“Don’t worry about it. I’m happy to help with Sean.”
“I don’t know how you did it then.” He shook his head.
She smiled. “I had you.”
He smiled and rubbed her head. He walked toward the house, pressing at his shoulder. The rest of him was healthy. Tall, with those long, muscular legs, like Beau’s. His head shone in the morning sun, his big ears jutting out. She touched her own head, tugged at the short tufts. Maybe she wouldn’t cut it today. Leave the clippers in the drawer. Maybe she’d let it go for a while, see what happened.
She straightened a chair, reattached a wire to a nail, and reached down to yank out a tuft of rattlesnake weed that had snuck up through the planks. She turned and looked at the orchard, at the cool shaded rows. She’d looked at this her entire adult life. Come next fall, it wouldn’t be hers anymore. She’d have to find a new view.
She hadn’t told Paul, or Esther, or anyone. Except Beau. She told him, out on the deck, late at night in one of her talks. Buster, it’s happening. She told him this winter would be her final Sundown nights. Told him she was going to buy a little cottage near the Syc, with a guest room for Sean. After so much land, so much space, the thought of smallness appealed to her. Told him she was going to college. Her. Ha. Told him she had no idea what she was going to study. She’d take whatever struck her. She’d be undecided for a while.
Oh, of course she was going to miss it. Like hell. Like she missed him. But she was doing it anyway, because goddamn, buster. This life. She didn’t know how much of it she had left.
The trees were ripe, she told him. They were almost there.
*
On the way to the ball fields, Paul glanced in the rearview at Sean buckled in the back, a small leather baseball glove on his right hand. The glove was too stiff. They needed to break it in. Paul wondered where his old glove had ended up; he’d have to remember to ask his mother. Probably somewhere in a closet, and he thought of his own closet down south full of Caryn’s clothes, and he thought he smelled vanilla. His son’s knees and elbows had healed, the skin pink but scab-free. Sean stared out the window, growing glassy-eyed as he often did in the car. The drive was short, but Sean would zonk out within minutes, so Paul asked him questions to keep him awake. Asked about his new preschool, about baseball, about the lizard he’d seen that morning. In the rearview, Paul caught a glimpse of his own collar. It was smudged with black. He rubbed at the mark.
She’d looked exactly the same. That had been his first thought. Like time had stood still. Sleeker, more modern than he expected. Her dark hair was shorter now, curved in a bob around her pointy chin, contacts instead of glasses. She’d lined her eyes with kohl with an elaborate swoop at the corner. When she smiled, he could see the crow’s feet, the vertical creases in her cheek. Otherwise, the same.
“Dani, you look great,” he’d told her. “Exactly the same.”
“You too,” she said, smiling. They chatted about how long it had been, about the weather. She pointed at Sean and said, “Oh, wow. He looks just like you.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Check out those ears. Poor guy.”
Her smile faded. Without warning, she’d started to cry. She took three steps, closed the space between them, and hugged him. Closed the gap, the literal one, and the festering one. She wrapped both arms around his ribs, squeezing. His shoulder protested, but he didn’t move. He stood still, silent, and everyone else fell silent, too, watching them. She stood on her tiptoes, pulling at his good shoulder, and he bent down.
“I’m sorry about your wife, Paul,” she said into his ear. “I really am.”
“Thank you,” he said. He lifted his good arm and put it around her. “I’m sorry, too. Me, too.”
They stood there on the edge of the orchard, on the edge of their past lives. He held her, and he could feel her shake, and he shook too. Since Caryn died, he hadn’t hugged even his mother this way, only Sean. Dani Newell, his first love whose heart he’d broken, leaving her retching her Thanksgiving dinner on the carpet. And here they stood, in the orchard again, bound by time and memory and all the things they’d once said, and the things they hadn’t known to say. I love you, they’d once said. God, I love you so much, they’d said, over and over, and they had meant it, their bodies joined under the naked sky. They hadn’t known any better then. They hadn’t known anything yet.
At the ball fields, Paul unbuckled Sean’s belt with his good hand. He bent down and checked his reflection in the side mirror. His eyes were puffy, a bit red, but he looked okay. He could use a shave, but oh well. He greeted the other parents, some of whom he knew from high school—there was Warren Smith, Smitty, his track mate, now plump around the middle and holding his chubby son’s hand. He said to Paul, Good to see you, good to see you. He whacked Paul on the back with a meaty paw.
Paul met Sean’s T-ball coach, Coach D, who’d been sending e-mail introductions and reminders. He hadn’t realized D stood for Drennan, and she was the woman he’d seen walking on the trails. The woman who’d found the bones. The new professor at the Syc. Coach Laura Drennan.
Laura gathered her young charges while Paul and the other parents lingered behind the fence. She squatted at eye level and spoke in a loud, cheerful voice. “We’re going to learn so much about baseball and sportsmanship, but your number-one job is to have fun, okay? Do you think we can do that? Let me hear you.”
The girls and boys cheered, hopping up and down. The kids took turns swinging wildly at a Wiffle ball on a post, and Coach D helped them choke up on the bat, showed them how to stand at the plate. Eye on the ball, she said. She clapped at every single swing. When Sean got up to bat, he turned and looked for Paul. Paul waved, his eyes filling. His first milestone without Caryn. Sean connected, and the plastic ball dribbled toward the mound. Paul yelled, “Go, buddy, go!” But Sean took off for third instead of first, hopping on the bag with both feet. Everyone cheered anyway, and Coach D guided him over to first.
After the game, while the kids sucked on orange slices and juice boxes, Coach D handed out schedules and snack rotation lists to the parents. Paul thought she looked different, though he couldn’t pinpoint why. Calmer, maybe. More open. Out on the trails, she’d struck him as one step away from falling down.
Someone asked how she was settling in at the Syc.
“Great!” she said, still in her coach voice. “Keeping busy.” She clapped. “Okay! See you next Wednesday night for practice!”
While the parents gathered up their kids, Paul lingered as Sean stood with another boy at the pitcher’s mound, throwing rocks toward home plate. He introduced himself to Coach Laura, sticking out his good hand to shake hers. She had a strong grip.