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“Fine. So we’ll do them in batches. All four of us where we can. Three when we can’t. We’ll see what Tom can cover as well. What do you think, Maggie?”
Maggie considered the list. “There’s a few guys on here that he gets along with. So those might be worthwhile. But these three?” She swiped over three names with her highlighter. “Not going to help. They don’t like Dad at all.”
“Well, we’ll use him where we can and it will help. He’ll help convince the owners’ that there’ll be some stability and continuity.”
“Presuming he’s still talking to you after you two explain today’s pictures to him,” Mal said. “Maggie, how are you going to handle that?”
She winced. “I should go talk to him.”
“I’ll come with you,” Alex said.
“You sure that’s a good idea?”
“Yes. For one thing, it’s what men do.”
Maggie rolled her eyes. “Newsflash, it’s not 1950.”
“Doesn’t matter. And it can’t hurt for us to be seen going to see your dad. We’ll leave here together.”
“Now?” It was closing in on eight P.M. “I wanted to get back to the city.” Mainly because it was far away from having to deal with her dad.
“I’ll make sure you get home. And get a car to bring you back in the morning, so you can leave your car here.”
Which was another perfectly terrible idea. She didn’t need to be spending any more time with Alex right now than strictly necessary. But she had no particular argument to mount for taking two cars when they were faking being together, so she nodded reluctant agreement.
Two hours later Maggie slid back into the passenger seat of Alex’s Jeep.
“That wasn’t too bad,” she said cautiously.
“Speak for yourself,” Alex said, rolling his shoulder and flexing his hand with a wince. “You weren’t the one dragged outside in the freezing cold for a game of catch for forty-five minutes.”
She stifled a giggle. She and Veronica had watched the two men square off in the backyard, bundled up and spotlighted under the garden lights, Tom barking questions while he fired off pitches at Alex.
“Your dad has a pretty good arm on him still.”
“Yup. I should’ve warned you.”
“Yeah, I could’ve brought my gear. He nearly took my head off twice, but I think we came to a meeting of the minds.” He flexed his hand again.
“Is your hand okay?”
“I’ll live,” he said, as he steered the car across to the far lane to pull up at the lights.
“Is your hand why you quit baseball? After the bombing?”
His head twisted back to her. “How do you know about that?”
“Ollie said something. I did some digging. So is it?”
He shook his head, turned his attention back to the road. “No. I made the decision before I knew my hand wasn’t going to be the same.”
“But why?”
“It’s hard to explain.”
“It’s a long drive.”
“The bombing…” He paused. “It changes you, going through something like that. I was lucky, my injury wasn’t too bad and I was smart, I had good grades. But there were guys on the team who weren’t that lucky. They had injuries that meant they couldn’t play again. Kids who were only ever going to make it through college because they were on the team. They lost their scholarships.” He went still … remembering. “It changed everything for them. And I just knew that I never wanted to be at the mercy of something like that. That I wanted to build something bigger than a baseball career. Something more solid. So I changed schools and changed my major to business and the rest is history.”
