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Chapter 16
Keeping God in your marriage as “the threefold cord” and honoring your commitment to your spouse thru the good times and especially the bad ones. - Fern Pena
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Peyton sat on the secondrow of the bleachers, with an easy view of the baseball field. There’d been several ladies sitting behind her, who had smiled at her as she climbed in.
She still felt a little conspicuous being alone, but having been divorced for ten years, she was used to going to things by herself. End-of-year assemblies, track and field days, church events, whatever. Sometimes she went with friends, but she hated to ask anyone to take off work to drive to Rockerton.
Shasta was catching up on some artwork that she’d promised would be finished this week, and Fridays were big days for Sadie with the trucking company paperwork.
Charlene and the other Piece Makers were going to come, but the shop had been busier than normal and they had insisted on staying while they shooed Peyton out the door.
The person she really wanted, Bryce, was one she hadn’t even considered asking. He would have no interest in attending a junior high baseball game where he knew none of the players. She wouldn’t have wanted him to come to cheer her son just because she enjoyed his company.
So ultimately she brought her headphones and listened to the narrator she loved on YouTube. She had started the book earlier in the day, and he’d gotten her caught up in the action, and she didn’t want to turn him off.
Still, when the game began, she pulled her headphones out of her ears and put them in her purse along with her phone.
The big North Dakota sky was bright blue, with just a hint of orange along the horizon, indicating the sun would be going down soon.
She brought a jacket, because from experience, she knew it would be chilly.
She tried to learn a little bit about baseball, and Owen had even had her watching a few games on TV.
She’d already known the basics, and the game wasn’t that difficult to follow.
The principle was easy: the pitcher threw the ball, the batter tried to hit it. The pitcher was supposed to try to throw it so the batter wouldn’t be able to hit it, but within a certain parameter of space directly over home plate.
Not bad for a bookworm. She tried not to be too proud of herself.
Owen was not up to bat the first time his team was up. He jogged out to the outfield with his teammates as the other team got the third strike.
This was one of the things he had been concerned about. He wasn’t super great at catching a ball. He had a ton of coordination, but needed practice. As much as she’d been trying to work with him at home, she wasn’t great at throwing, either.
Sometimes she wondered how those things happened, because the very first ball that was hit was a flyball arcing gracefully down, directly at her son.
She held her hands together in her lap and held her breath as Owen put his glove up. Seconds later, the ball bounced on the ground beside him.
Not only did he not catch the ball, but he didn’t see it where it was lying at his feet, and he spent several seconds looking around for it before he found it, picked it up, and threw it.
Only he threw it the way she did, which was the harder she tried to throw, the more she usually managed to piledrive the ball into the ground about three feet in front of her.
There were titters from the crowd.
Hopefully Owen didn’t hear the laughter. He ran forward, grabbing the ball that he’d just thrown a whole yard, picking it up to throw again as the runner rounded second.
He did the exact same thing a second time, getting a big overhand swing, and then instead of releasing the ball when he needed to, he held on just a bit too long, and the ball drove into the ground.
“Who let that kid on the field?” one of the ladies behind her said.
