I was the one who found her. I later wondered if it was planned, my discovery of Tiffany. If so, it was brilliantly effective. I’d paid attention to the deaths before; we’d met with investigators, donated money to memorial funds, made personal calls to parents. But her death, at least for me, changed everything. After her, the deaths ruled my life. There was no way to avoid a dead girl. No way to forget the blank stare of her eyes, the open gape of her mouth. I still see her face in my nightmares. I still can hear the scrape of gravel as I skidded to a stop in front of her body.
She was on the edge of our Hamptons’ property, on the service road that led to our back gate. Her body was on its side, as if it’d been kicked from a moving car, no care made to lay her flat, her arms at an unnatural angle. She’d been more than a fan. She’d been a member of our staff, a Human Resources’ admin, her face familiar to me.
Titan and I had come around a curve, his ears up, stance alert, and we’d almost stepped on her. I’d known, as soon as I’d seen her, that it was a message—one screamed through blonde hair and the dust of our property on her face.
In that moment, I understood Tobey’s nausea. I understood his panic. I felt the pressure, the breath of this psycho on the back of my sweaty neck. Whoever the madman was, he had my attention. And from that moment on, he had all of my focus. We needed to win. The NYPD needed to step up its fucking game.
Time was ticking, and everything amped up. Our recruiting. Our training. Our pressure. Tobey changed, retreating into himself, short with everyone but me, his obsession with winning almost manic in its focus. And that day, I became the same way.
79
“Hot Dog Day can’t come before Hoodie Day!” Mitch Addenheim, one of our senior marketers, slammed his fist on the table like he was preparing for war. I stifled a yawn and drew my best impression of Mitch’s hot dog on the edge of my agenda. It wasn’t impressive. “I’ve got suppliers already lined up and committed, plus the calendar magnets printed.”
I glanced at my watch as discreetly as possible, tuning out the argument between Mitch and the others, an issue with our hoodie manufacturer creating a mini-crisis of sorts. It was just after eleven. Forty minutes of hoodie discussions and I was over it. I cleared my throat and Mitch stopped mid-sentence.
“Keep the current scheduling. We’ll hand out the hoodies that we have and issue vouchers for the rest. It’ll give them an excuse to come back to another game.” I waited a half-moment; no objections presented, and moved on. “What’s next? Kirsten?”
The blonde stood, taking over, and I flipped the agenda over, skimming the remaining topics, my mind struggling to stay on point. Three days since I had seen Chase on the field. I hadn’t gone back, the last two nights restless, my legs twitching, my eyes darting to the clock as each grew later. Titan had laid by the back door, too well trained to whine, his eyes following me every time I stood. Normally, during a home week, I was there every night. But not this week. Half of it was self-punishment. The other half? Self-preservation.
I was in hell. Going crazy with thoughts of him, with the anticipation. I couldn’t pull through the stadium gates without searching the cars, wondering if his was there. I sweated through games in the skybox, every glance at him torture, his eyes up, on our box, the contact so frequent that I both dreaded and expected Tobey’s mention of it. A mention that never came, the observation missed, everyone oblivious to what was being screamed, at top volume, for all the world to hear.
I thought women enjoyed affairs. I thought they got sparks of pleasure at the buzz of their phone, thought they ran around with a glow, their world suddenly on fire with new love. I thought they were women with terrible husbands and unhappy lives, an affair the first step in an eventual ending of their marriage. I thought that they were horrible, selfish women. I never thought that I would be one of them. I never thought that I’d be so weak. It turned out being the perfect wife was only easy when there was no temptation, no mistake haunting and overshadowing your marriage.
I loved Tobey. Another man shouldn’t be able to tempt you when you loved your husband. But love felt like a flat emotion with Tobey, something that had grown with time, a winding of two lives, built on a foundation of friendship and respect. I was attracted to him. We had sex, a more active life than most couples. We had all of those building blocks that make a marriage strong … yet one touch from Chase, and I’d crumbled. One moment of eye contact and I’d broken. One hour of throwing a ball with him and I’d been ready to pack up everything and leave my husband.
What kind of woman was I?
What kind of love did that?
Regardless of the reasons, or of my justifications, this entire situation was wrong. It was a black hole, each day with Tobey pushing me deeper, my claw to the surface, to the maintenance of my marriage, getting harder and harder.
I had to go to the fields that night. Not to see him, but just for a breather. I was a drowning woman, and needed my field, my grass, my dirt. I needed to pound up a flight of stadium stairs and stand in front of an eighty-mile per hour pitching machine. I needed a release, or else I just might go crazy.
80