in the seats and hit a baseball so hard the building made that sound.
He wanted it and he'd been pretending he didn't because wanting it meant leaving and leaving meant risking the only thing that mattered more than the game.
"I know I'm back," Beck said. "That's not the problem."
"We know what the problem is," Luke said.
The three of them sat with it. The field. The morning. The marsh birds.
"I met Addison and my whole life changed," Luke said. "She walked into Jon's on a Friday night and the game went from being everything to being the thing I did while I waited to see her again. Brady met Morgan and the same thing happened. Different version, same result."
"She asked me to stay," Beck said. "Twice."
Luke looked at him. Brady looked at him.
"On the beach. And after her birthday." Beck turned the ball. "She asked me and I stayed and I meant it. But she didn't ask me to stop playing. She'd never ask me that. And I can't figure out how to do both."
Luke picked up a ball from the bucket beside him.
Turned it in his fingers. "Addison never asked me to stay.
She'd have let me go back to Boston and she'd have figured it out and she'd have never said a word about what it cost her.
That's what Addison does. She adjusts." He set the ball down.
"Kirstin's different. She asked. She put it on the table.
And you're sitting on the answer because you're afraid the answer hurts her. "
"Morgan told me to go," Brady said. "When Jerry made the second offer. A million a year. She told me to take it."
"What did you do?" Beck said.
"I told Jerry no in under a minute." Brady leaned back on the bench.
"Because the offer wasn't the question. The question was what I wanted, and what I wanted was on that island.
But Beck, I was done. My playing career was over.
I was choosing between two front office jobs.
You're choosing between the woman you love and the game you're not finished playing. "
"I know."
"Do you?" Brady turned to him. "Because from where I'm sitting, you've been pretending the choice doesn't exist. You shot Boston down because the distance was wrong. But the distance isn't the issue. The issue is you won't let yourself want both."
The ball was still in Beck's hands. He turned it. Read the seams. The leather was scuffed from the cage, the red stitching faded on one side.
"You just turned thirty," Luke said. "I played until I was thirty-five. You've got years left. Good years. And I'm telling you this as your friend, not as the guy who runs this place — you are too good to stop playing because you're afraid."
"I'm not afraid."
"Yeah, you are." Luke said it flat. No judgment.
He'd known fear in his own career and he recognized it.
"You're afraid that going back means losing her.
And I understand that because I was afraid of the same thing.
But Beck, Addison didn't leave when I went back for the consulting deal.
Brady turned down a million dollars a year because he'd given his word to Morgan and this island.
These women don't run. And the men who love them figure it out. "
Beck thought about Kirstin on the beach. "Stay there." Kirstin in his kitchen, barefoot, his shirt. Kirstin on the porch at Deanna's house, listening to his mother tell stories. Kirstin in the passenger seat, her feet on the dashboard, talking to April for thirty minutes while he drove.
Kirstin at the dinner table, her hand too tight on his under the tablecloth, watching Jerry Smith paint a picture of a life in Boston that she'd never asked for.
"What if she doesn't want to leave the island?" Beck said.
"Have you asked her?" Brady said.
Beck didn't answer because the answer was no and all three of them knew it.
"She opened a box of bar prep materials that had been taped shut for four years," Brady said. "She registered for the February exam. She put her name on a sign. That woman is not standing still, Beck. She's building something. The question is whether you're going to stand still while she does it."
Luke stood from the bucket. He walked onto the field, hands in his pockets, and stopped near the infield dirt.
"One more thing," Luke said. "And this is from both of us."
Brady nodded.
"You've got a place here. At this facility. With us. Whether that's now or five years from now or whenever you're done playing. It's not going anywhere. We built this place for a reason and part of that reason is standing right there holding a baseball at six in the morning."
Beck held the ball in his hands. Brady on the bench. Luke at short. Two men who'd built careers and families and a life on this island and were telling him he could have all of it. The game and the girl and the facility and the island. He just had to be willing to want it.
"I've got to talk to Kirstin," Beck said.
"Yeah, you do," Luke said.
"Before you talk to anyone else," Brady said. "Before the Braves or the Yankees or anyone. You talk to her first."
"I will."
Luke walked off the dirt. He picked up the bucket of balls and carried it toward the cage. Brady stood from the bench and collected his clipboard from inside and came back out.
The morning was full now. The sun was above the trees. The field was bright and green and the marsh was gold behind it and the day was starting.
"BP in thirty?" Luke said.
"Yeah," Beck said. "Give me thirty."
They went inside. Beck stayed on the bench.
He sat there and held the baseball and watched the light fill the field. Thirty years old. A body that could still play. A woman who'd opened every door she had for him. Two friends who'd just told him the truth.
He put the ball in his pocket. He pulled out his phone.
He didn't call Kirstin. Not yet. He wasn't ready. But he opened his contacts and he looked at her name and he sat with what he needed to say and what it might cost.
The marsh birds were loud now.
Beck put his phone away. He stood from the bench. He walked to the cage.
He had work to do.