I move the toggle, shifting more snow as the frosty air bites my cheeks. “You’ve officiated, what, maybe ten, twelve gamesper season since I came up? Do you think that’s enough to get to know a person?”
“I think your little nickname for me is.”
I groan. “Bruce, come on. It was a dumb joke in a heated moment. Can’t we move on?”
Bruce grunts.
I’ve always been respectful with umps. My GM is right: you don’t mess with the guys who can call a game against you. But when I first hit the pros, everyone had noticed that Bruce Fischer had pulled a Barry Bonds—he’d gone from being an athletic guy to going full WWE wrestler size over the course of only a couple seasons. The jokes started about him being on steroids. On juice.
Bruce doesn’t miss much on the plate, but in a particularly tense game, he called a strike on me that I thought should have been a ball, and like the idiot I am, I said, “Is that what we’re doing today, Juice?”
It was one time. One stupid slip of the tongue early in my career, and evidently, it’s stuck with him all these years.
I really have a habit of saying dumb crap in front of the Fischer family.
“My wife weighed a hundred and sixty pounds when she was diagnosed with ALS. She weighed a lot less at the end of her life, but she was sick for ten years,” Bruce says, his voice low but piercing. I don’t like where this is going. Bruce is shaking his head, staring at the snow, but I can tell his thoughts are far from here. Dread and regret gurgle in my stomach. “Do you know how she showered? How she was transported in and out of vehicles? To and from beds and chairs and up and down stairs?Me.So yes, I spent a lot more time at the gym, because I wasn’t going to be the reason my wife missed a single moment in our kids’ lives.”
I stop the UTV. I feel like I’m gonna be sick. “I didn’t know. I’m so sorry, Bruce. I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t care.”
“I do now.” I look at him, dropping every hint of bravado I have left in me. “We don’t know each other well, but please believe me when I tell you that I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said it, regardless, but Ineverwould have said something so callous if I’d known.”
“You disagreed with me on a call and threw my sacrifices in my face. That’s a punk move, but it’s not the reason I dislike you.”
I wince. “I know. Liesel told me about the game. I don’t have any excuse for what I said, but I do have reasons.”
“I know better than most how hard that first season must have been for you, but you have to understand that I can’t let someone near my daughter who can’t control himself when he’s upset about the game.”
“I would never have acted like that over a game.”
“Youdid.”
“No. That’s not the real reason I snapped at Liesel that day.”
Bruce squints through his sunglasses. “Why should I believe you?”
“Because my parents raised me better than that. My mom …” My lips purse as I clear my throat. “My mom has been sick most of my life. With mental illness, not physical, but it’s just as real.” I stare at the snow and start driving again. Some conversations are easier when in motion. “She had a big set back that day, and I didn’t deal with it like I should have.”
The plow stops where I dump the snow, and I should reverse, but I can’t. Bruce’s silence is giving me space to admit things I’ve only ever told one other person: Liesel.
“You’d like my dad. He’s a lot like you. Strong enough to carry every burden his family needs him to carry. He quit a higher paying job for one that gave him the flexibility he’d need to take care of my momandme. He sacrificed to take me to games, get me on club teams, help me get to and fromtournaments, and all while making sure my mom was taken care of, too.”
Bruce nods. I risk a glance at him, and his brow is creased. Then he looks back at me. “He sounds like too good of a guy to have a dope for a son.”
“He is. You two have more in common than you’d think.”
His lip twitches. “Apart from the dopey sons?”
I laugh before I can stop myself. “Uh, yeah, actually.”
Bruce’s snort sounds like a grunt. “Tell me more about your mom. She must be a saint to put up with you.”
I laugh again. And that’s how I find myself telling Bruce Fischer about my family.
Allabout my family.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
