He laughed. “I love you.”
“I love you too. Keep me posted.”
“I will.”
I ended the call and tossed the phone onto the bed. Five minutes later, jeans and a henley on, I laced up my boots, grabbed a leather jacket, and jogged down the staircase, smiling at Paula, who held out my coffee and a bag with breakfast. “Thanks.”
Our elevator was waiting, and I had, in the quiet of the ride down, a moment to collect myself.
Margreta Grant—Tobey’s sister. A bottle blonde in the hospital for a procedure I strongly suspected to be another breast augmentation, but she was insisting otherwise. I should be in Tampa with the team, one of her socialite friends holding her hand through this harrowing experience, but it turned out fake friends sucked at real obligations, and sisters-in-law were expected to step up in their stead. I stepped out of the elevator, into the garage lobby, and nodded at the driver, taking a long pull of my coffee.
“Good morning, Mrs. Grant.”
“Morning, Frank. We’re picking up Caleb from school, then swinging by the hospital.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He opened my door, and I stepped into the warm car, tossing my bag onto the floorboard, my phone out and against my ear by the time we pulled onto the street.
Dad answered on the third ring, “Hey Ty.”
“Hey Dad. How’s Florida?”
“Terrible. Nothing but sunshine and bikinis.”
I laughed. “Stay there. New York hasn’t gotten the memo that summer is coming.”
“Surprised you guys haven’t flown south.”
“We’ll be in Aruba this weekend. I can defrost then.”
I opened the bag from Paula, pulling out a muffin, my phone put on speaker and set aside, conversation between us easy as I ate breakfast and tuned out the outside world. It wasn’t until Frank coughed that I realized we were at the school.
“Got to run, Dad. Drink something with an umbrella in it, and give Carla a hug for me.”
“Done and done.”
I ended the call, stuffing the rest of the muffin in the bag, and stepped out of the car and into the brisk wind, my walk into the school quick. Dad had retired two years ago, three weeks after summoning the courage to ask Carla to dinner. They’d married last year and bought a place in Key West, dividing their time between that home, and our old place in Alpine. It was strange, after so many years, the two of us against the world, that we were now separate, each with a spouse, each with our own lives. Part of me had been happy when he’d retired, the man deserving of a vacation, of a life outside of the strike zone. Another part of me had hated it. His job had been the last tie I’d had to the field. After he left, my relationship with the team as an old ball girl, as a teammate’s daughter… all that had died and I had moved fully into the role of Mrs. Grant. Mrs. Grant, who sat in the skybox. Mrs. Grant, who did “stuff” in the main office and wore suits and heels and was a stranger to everyone but the oldest uniforms on the team. The new guys were stiff, smiling politely and shaking my hand after games. They didn’t know me, and they didn’t care to. In the game of baseball, owners were the high maintenance afterthoughts, something I knew well, even if Tobey didn’t.
I stepped into the sophisticated interior of the prep school and saw Caleb, sitting miserably in a seat, his feet swinging dully, his eyes on the ground. I cleared my throat, and he looked up, his eyes lighting, sick legs working just fine in their sprint across the room, his small body colliding into my arms. “Aunt Ty!” he cheered.
“Hey buddy.” I squeezed him tightly and enjoyed, for one heart-breaking moment, the smell of little boy.
61
I lost the baby at five months. After four years, I still couldn’t talk about it without crying. Funny how something I hadn’t wanted, became the only thing I’d lived for.
I wouldn’t depress you with the details. One day I was pregnant, our nursery ready, plans and possibilities in place, the next I wasn’t.
I’d given up so much for that baby. And he never came.
JULY
“Ty practically bled Yankee blood already. She should have been ecstatic, marrying into the Grant family. But that first year of marriage, she wasn’t. She seemed shell-shocked. Almost like a trauma victim. She smiled, she said all of the right things, but there just wasn’t any light behind her eyes.”
Dan Velacruz, New York Times
62
“Tell me what I can do to make you happy.”
I rolled over onto his chest, and looked up at him. “Trade Perkins,” I said, without hesitation.
Tobey laughed. “That’s it? Your key to lifelong happiness?”
Lifelong happiness? A concept given up years ago. “He’s dead weight. His knee is shot,” I pointed out. “And he smokes. If he doesn’t care enough to quit, he doesn’t care enough about his job.”