“The day came, and I packed the car. Maybe I would have gone. Maybe I would have chickened out, I guess.”
“You would’ve gone.”
“I hope so,” she said, and even though she knew she was imagining it, it felt like the sound of those words bounced around the truck. “I keep having plans. I thought I was going to marry this guy and be happy and be done with everything that was hard by the time I was twenty-five. And then I thought I was going to pack all my stuff and get in my car and get a divorce. Go back to my maiden name and get a job and live in some little house in the mountains, and it’s just…nothing turned out.”
“Well, that part sounds familiar to me.”
“Now I’m on Evvie Drake, take three.”
“You think you’ll ever change your name back?”
“I can’t, really.”
“Of course you can,” he said, frowning.
She raised her eyebrows. “Give back the name of my husband who’s going to wind up with a wing at the clinic named after him if his mother has anything to say about it? Tell his parents I don’t want it anymore? I don’t think that would go over very well.”
“So you’re going to drag around his name for the next fifty years so nobody gets their feelings hurt?”
“Eh. Maybe. I don’t know.” Evvie’s fingers went reflexively to her pocket, to the ridge where her rings pushed up against the fabric from inside. “It’s only the first day.”
“Of what?” he asked.
“You know,” she said. “Whatever.”
IN EARLY JUNE, EVVIE WAS putting off making dinner and reading a diary from a 1912 textile strike in Massachusetts when she heard Dean’s truck pull into the driveway. She kept the book open and kept her eyes pointed straight at it, but really, she waited to hear his key in the door. She knew how long it should take, the way you know how long someone who goes underwater should take to come to the surface, and when she didn’t hear anything, she went to the window and looked out. He was sitting in the truck, both hands on the wheel. She watched him sit very still until she felt more self-conscious watching than she would barging in on his reverie, and she finally stepped out the door into the dry, warm early summer.
Coming up to the truck, she tried not to wonder what was wrong. Someone died. Someone called. He met someone else. He’s leaving. Whatever it was, I broke it. As she came up to the window, he looked over and saw her, and he motioned for her to come around the other side. When she slid into the front seat next to him, she could see that his face wasn’t in a state of traumatized paralysis. It was in a state, instead, of uncomplicated disbelief. “What’s going on?” she asked, pulling the passenger door shut.
“Do you remember I told you about my buddy Dante, who was so jealous that I had the pinball machine?”
“With the two girlfriends?”
“Yeah.”
“Sure.”
“He texted me today, right before I left school.”
Dante played for the Phillies now, she was pretty sure. Or the Nationals. Their uniforms were similar. “What did he say?”
Dean kept his voice even. “Well, their pitching coach is Alex Laramie, who used to be with the Yankees. And Dante said that Alex saw the tape of me at the Spring Dance and I should call him.” Finally, Dean looked over at her.
“And?”
He looked straight ahead. His hands hadn’t come off the steering wheel. “And so I called Alex. He wants me to come down to a facility they have in Connecticut. They’ve had a couple of injuries, they’re feeling a little desperate, and he’s trying to figure out if there’s anything to, you know, pursue. With me.”
“You mean he wants to know whether you can pitch. He wants to give you a chance to pitch. Major league baseball. To major league baseball players.”
“Evvie, it’s just to see. He wants to see how I look, bring some of the other coaches, see what the situation is.”
“I know what the situation is,” she said, poking him in the side. “The situation is that you’re going to pitch again. Which, I want to point out, I always knew you would.”
“You did, huh.” He finally took his hands off the wheel and put them on the back of his head. “That’s interesting, because I’m fuckin’ shocked.”