“What?” There was glass between us. Dirty glass, fogged at the top, a few greasy handprints scattered over its surface. He peered at me and waited.
“You wanted Tobey and I to be together—that’s why you did all of it, right?” He said nothing, and I pressed forward. “But then you were going to kill me. Which would have meant that we wouldn’t be together. It would have defeated the entire purpose.”
I don’t know how I never saw his crazy before. Maybe I just hadn’t known where to look. Didn’t know that the slow tilt of his head meant that he was turning over a lie in his head before he spoke it. Or that he smiled when I said something that angered him, and he frowned when he was thinking. Now, he smiled, but it was a sad one. An almost genuine one.
“I read an article about you and Stern. A nice piece actually. Vanity Fair, I believe.”
I nodded. The only interview I had done, one published just last week. An interview where I had bared my soul, my first time speaking aloud the thoughts, the dreams, the feelings that I’d hidden for so long. The piece had been my confession, and the only time I would speak publicly on any of it. After that, should the fans hate me, so be it. But at least they would know the how. The when. The why.
“The last line of it. Powerful stuff.” He saw my confusion and leaned forward, so close that his breath fogged the glass. “Our love … I knew I would never find another like it. I had to protect it. I had to respect it. Even if it hurt Tobey. Even if it hurt the fans. Even if it meant leaving everything that I knew. I had to choose him. And I’d make the same decision now, even if he didn’t love me back. Because next to it, anything else was a lie. And anything else wasn’t fair to either of us.”
“I meant it. I love Chase. And I never felt—”
“I know you didn’t.” He cut me off, his head shaking but staying in place, close to the glass, his fingers biting into the table. I glanced at those fingers, the same ones that had held the knife to my skin, the same ones that had wrapped around my throat and squeezed.
“Then …” I flicked my eyes back, suddenly understanding.
“I thought he was happy with you.” He said softly, and there was madness in those eyes. Love does that to a person. I understood that, on a much milder scale. “I’d wanted him to be happy. And I thought you were worthy of him.”
“Until I wasn’t.”
He smiled, a slow one that showed a piece of food stuffed near an incisor. I couldn’t believe that this was the man, the one who terrorized our lives, our team, our city. This man who settled back into his plastic chair, scratching at a place on his neck.
“I don’t understand.” Tracy tilted her head, her pen tapping at the edge of her notepad, toes curling into the brown cork of her sandals.
“Despite the ten-year age difference, despite Dan’s ex-wife, we never saw it. We had simply appreciated his undying loyalty to the Yankees. But it wasn’t about them.” I paused, weighing the words in my mind before using them. “He loved Tobey. That’s why he did it all.”
So simple. And so heartbreakingly stupid.
I glanced at the clock, then at her face, three minutes left in this examination of my sanity. “I don’t think I’ll see him again. I think I’m done.”
It’s odd that I chose that day to make that decision. Even as I said it, I wasn’t sure it was final. I had some perverse need to stare at him, locked in that prison, on the other side of that glass. But, I never had another opportunity to. That night, Dan Velacruz hung himself in his cell.
115
Four Years Later
I’m a Texas Ranger now. I wear red and navy, drive a pickup truck, and run with Titan through horse pastures across our ranch. We have two goats and four horses to keep him company, all but one named after baseball players. Moonshot is the exception. Chase spent a month tracking him down, following racetrack records and stud channels until he found him, retired from a sad career and studded out. He flew him to Dallas with some romantic notion that I’d care. I did. I almost fell out of the truck when we pulled up to the ranch, and I saw him trot across the field.
Right now, at nine o’clock on a Friday night, I’m in Globe Life Park in Arlington—Section 34, Row A, Seats 1-5—and that’s our home, the seats right next to the dugout, close enough that I can hang over the side and pretend, for a brief moment, I’m in it. Close enough that my husband can look over and catch me when I try to sneak our daughter a sip of my soda. Close enough that when I scream at the ump, he can hear my voice. Close enough that when my man rips a homerun, he can lean over the rail and get a kiss. He gets lots of kisses. And his team is keeping up, their record putting them in the standings for the American League Championship. Never mind that the Yankees are the other front-runner. We aren’t focusing on that right now.
We are focused on juggling life with a toddler. One hundred sixty-two games are a lot different with a two-year-old in hand. Dad and Carla sold the Alpine home and moved to Dallas. They have a ranch a half-mile away from ours, and keep Laura during most of the home games. The away games are still a work-in-progress. I now understand why Mom had stopped traveling with the team when I was born. My love for baseball is nothing compared to my child. Everything changed the moment she was born.
I avoid New York entirely. Haven’t set foot in Yankee Stadium since that last game. I don’t think I ever will. Partially out of respect for Tobey, and partially out of respect for my heart. I think it would be too hard for me. I’d rather my last memory of that field be that championship moment. I will always, secretly, be a Yankee, no matter whose colors I’m wearing.
My divorce with Tobey was quiet and quick, no child to fight over, no assets contested. I got Titan and my car. He offered more, a bulk settlement with alimony, but I refused. We had taken four years out of each other’s lives. Anything else was ridiculous.
He’s dating a supermodel now, one of those Victoria’s Secret Angels who wears million-dollar bras and blows kisses into cameras. She looks good in pinstripes, and in every photo I’ve seen of them, he looks happy.
Chase steps up to bat, and I stand, my daughter peeking up at me, her pink Converses sparkling as they jut out from her seat, not long enough to hang over the side. “Daddy up?” she asks.
“Yep.” I lean forward, watching, her attention returning to the coloring book before her, a big chubby marker awkwardly gripped in her hand, purple colored over half of the page.