Not my parents. Not my dad or Mom or even an uncle.
Darren Murphy.
How this guy has gone from Public Enemy Number One to my only ally at my brother’s wedding is a mystery. We march down the aisle with our respective bridesmaids and we stand shoulder to shoulder as my brother kisses the bride.
And now, we’re about to sit next to each other at the reception in Oak & Ivy, Granddad’s fancy country club. Everyone is in the parking lot, piling into cars to get to the country club a quarter of a mile down East Avenue. My parents pass by with Granddad, and Mom reaches a hand out to me. Gives me a sad smile.
Dad struggles to even look at me.
It’s his shame, I know. Not mine.
It’s not mine.
It just feels like it is.
The sky is an inky dark that seems to swallow all light. It’s only by the amber glow of the streetlamp that I can see snowflakes twisting violently in the wind. Rochester is always cold in winter, but nowhere is it frostier than the icy, disapproving stare of my own grandfather.
I don’t acknowledge him when he passes by, so I should know it’s coming as I pull the truck door open.
“You gonna be able to keep a handle on those emotions?” Granddad asks with a laugh, like this is all in good fun. There was a time where his approval meant the world to me, where I’d do anything to see him give me a nod when I rounded home plate or hear him clap when I threw a runner out at third.
I haven’t felt that approval since the moment I was injured. His disapproval was always so heavy, with a frown feeling like a knee to my chest. But since my surgery, every conversation with him has felt like I’m slowly sinking in quicksand.
And now I’m going under.
“I’ll try, Granddad,” I croak, wishing I were as aloof as everyone thinks I am.
Around us, wedding guests are still trickling out of the church, loading into cars. Some are watching the snow fall. Others are on their phones. But a few have stopped, noticing the tension radiating from us at the far end of the lot.
Granddad chuckles and mutters something under his breath. The wind barely carries it to me. “Knew he never had what it took.”
My eyes fall on that baseball buried in the snow in front of me. I stare at it, cold, piled on, and discarded, knowing exactly how it feels. And my mind catches on to the last time this same sense of intense overwhelm hit, but it’s not the day I was injured.
It’s my signing day.
We’re at one of Granddad’s facilities—free advertising, he called it—with my family, some of Granddad’s staff, and a couple of old teammates … who also worked for Granddad.
Everything was a blur of clicks and flashes. After I signed my contract, my mom was so proud, she was crying. And she handed me a baseball.
“Here,” she said, “Sign this.”
Dad laughed in excitement. I looked at them, uncertain if it was showy of me, if Granddad thought it would “distract” me the way he thought dating, friendships, and even hobbies would.
But he just laughed and said, “Go on and sign it. Could be worth something someday.”
So I signed it and gave it back to Mom, a pit in my stomach.
Why did I have a pit in my stomach?
Shouldn’t that have been one of the best days of my life? Shouldn’t signing a ball for a mother brimming with pride have made me smile and laugh with her?
I had made it.
I’d finally made it.
But … where wasit, exactly?
The feeling of that day engulfs me like a blizzard—that sense of staring at a future of moments like that one, pressure heaped on me, impossible standards I’d have to fight to live up to, always wondering if I’d ever be good enough to live up to Granddad’s expectations, the soaring heights of the career he was so sure he’d been robbed of. He was about to spend the next fifteen years living vicariously through me …
