Page 18 of The Fall Classic

Emotion tightens my throat, but I swallow it away, because this isn’t about me or my dad. “That sounds like more than one reason. He’s been an ump your whole life and did that every day? That’s … thousands of reasons for him to be your hero.”

“Huh. I’ve always seen it as a single event, but you’re right: It’s a new choice he made every day, thousands of times.” He shakes his head. “Freaking Bruce Fischer. That guy is impossible to live up to.”

“He sounds amazing,” I say as two drinks appear. I look up to see Alma already walking away. I didn’t order anything, but Alma always knows I want hot chocolate. Growing up in a coffee shop, you’d think I’d be a borderline addict.

I am.

It’s just for cocoa beans instead of coffee beans (sorry, Mama).

“Yeah, he is,” he says. “My mom was sick for a long time, and he made taking care of her look like an honor. A privilege.” He clears his throat. “Watching that kind of love in action formed us.”

“I can’t imagine,” I say in a dramatic understatement.

“I wouldn’t want anyone to have to.”

I don’t tell him there are things worse than seeing true love in action because it would mean me elevating my loss above his.

I want to hold the pain he’s shared with me close.

“Thank you for telling me,” I say. “Can I ask what your mom had?”

“ALS—Lou Gehrig’s disease. She always joked she loved baseball so much, she even got the baseball disease to prove it. She insisted she’d live long enough to see us get drafted.” He shrugs. “She did.”

Without meaning to, I press a hand over my heart. “Wow. What an incredible woman.”

“Yeah. She really was.”

I don’t want to compare pain, but I do want him to know I relate. “My mama passed when I was thirteen. Lupus nephritis. She was the best, too,” I say, remembering her hooked up to the dialysis machine, somehow chatting with the nurses like they were old friends, smiling at everyone she saw.

“I’m sorry.” It’s his turn to give me a sad smile. “What a crappy club to be a part of.”

“Yeah. But my mama said that it would make me a more compassionate person. She said, ‘Think of all the people you’ll be able to love better because you understand their pain.’”

Logan’s eyes well up immediately and he shakes his head. “Shoot. I don’t think I can handle your mom’s wisdom at nine oh nine in the morning.”

I laugh—hard—and hold my mug up to him. “I’ll drink to that.”

He chuckles. “Unless Alma made yours a lot stronger than she made mine, I’m not sure it’ll have the right effect.”

I laugh into my mug, letting the steam from the hot cocoa fill my lungs. “That’s where you’re wrong, 49.” He smiles hearing me calling him by his number, but he lets me keep talking. “A couple of days after my mama passed away, I walked over here—to Meant to Bean—and Alma said, ‘You need chocolate. Chocolate makes everything better. Even grief.’” I smile, thinking about how she served me in this exact teal mug with the yellow and coral flowers Mama so painstakingly painted. “She was right. For a few minutes, everything hurt a little less.”

Logan is pinching the bridge of his nose right between his eyes, and the sound coming from him is that strange mix of crying and laughing that only the initiated know. It’s somehow dark—so, so dark—but light at the same time. A contradiction unique to those who’ve seen beauty in the ashes of loss.

He sniffs. Looks at me. “So about that Robert Frost⁠—”

I laugh so hard, I choke on my hot cocoa. I grab a napkin and press it to my mouth, trying not to turn this into a full spit take. Logan’s laughing on his side of the booth, too, and I can’t look at him, or I’m going to lose it completely. I hold up my other hand as I swallow. Then I laugh out loud.

“‘About that Robert Frost.’ Wow.”

“It seemed like a natural transition,” he says, his shoulders shaking even more than mine.

“Yeah. So natural.” I’m still smiling as I catch my breath. “It’s a good thing you brought your copy. I left mine in the truck.”

“You drive a truck?” he asks. “Me too.”

Whoops!

“It’s borrowed,” I say, which is technically true, because Marlowe is leasing the truck. “I usually drive a 2010 Nissan Sentra. Try not to be too intimidated.”