Page 85 of Everything All at Once

He took a few steps back, and I brought the bat up, settling it on my shoulder, holding it like my mom had shown me. Abe hated sports (besides croquet). I had always humored her.

“Hey, batter, batter,” Sam said, but his mouth had settled into something like a frown. I watched his gaze drift over toward the view; it was a perfectly cloudless day, and I could see practically forever. And just the way his face looked, the way his gaze went on but never settled on anything, the way he carried around this enormous invisibleweight I couldn’t pinpoint, how he’d found me at my aunt’s party, how his eyes grew so dark every time I said her name.

“It’s you, isn’t it?” I said suddenly, and I didn’t know what made me say it, I didn’t even know where it had come from except here I was, getting ready to go through with another one of Aunt Helen’s weird requests, my knuckles turning white from gripping the bat so hard, my heart beating a jackhammer’s rhythm against my rib cage as it occurred to me that yes, obviously, of course—it was him.

“What?” he said, freezing, pausing, a moment in time.

“What’s your last name? You never told me your last name,” I said, but I already knew it, as clearly as he was standing in front of me I knew that his name was Sam Williams, Mr. Williams, and that my aunt had left something to him in her will and even dedicated her last book to him: S.W.

He came unfrozen gradually, in slow motion, thawing out, his cheeks flushing pink. He held the figurine in his hands, cupping it carefully. His thumb was on the boy’s head. Alvin. “Williams,” he said, in the softest possible voice.

“You knew her,” I said.

“I told you, I took her class.”

“No,” I clarified. “Youknewher.”

“I can explain.”

“She dedicated the book to you.”

“We were friends,” he said.

“She left you something in her will.”

“She... did?”

“Mr. Williams,” I said.

“I didn’t know,” he said.

“And you were friends.”

“We were friends. I’ve known your aunt for a long time.”

“How could you have known her for ‘a long time’? You only audited her class. That’s one semester.”

“It’s complicated, Lottie.”

“I’m so tired of this cryptic thing with you,” I said, and my words came out harder than I’d meant them to, but once they were out I realized that my pulse was racing and my entire body felt hot and itchy with anger. “I’m so tired of it. With you, with Aunt Helen... These letters, these secrets. Why won’t anybody just be honest with me?”

“I can’t.... You have to trust me,” Sam said.

“I don’t have to do anything. I’ve only known you for a couple weeks; I don’t have to trust you. You have toearnsomeone’s trust. If you had known my aunt, you should have told me.”

“I tried, I swear—it’s just not that easy.”

“So tell me now. Go on. I’m all ears.”

I wanted to scream; I wanted to explode; I wanted to know whatever it was that Sam wasn’t telling me.

But he didn’t say anything. He squeezed the figurinehard in his hands; his knuckles turned white and his face was unreadable, completely devoid of emotion.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Pretty sick of hearing people tell me they’re sorry. That won’t bring Aunt Helen back, and it won’t excuse you for lying. Now throw it.”

I raised the bat back up and squeezed my hands around it, lining my knuckles up like my mother had shown me.