He said, “We’ve crossed paths before, I think. Out on the river trail.”
Laura tilted her head. “Right. You’re the runner.” She seemed to blush when she said it. Perhaps because she didn’t want to talk about the bones. She let go of his hand and pointed at his arm in the sling. “You’re having a bad day.”
“Lost a fight with a ladder,” he said.
“Ladders. Sneaky sons of bitches.”
He laughed. He nodded at the field. “Hey, thanks for doing all this. I’m sure you’re busy.”
She shrugged. “Busy’s good. I like busy.”
“I haven’t seen you out lately. Walking.”
“No,” she said, looking down. She tapped the tips of her tennis shoes together.
He said, “Are you coming tonight? To the orchard?”
“The memorial? Oh, I don’t think so. I didn’t know her,” she said. “I’d feel out of place.”
“I always feel out of place,” he said, “and I’m from here.”
She smiled. “I actually would like to pay my respects to Maud. She’s a great lady. The first one here to welcome me.” She pulled on her ponytail. “It’s been very strange. A lot of people know who I am, but I barely know anyone.”
“I can introduce you. If I don’t know them, my mom will.”
“Thanks. Maybe. It’d be nice to know people. It’s been a long summer.” She pulled a baseball from her shorts pocket and gripped it in her right hand. She threw the ball, hard. It went all the way to the right-field fence.
He whistled. “Good arm, Coach D.”
She grinned and pointed at the field. “Looks like we’re the last ones standing.”
Sean sat on the pitcher’s mound, alone, burying orange slices in the dirt at his feet. “I should get going,” Paul said.
“Me, too.” She nodded. “It was nice to meet you. See you later. Or next practice.”
“You bet,” he said.
He watched Laura Drennan walk toward the neighborhood behind the fields, her ponytail swinging between her shoulder blades. He called to Sean, who jumped up and ran at him, his knees and hands brown with dirt. Forgetting his shoulder, he swung the boy up in his arms. He cringed, biting at the pain, but he didn’t set him down. He shifted Sean’s weight, smelling oranges. He tightened his grip.
“You did great,” Paul said. “You played like a million bucks.”
*
Laura Drennan walked home. She walked through the metal gate, trailing her fingers on the latch. She walked, and her stomach growled, and she thought of the leftover burrito in her fridge. She thought of the quizzes she needed to grade, the prep she needed to finish. She walked across the bridge and down the gravel path that led to the streets of her neighborhood; she walked the same path to and from the college on her teaching days, too. She walked, and she said the street names in her head before she reached them. She knew them now without looking. She knew her students’ names, too, here with classes a month in. She knew her new colleagues’ names, the names of campus buildings, the names of the mountains, the names of trees. She knew the name of her mail carrier and the name of her mail carrier’s daughter, the girl whose bones she’d found in the wash. She knew the name of the woman who served her pastries at the bakery. She knew the names of her T-ball kids. She knew the names of the T-ball parents. She knew that father back on the field was the runner with the sexy legs on the river trail. She knew the woman at the auto shop and her chatty wife—look, there they went now in their cool vintage car, their teenage girl at the wheel. Laura waved, and they waved back.
Before Laura reached the street, she turned and looked behind her. The grass of the fields rippled in the gentle wind. Paul Overton, his arm in a sling, carried his son across the gravel parking lot. She turned and kept walking. She smiled. It was almost fall, she was coaching Little League, and the sun was shining on her face. When her feet hit the pavement, she gave a little skip. Skipping. What a childish thing to do. What was next, hopscotch? Hush up, you, she told herself. Just be among the goddamn living. She skipped, the soles of her tennis shoes scuffing the pavement, until her breath came hard and fast, heavy in her ears. She skipped all the way home.
*
From the passenger side of the Impala, Rose said, “Ten and two, Hazel. Stop slouching.”
Hazel shifted her hands on the wheel. “I’m not slouching. These seats are slippery.”
Angie sat in the middle of the back seat, offering advice and directions. Hazel was a good driver, attentive, cautious, defensive. Better than Rose, that was for sure, who’d always been a lead foot and a talker at the same time. A damn sight better than Beto, god love him. Hazel’s personality probably came from her father, though Angie had never met him, so she couldn’t say for sure. She didn’t know much about those two years after Rose had called off their secret relationship, their clandestine trips to the motel, to the alleys of Jerome, to the desert pullouts outside of town, atop the slag heap behind the fairgrounds with the sharp ore cutting into their skin. She only knew Rose finally came home—with Hazel.
Rose turned around to Angie in the back seat.
“I said to her, I said, Stevie, where is this coming from? Why do you suddenly want to go to Paris?”
“Watch this corner, Hazel,” Angie said. “People speed here.”
Hazel said, “Got it.” She slowed down, looking both ways.
Rose slapped the dash. “She bought a one-way ticket. Got right on the Internet and ordered it up. Says she’ll be home in a few months. I swear to God. I swear to God. Mom’s about to have kittens.”
Hazel said, “I think Aunt Stevie is smarter than everyone gives her credit for.”
“I agree,” Angie said.
“I’m not saying she isn’t smart. That motel is the tightest ship in town. But there’s smart, and then there’s prepared. There’s smart, and there’s—whatever it is she does. My sister wandering the streets of Paris, having one of her space-outs. How’s that going to go?”
“Fine,” Angie said. “It will go fine.”
“What if it’s not? I mean, what if we never hear from her again?”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“It happens,” Rose said. She was suddenly near tears. “You know it does. We all know that. Look at Jess.”
Hazel braked at the stop sign on Arrowhead. “Which way? Right or left?”
“Left,” Angie said. “Then take a right on Main.”
“Where are we going?” Hazel said.
“Not Paris!” Rose folded her arms.
Angie laughed. “It’s a surprise,” she said. “I was going to show you after the service tonight, but let’s go now.”
“A surprise?” Hazel and Rose said together.
“Jinx, you owe me a Coke,” Hazel said, grinning at her mother. She reached over and punched Rose gently on the arm.
Rose reacted in mock pain and then tucked a piece of Hazel’s hair behind her ear. “Watch the road,” she said.
“I am.”
Nearing the Woodchute on Main, Angie said, “Turn left here.”
“Here? The motel?”
“Yep.”