She shrugged. “I didn’t say it was going to make you feel better. But what should make you feel better is that you get to keep every good day you had playing.” She put her hand on his elbow. “And whether you ever pick up another baseball as long as you live, we’re not going to be any less proud of you than we were when they took that picture.” She looked at her watch. “Now, I’m going to serve dinner in about five minutes. Don’t make me come back and drag you out.”
“I’ll be there,” he said, leaning down to kiss her on the cheek. “Thank you, Mom.”
* * *
—
At the table, Stuart got right to the point. “You hear anything from Evvie these days?”
Angie shook her head. “Stuart, I thought we were going to work up to that. Is this working up to it?”
Stuart shrugged. “I’m up to it.”
Dean spooned potatoes onto his plate. “I get a text from her here and there. But not really. That…ended.”
“Well, that’s dumb.”
“Stuart,” Angie said again. “Maybe take it easy?”
“You don’t think it’s dumb?”
“I didn’t say that.”
Dean buttered a piece of bread. “Well, Dad, the head case stuff, she couldn’t get used to. She pushed and pushed and pushed for me to try to get back into pitching, and when it didn’t work out, she pretty much invited me to leave.”
“I didn’t realize she cared that much about baseball,” Angie said.
“Yeah, I gotta say that doesn’t sound right,” Stuart agreed.
“Believe me, she was pretty relentless,” Dean told them. “It was like you guys with All-Star Camp all over again.”
Angie and Stuart looked at each other. “Now, wait a minute,” Angie said. “Tell me how you think you got to All-Star Camp.”
“You guys badgered me until I agreed to go.”
Dean’s mother gave this contemptuous “Ha!” and his father, simultaneously, said, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“What?”
Stuart speared a piece of chicken. “You’re remembering that wrong, pal.”
“How? What’s your version?”
“You brought home that brochure, said you’d been invited, but it was pretty clear it was going to be hard work with a lot of guys you didn’t know. It seemed like it spooked you. You told me and Mom you didn’t want to do it. We said, ‘Are you sure?’ You said yes. Next day, that brochure’s on the table again. We ask you again, ‘Well, now, do you want to do this, Dean-o?’ ‘No, no, I don’t want to.’ ”
“You were adamant,” Angie added.
“But the thing keeps showing up. Every time you walk off with it saying you don’t want to go, it shows up again. I told your mother, ‘Angie, either Dean wants to go to this or we’ve got a ghost that wants him to.’ ”
Angie laughed. “You did, I forgot that.”
“So the next day, you come home and you say, ‘You know what I found out today, Dad? I found out Teddy’s going to that All-Star Camp.’ And that’s when I said, you know, ‘Go. You’re going.’ ‘Badgered’ you, for goodness’ sake.”
Dean frowned. “That’s bizarre. I don’t remember doing that at all.”
“You know I’d tell you if your dad was fantasizing,” Angie said. “But that’s the way I remember it, too. You dropped hints. And more hints. And even more hints. I think we were invited to badger you.”
“What,” Stuart said, “did you leave a bunch of brochures lying around for Evvie, too?”
Dean was quiet for a minute. “Dammit.”
ON THE LAST FRIDAY IN March, just before eleven in the morning, Evvie took the quick drive into Calcasset with a white box next to her on the passenger seat, addressed to Dean in New York. She pulled up to the curb near the post office and climbed out with the box in her arms. The sun was not fully out, but it was trying, and a gull soared over her, cawing. Just as she neared the doors, they swung open, and Dr. Paul Schramm came through them, with a huge pile of mail rubber-banded together. He’d finally retired, and now and then, Evvie’s dad would tell her something he’d heard about where the Schramms were, where their postcards back to friends were coming from. “Eveleth, hello!” he said.
“Hi, Dr. Schramm.” She shifted the package under her arm. “That’s a lot of letters you’ve got there.”