Chapter 28
Three days. Beck reached for his phone.
Please come back home so we can talk?
Soon, I just can't right now.
Are you ok?
No.
Me either.
The highway opened south of Savannah and Luke fell asleep.
Beck drove. I-16 west, the Georgia pines on both sides, the road straight and empty.
Luke's cap was over his eyes. His seat was back.
He'd talked for the first forty minutes, mostly about the clinic, the high school coach in Marietta who'd invited them.
Then somewhere around Statesboro he'd gone quiet and then he was out.
Beck let him sleep.
He hadn't mentioned Kirstin when he'd brought it up two days ago.
He'd said, "Williams needs us Tuesday. You and me.
Road trip." Beck had said fine because fine was the only word he had for anything right now and because three hours in a car with Luke beat another morning in the rental staring at a phone that wasn't going to buzz.
Addison was driving up separately. She had a meeting at the Braves offices in the afternoon. The business side. Her side.
The morning was gray and cool and the mile markers passed and Beck held the wheel and didn't think about anything.
That was new. For a week his head had been a room with no doors, every thought leading back to the same place.
The kitchen. The text. The 4Runner gone from the drive.
But the highway was doing something to the noise.
The pines and the pavement and Luke breathing beside him and the simple fact of going somewhere, of having a destination that wasn't the facility or the rental or Sailor Jon's.
He didn't think about her for forty-five minutes. He counted.
They pulled into the lot in Marietta just after nine.
A high school field, good grass, lights, a scoreboard that worked.
Twenty-two kids warming up along the foul line.
A coach named Williams met them at the gate with a handshake and the look Beck had gotten used to since September, the one that said I know who you are and I'm going to act like I don't.
"Didn't tell them who was coming," Williams said.
"That's going to last about four seconds," Luke said.
It lasted three. A kid near the cage glanced up, saw Luke, and dropped his glove.
They split the group. Luke took infielders. Beck took hitters.
He worked with them for two hours. Stance, load, the adjustments that lived in half inches.
He moved from kid to kid and watched more than he talked and when he stepped into the cage to demonstrate, his body did what it had always done, the swing arriving from somewhere beneath thought, the mechanics drilled since Ocala.
The kids heard the ball come off the bat and their eyes changed and Beck felt something shift in the back of his mind that he couldn't name yet.
He wasn't performing. He wasn't trying to feel better. He was just here, on a field, doing the thing, and the thing was enough. It had always been enough. He'd just forgotten.
A sophomore hit six straight line drives after Beck moved his back elbow an inch. The kid turned around with Tyler's face. The face of someone who'd felt something click.
"That's yours now," Beck said. "Nobody gave it to you. You did the work."
At noon they broke for water. Luke came off the dirt with red clay on his knees and stood next to Beck along the first base fence. They watched the kids throw sunflower seeds at each other and replay their at-bats with their hands.
"You're good at this," Luke said.
"You've said that before."
"I'll keep saying it." Luke took his cap off and wiped his forehead. "You know what I miss? Not the games. Not the stadiums. This." He gestured at the field, the kids, the bucket of balls on the mound. "Standing on a field with somebody who loves it as much as I do."
Beck didn't answer. He didn't need to.
They ran one more station. When it was done, Beck gathered the kids in a half circle and asked if anyone had questions. He answered a few. Routines. BP. Sliders versus changeups.
Then a kid in the back raised his hand. Tall, lanky, jersey said COLLINS. He glanced at the kid next to him. His ears were red.
"So this is probably a stupid question."
"No such thing," Beck said.
Collins scanned his teammates.
"Is there any way we can talk you guys into having a home run derby?"
Twenty-one kids erupted. The noise bounced off the backstop and the dugout and Beck looked at Luke and Luke's eyes were already on him, the grin forming, starting in his eyes, taking its time.
"Boys," Luke said. He held his hands up. "That would be a lot of fun. But I'm an old man nowadays."
"You just turned thirty-seven!" someone yelled. "You could still be playing!"
"Well, maybe. But what I'm really saying is I don't have a chance against this dude." Luke turned to Beck. "But we'll do this. I'll throw him some BP." He turned back to the kids. "Who wants to see Beck crush some balls?"
Luke carried the bucket to the mound. He pulled a ball out, turned it once, reading the seams out of habit. His eyes went to Beck.
Beck stepped into the left-handed box.
Luke threw. Belt-high, middle of the plate. Beck's hands moved and the ball cleared the left field fence by thirty feet and landed somewhere in the parking lot.
Twenty-two voices screamed.
Luke threw another. Beck drove it to the opposite field gap, the ball still climbing as it cleared the fence.
Another. Pull side, a rocket that hit the scoreboard on one bounce and a kid yelled "HE HIT THE SCOREBOARD" and the kid next to him yelled "HE brOKE THE SCOREBOARD" and Luke was laughing on the mound and Beck was laughing in the box.
He switched to the right side. Luke didn't miss a beat. The ball went to right-center, deep.
Luke threw and Beck hit and the bucket got lighter and the noise got louder and somewhere in the middle of it Beck stopped thinking again.
The Braves and the workout and the rental and the empty house and the text he'd read four hundred times.
All of it left. He was just hitting. The game was giving him back the thing the game always gave him when he let it.
Luke threw the last ball. Beck turned on it and hit it farther than any of the others, a towering fly that carried over the fence and the trees and disappeared. Luke dropped the bucket and pointed at Beck with both hands. Beck tipped his cap.
He was smiling. He didn't know when it had started. It was just there. On his face, in the looseness of his shoulders, in the hands still warm from the bat.
His eyes went to Luke on the mound. Luke was smiling back. Sixty feet apart on a high school field in Marietta, Georgia, grinning at each other like they were twenty-three years old and the ball was still the point.
Then he noticed Addison.
She was at the fence along the first base side. Blazer over her arm. Phone in her hand. He didn't know how long she'd been standing there. She was watching them, and as he turned toward her she lifted the phone and held it steady, her thumb on the screen, her eyes on Beck and Luke and the field.
She lowered the phone. Her eyes went to the screen. Her thumbs moved.
Beck turned back to Luke. The kids surrounded him. Collins waited until the others had gone and then stepped forward and shook Beck's hand with both of his.
"Thank you," he said. "That was the best day of my life."
"Mine too, kid," Beck said.
He meant it.
The lot emptied. Williams said the field was theirs as long as they wanted it. Then he drove away and the field was quiet.
Beck walked to the mound. He picked up the last ball from the bucket. He turned it in his hand. The seams were raised and familiar under his fingers, the geometry of a baseball unchanged since he was six years old.
He put the ball in his pocket. He walked to the car.