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Ten minutes into their walk, Noah was still struggling to find the right words. Same problem he always had when they were younger and she brought up his family. But something told him Gracie wasn’t concerned about the right words. She simply wanted to hear his story. So after a deep breath, Noah started using the words he had, whether they were the right ones or not. “First thing I should probably tell you is I had another brother. Owen. He was younger than me. Died when he was eight.” Noah let the words hang in the late afternoon air, swirling and dipping, before a crisp breeze carried them away.

“Second thing I should probably tell you is my mom had an affair.” A flock of geese flew overhead. Gracie’s grip on his arm tightened, her gaze focused on the ground, thankfully not him. Some information just came out better without having to look someone in the eye.

“My dad had no idea it was going on. Of course, when you’re working sixty hours a week, how would you? Looking back, I wonder if my dad knew he even had five sons for a while. Poor Owen probably slipped out without him even realizing at first.”

He sighed, watching the geese until they disappeared from sight. “Part of me gets it. Why my dad wasn’t around much. Owen was born with some complicated health issues. So dad was working like crazy to cover the medical expenses. Equipment. Therapy. Even with insurance, I’m sure everything cost a ton. But when I say he was never around, I’m telling you he was never around. And since my mom’s entire world revolved around caring for Owen, it didn’t feel like she was around all that much either.”

Gracie squeezed closer to his side. He half hoped she’d speak up and say he didn’t need to keep going. But, of course, this would be the one time in her life she kept quiet and let him do all the talking.

“Things only got worse after Owen died. I can’t say his death came as a shock. We all knew it was coming for years. Even so, I can’t say any of us were ready for it. I mean, how can you ever be ready to lose someone you love? Doesn’t matter what your brain knows. Your heart’s just never ready. So we all took it hard. Dad completely disappeared for a while, and Mom couldn’t get out of bed. Eventually she did, but it was just to crawl in someone else’s bed. I guess having an affair felt better than missing Owen and trying to raise four rowdy boys on her own.”

“Noah, I am so sorry.”

He shrugged. “I don’t want you feeling sorry. I just want you to see why this isn’t my favorite topic. Definitely not something I want written down in a book for all the world to see.”

Bad enough telling Gracie in the privacy of the backwoods that ran the line of their property. But now that he’d started, may as well get it all out there.

“She died from a ruptured brain aneurysm. She was with the other guy when it happened.” Noah steadied Gracie as they passed some shallow roots from a tree. “By the time they got her to the hospital, there wasn’t anything they could do.”

“Is that how your dad found out about the affair?”

Noah nodded. “None of us boys knew the details, of course. Just that she’d collapsed. I knew my dad was acting weird, but...” Noah shrugged. “We’d lost Owen the year before. Now Mom had just died. We were all acting weird. Yeah, there were whispers at the time, but I was twelve. I had no idea what the whispers were about. Not until those whispers trickled from the adults down to the kids and became taunts at school.”

“I can only imagine what that must’ve been like for you and your brothers.”

“None of us handled it well, I’ll say that. I guess instead of losing himself in his job Dad decided to start losing himself in the bottle. And my brothers... well, you name it. Drinking. Skipping school. Starting fights. Even set a few fires. All three of them landed in juvie before their seventeenth birthday.”

“But not you?”

“See what a prize you landed yourself? The only Parker boy to stay out of juvie. No wonder you fell so hard for me.”

She gave him a nudge. “What kept you walking the straight and narrow?”

“I don’t know about straight and narrow, but there was one thing I had that my brothers didn’t have. And that was baseball.”

Gracie pretended to groan as she gave his arm another squeeze. “I should’ve known everything always comes back to baseball with you.”

“And charcuterie. Don’t forget that.”

“I only wish I could forget that,” she responded, offering a sweet smile. “So how did you get into baseball?”

“Found out I had a strong arm when I threw rocks to break out the windows at the old boiler factory in our town.”

“You little scallywag.”

“Told you I wouldn’t say straight and narrow.”

“How’d you go from rocks to baseballs?”

He reached for her hand still looped through his elbow. “Remember me mentioning Grandma Rosie?”

“The one who was obsessed with Glenn Miller?”

Seemed like Gracie’s limp had grown heavier, so he stopped walking and turned to face her. “She wasn’t technically my grandma. She was our neighbor. But she loved on me better than any grandma could. And in addition to Glenn Miller, she was obsessed with baseball. I think she saw the potential in me and knew I was going to slip through the cracks if someone didn’t help me along, so she connected me with one of her nephews. He played in the minors for a while, eventually helped out coaching one of the college teams in his area. He took me under his wing. Told me it wasn’t enough to have a strong arm and throw hard. You had to throw smart. Because all that separates you from getting a strikeout and getting your bell rung is a matter of inches. You can’t afford to miss by an inch, he said.”

A leaf had fallen and gotten caught in Gracie’s hair. Noah brushed it away, then let his fingers linger on the bottom strands of her hair. “I knew what he was really saying. One inch off—whether that be a suspension, a demeanor, or taking things too far with a cute girl on a date—could end my career before it began. He’s the reason I wound up here in high school. He knew I had to get away from my dad and his drinking, my brothers and their reputations. Shoot, I just needed to get away from that town. So he offered me the chance for a fresh start. And you know what, I thank God every day that I took it.”

Gracie’s hazel eyes, sparkling greener in the sunlight and full of more kindness than he’d seen directed his way in a long time, held his gaze. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this years ago? You said you were an Army brat.”

“I had half of it right at least.”

She continued searching his eyes, obviously waiting for a real answer.

Noah let go of her hair. “I don’t know, Gracie. I guess I felt like you were so far out of my league. Here you were this beautiful senior in high school with a great Dad. I mean sure, your sister was a little scary, but...” He reached for that strand of hair again, needing to touch her and stay connected to her and not lose her as he tried explaining something he wasn’t sure he could even explain to himself.

He rubbed her hair between his fingers. “Truth is I felt like I’d hit the jackpot with you. From day one, I knew you were it for me. But I was scared to death thinking I may never be it for you. So when we started dating... I don’t know. I guess I didn’t want to blow it by dragging all these skeletons out of my closet. Then later on...” He shrugged. “All my family drama just never seemed that important.”

“But they were your family.” She shifted her weight and winced.

“Here.” Noah spotted a fallen tree large enough for Gracie to sit on without having to bend much. He led her to it and brushed away the dried bark and leaves.

Once she was settled, she said, “I’m just looking back, trying to figure out how you avoided talking about them all those years we were together. Didn’t you ever miss them after you moved here?”

Noah settled next to Gracie on the trunk. Inhaled a deep breath. Sighed. Then reached for her hand and cradled it between his on top of his lap, needing that connection again. Especially since he still didn’t know how to explain it. Did he miss his family after he moved here?

“There was a game back when I was thirteen. Not just any game. The Little League championship. It wasn’t my turn to pitch, but right before the game, our starting pitcher came down with a stomach bug. At first we thought it was nerves, but by the eighth or ninth puke, we realized he wasn’t going to be spending any time on the mound. Another one of our pitchers had broken his arm two days prior, and our other pitcher just wasn’t very good. So I knew it was going to be up to me to get us through that game.”

Noah could still feel the sweat glazing his skin from the humidity and nerves hovering over the diamond. “I’m not lying when I tell you I felt as much pressure that night as any game I played in the majors. Maybe even more. The bleachers were packed. Felt like the whole town was watching. And yet in all those packed stands, I knew there wasn’t a single person out there rooting for me. Not my brothers. Not my dad. Not even Rosie, since she was pretty much housebound by that point. I knew I was on my own.”

“Did you blow it?”

He narrowed his eyes at Gracie. “Now as a writer, you of all people should know I can’t just jump straight to the end. Where’s the suspense in that?”

“I hate suspense. Did you blow it?”

“First few innings weren’t pretty.” Gracie huffed but tightened her grip as he continued on with his story. “I gave up a lot of runs. Thankfully our offense kept us in the game, but every inning was a battle. I kept getting down in the count. Batters kept hitting foul ball after foul ball, staying alive long enough to eventually earn a walk or a hit. Bases kept getting loaded, and I’d see no way I could possibly get out of the inning without giving up a dozen runs.”

“Just tell me if you blew it.”

He cracked a smile at her. “But then somehow, some way, I always got us out of it.”

Her hand relaxed inside his as she let out a small, “Thank goodness.”

“Inning after inning, I did that. All the way into extra innings. My arm was completely shot, but after eleven innings we won by a single run. I felt on top of the world.”

“As you should have.”

Without thinking, Noah dipped his head and kissed the skin on the inside of Gracie’s wrist. “Thank you for that.”

She didn’t tug her hand free, so the kiss must’ve been okay. “I’m sorry someone wasn’t there for you that night,” she said in a soft voice, letting him return their clasped hands back to his lap.

“Someone was there.” He felt her gaze on his profile as he continued staring at their hands joined together. “Soon as the game ended, I couldn’t help myself. I looked at the stands. And that’s when I saw him. My dad. It was the only game he came to all season. He was too drunk to come to any of the others. And you know what? I realized I couldn’t care less if he was there or not. Because I couldn’t care less about him. If I could show up on the mound and fight my way through inning after inning, why couldn’t he figure out how to fight for his family?”

Noah dropped Gracie’s hand and reached for his shoulder, massaging an ache there that refused to leave. “You want to know why I didn’t talk about my family after I moved here? Because no, to answer your question, I didn’t miss them. By the time I met you, I didn’t feel like I had a family left to miss.”