Warning Track (Callahan Family #1) - Carrie Aarons Page 0,19
his mouth, and there are a boy and a girl pretending to water fake flowers with a plastic gardening set.
On the other wall, some of the wives chat with each other as they snack from the buffet, there are players’ parents milling about getting to know one and other, and the whole space just feels so much more alive than the tenseness of the executive box I came from.
I greet a few of them, stopping to chat with a trio of wives who have been with the club for a while, and they ask me about attending one of their soup kitchen nights at a shelter the town over. Of course, I agree, I like to volunteer on whatever charity event they’re putting together.
Shane Giraldi’s wife, Hannah, stands by a table full of meats, cheeses, and crackers, bounces her toddler on her hip. She looks thinner than the last time I saw her, and there are visible bags under her eyes, even from where I stand.
I make my way over there, hoping she’ll let me take her younger daughter so she can have a break.
“Hannah, how are you?” I smile kindly.
Her eyes flit to the field, as if she’s anxious she’ll miss something. “Oh, Colleen, I’m good. Thanks.”
She doesn’t ask how I am, but that’s okay. She seems to be lost in her own thoughts, and I coo at the little girl she’s rocking. With big blue eyes and dark black hair, she’s the spitting image of her mother. Somewhere in this room is the Giraldi’s other daughter, who I think must be about five now.
“Can I take her for a minute? She’s just so cute, and I need my baby fix once in a while.” Make it about me so she doesn’t feel like this is a helping hand.
Reluctantly, she hands the toddler over. “Thanks, she’s getting so heavy.”
I tickle under the girl’s chin, and she giggles into the crook of my neck. “We don’t mind, do we?”
As Hannah is pulling her arm back, her jean jacket rides up, and I see an ugly bruise on her wrist. It’s aging, that yellow and green kind, and about the size of a silver dollar. Her eyes latch onto it, and she sees me see it. My breath catches in my throat, because she snatches the material of her jacket down too quickly. It’s too hasty not to be suspect, and seeing a bruise that size on a woman … it means something.
“Hannah, are you okay?” I try to stress the worry in my voice without actually asking the real question.
I have no kind of training for this, other than trying to be a compassionate person for someone who is clearly going to spook easily. And here, I have her toddler on my hip, while I look at her mother’s skin turning purple as she hides it under her clothes.
“I’m fine.” She shrugs nervously, smiling, but the expression is off, slanting too much to look genuine.
Shane is a grade A asshole, everyone in the organization knows that. But he’s a hell of a third baseman and he works hard, so we all put up with his showboat attitude and sometimes questionable off the field antics. This, though … this is extremely serious.
I remember when I was interning here my junior year of college, there was a video that came out of a player smacking his girlfriend around outside a night club. She ended up with a broken jaw, and the Pistons suspended him immediately. The case never went to trial, because she refused to press charges, but the league stepped in and did what it could. They suspended him for the rest of the season, and we dropped him. Ate his contract in our budget, and he’s never played professional baseball again.
“If there is something going on—”
Before I can even get the words out, Hannah’s eyes go angry, and she shuts me down with her expression alone. She snatches the little girl out of my arms.
“Everything is fine, just some sleepless nights with this one. Now, I need to go watch Shane play.”
And she walks off, avoiding me entirely. Now that I think about it, this is a drastic change from the Hannah I dealt with a couple of years ago. Some would even say we’d formed a loose friendship back then. She would show up to all the charity events, help immensely, and put in overtime to make all the new wives feel welcome. Hannah was a pillar of our