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I retrieved it and returned to my seat, setting the leather bag in my lap. “What can I get you?”
“Look in the side pocket. There’s a cloth book that looks like a passport.”
I rummaged around until I produced what appeared to be a photo album, the black cloth worn, a small goldCstitched in the bottom corner.
“Go ahead. Open it.”
On each side, underneath clear plastic, was a tiny handprint and footprint. “What’s this?”
“The one on the left is you. The one on the right is Easton.”
“I don’t understand—”
“We had them done the day each of you was born. I never go anywhere without them.”
“But, Mama, they’re forty years old,” I protested, confused and surprised that my mother had these with her. She was sentimental, had loads of keepsakes, but this . . . I just couldn’t understand why.
“I wish you could have seen your father the day I told him I was pregnant again. He was thrilled the first time, but with you, it was different. And Easton, for all his gibberish, couldn’t wait to be a big brother. You can’t imagine how loved you were from the very beginning.” Her eyes shimmered with unshed tears. “I keep these with me because this reminds me of the first time I met both of you. I was in awe that something living and breathing was inside me, and then you were there in the flesh. It still amazes me that you went from that to the man you are now.”
I stared at the prints, a little overwhelmed that I’d ever been that small. Easton’s were even smaller than mine.
“I-I wanted that moment for you so badly—the second you saw your own child for the first time. Maybe you’d understand what it’s like to love something more than yourself. To live for that someone. To die for him. It kills me that it was taken from you.”
“Mama, I don’t—”
“The doctor told us you’d never be able to have children after your injury, and I didn’t know how to handle it. You seemed fine, as though it didn’t matter, and maybe I thought you were too young to understand. I didn’t know what to say, but I should have said something instead of letting you deal with it on your own.”
The memory couldn’t be stopped.
“Ninety-nine miles an hour. So close.”
I tested my swing a few times before stepping up to the plate.
“I’m gonna break a hundred and one. Beat your speed,” Wyatt said from the pitcher’s mound. “With this ball right here. You ready, Carter?”
I pointed toward the fence. “That ball is going out of the park.”
“Will you two stop running your mouths and start playing,” Coach yelled from near first base.
Wyatt and I grinned at each other. We were in constant competition on the pitcher’s mound, pushing each other to be better even though we were great friends.
“I’m strolling around the bases while you go fetch that ball after I hit it.” I tapped the bat on the dirt a few times and got in my stance.
He spun the ball in his hands. “You ain’t even going to make it to first base.”
Once the catcher gave the signal call Wyatt wanted, he nodded. But I knew what was coming. Fast ball.
He wound up and the baseball zinged toward me at lightning speed. It was too low. Impossible for me to take a swing. Too fast to jump out of the way.
Whack.
Pain exploded. I grabbed my crotch and fell to the ground in the fetal position.
“Carter! Shit!”
And then the world went dark.
Discreetly,I adjusted myself as I recalled the moment. Damn that had hurt. And then I’d pissed blood, the doctors had done a test, and I’d found out I’d never have a family of my own. That was like taking a fast pitch to the crotch all over again.
