He’d put a stuffed chair in there, adult-sized, so she could sit on his lap when he read to her, but she’d gotten into bed and had an assortment of large, brightly illustrated books on her blankets.
Old favorites. Comfort books. He knew most of them by heart.
A few of them were even the cardboard books that she’d loved as a toddler, and he picked one of those up and gave it to her.
“You ready?” he asked, and she nodded excitedly. They had a rhythm here, and they read it together, pausing at some points, squealing in delight at others. So much fun. The next thing she picked was a book of poetry. He read four of those, with all the voices and the enthusiasm and the theatrics that he could muster, and Piper yawned at the end.
“One more,” she slurred.
He kissed her forehead. “Tomorrow night. We have to be up in the morning for gymnastics.”
“Okay, Daddy. Can I watch you play baseball?”
“I’m practicing on Sunday. I thought you’d want to play in the park.”
“I’ll watch you. I want to see you look like the picture.”
“Night, pumpkin.”
“Night, Daddy.”
He got up and turned off the light, making sure the caterpillar nightlight was still on. He didn’t even want to think about how his own daughter wanted to see him happy again.
It felt like too much of a lie.
THE THING about being a dad on the weekend was you spent a lot of time trying to make every moment count. But in real life, kids had their downtime just like adults did, and as Tenner hit Kipp’s gamely pitched balls into the outfield to give the rest of the team fielding practice, he had to admit this was a good compromise. Piper had spent the day before at gymnastics and at a local park, flying a kite Tenner had picked up from the grocery store. She’d fallen asleep in the car on the way home without their milk-and-cookie ritual, and had slept long that morning. After running around the backyard while Tenner cleaned up the house, she was perfectly happy sitting in the sandpit and playing with Hanford’s sister’s kids, building sandcastles while she paused every so often to wave to him.
He’d usually wave back.
Hanford’s sister, a tall woman with faint ocher tones to her skin and eyes as wide and brown as her brother’s, had assessed Tenner boldly, and then shaken her head a little at Hanford.
Tenner could swear she mouthed “Too old,” at him, and Hanford had looked a little crushed. A part of Tenner wanted to roll his eyes and cock his hip and give her some attitude for that. Too old? He wasn’t even thirty yet! Too goddamned old for Hanford Birmingham? Was she kidding?
But looking at Hanford holding his nephew’s hand with a sort of dewy expression on his face brought Tenner up short. Even if Hanford was exactly Tenner’s age, Tenner had a kid and an ex-wife and baggage Hanford didn’t know how to deal with yet.
The thought depressed him a little.
Right up until he was sizing up Kipp’s gentle lob—up, up, up—and choking up on the bat. Then, from right behind him, came the now familiar chant.
“Hey, batter batter, sha-wing, batter!”
He ignored it and hit the ball deep into center, watching in dismay as Hanford and Charlie Saylor and Greg Nemensky all headed for a collision as they tried to catch it.
“Call it!” Tenner yelled. “Goddammit, somebody call—”
Charlie and Greg connected first, bouncing off each other, and Hanford tripped over Charlie’s prone body in time to watch the ball drop right in front of him.
“Oh my God!” Kipp looked at Tenner in chagrin. “Are they okay?”
Tenner looked over his shoulder at Ross and narrowed his eyes. “You just had to, didn’t you?” he asked.
He didn’t even stick around for Ross to hold up his hands in honest confusion. “What’d I do? I swear, Ten, it wasn’t me!”
Tenner didn’t hang out to listen to the rest of it. He was trotting across the field to see how bad it was.
HANFORD HAD grass stains on his knees and chin, and that was fine, but Charlie had twisted his ankle when he’d stumbled back from the collision. Greg offered to call his wife, then take him to the doctor, and that effectively ended practice.
Greg and Charlie left, and Hanford’s sister took her little brother and her kids home with a sniff in Tenner’s direction, as though he should have known better, and the rest of the team had begged off. They’d been pretty close to ending practice anyway. Just as Tenner turned to Ross to ask him what in the furry hell he was doing there, Piper wandered over from the playground.
“Daddy, those other kids left. Can we go home and watch TV now? I want mac and cheese for dinner.”
Tenner gave Ross a sideways look, not sure what to do with him there. “Sure, baby. Mac and cheese sounds good—”
“And you can bring your friend,” she said as though she were the Queen herself, making a huge concession. She yawned. “He can watch TV with me.”
Tenner opened his mouth to say, “Oh, honey, this isn’t my friend. This is some loser who’s here for no discernible reason that I can see,” when Ross squatted down in front of Piper and offered his hand.
“Hi, honey. I’m Ross, and I’m a friend of your dad’s. Did you say mac and cheese? That sounds outstanding. It’s the best offer for dinner I’ve had in months. I would love to have mac and cheese with you and watch TV.” He looked up at Tenner, his eyes direct, without bullshit. “Right, Ten?”
Tenner opened, then closed his mouth, trying to think of a reason, any reason, not to invite this guy over to his house when his daughter was all but begging to go home. It wasn’t that Ross wasn’t appealing—look at him, treating Piper like a human being and making her smile like that. It was just… God, was it even responsible to talk to the guy he’d banged in the park two nights ago?
“We live at 420 Union Street, Folsom, California,” she said wisely, and while Tenner gaped at her and cursed an apparently very effective school system, she threw in their zip code for good measure.
Ross stood up and winked at him. “Smart kid,” he said. “I’ll follow you there.”
“I have to get my equipment bag,” Tenner told Piper. “Ross, can you come help me?”
“Sure thing.” Ross gave him a big smile and cracked his gum, and Tenner realized he was dressed in baseball gear, same as Ten was.
“Did you come out here to practice with us?” Tenner asked, a little disconcerted.
“Yeah, well, a little bird told me you’d be here today,” Ross said blithely. He got to the dugout first and started throwing Tenner’s bat and practice balls into the big canvas duffel. “I wanted to stop by and see how you were doing.”
Tenner frowned at him. “A little bird…? You listened to us planning this Friday night!” he accused.
Ross gave him a lazy wink. “Guilty as charged. Are you going to use this as an excuse not to have me over for mac and cheese? Because I’ve got to tell you, I’m developing a craving.”
“Why are you coming over for mac and cheese?” Tenner asked almost desperately. “I mean, there’s so many better things you could be eating.”