Читать книгу The Comeback of Roy Walker - Stephanie Doyle - Страница 11

CHAPTER THREE

“YOU NEED TO come home.”

Lane pressed her cell to her ear with her shoulder and opened the door to her apartment, two grocery bags hanging from her arms. “Hold on.”

Once inside, she shut the door, made her way to the kitchen, put the bags—recyclable, of course—on the counter along with her phone and hit the speaker button.

“Okay, Scout, I’m here. What do you mean come home? I was just there.”

“Months ago at Christmas. Things are different now.”

Lane took a deep breath as she unpacked her frozen entrées and tried not to let Scout’s anxiety get her freaked out as well.

“Has he been to a doctor?” Lane asked, knowing what Scout was worried about. This was about Duff. With Scout it was always about Duff. Or baseball.

“He won’t go. He says he’s fine, just old and tired—”

“Scout, he is seventy-five. I mean, he’s allowed to be tired.”

“It’s not like that. It’s not naps in the afternoon. It’s not dozing after dinner. Something is wrong and you are the only one in this family who has any kind of medical knowledge. If you tell him to go to a doctor, he’ll listen to you. With me he brushes it off as nagging.”

Home.

The word blasted through Lane like a bullet into the gut. Suddenly the idea made so much sense to her when nothing seemed to make sense six days ago.

Six days? Had it been that long since the doctor told her Stephen had died? The eerie sense of lost time had Lane wondering what had happened during the past week. Most of that time had been spent on a couch staring at four walls. Until she got hungry enough to go to a grocery store to get something besides potato chips and peanut butter sandwiches to eat.

Now with Scout’s worry about Duff, it suddenly felt like there was an answer. A place to go. A person to be. Not a physical therapist, but a daughter.

Because Lane was no longer a physical therapist.

Scout wasn’t prone to exaggeration and she certainly wasn’t the type to ask for help. Lane hadn’t missed the fatigue Duff seemed to suffer from at Christmas. If he was getting worse, then he needed to see a doctor.

“Should we call Samantha?”

“The traitor sister? No.”

Lane groaned. Sometimes family dynamics could be so draining. “Scout, you really need to get over it. Yes, she talks to our mother on a regular basis. That’s normal behavior between a mother and a daughter. You should try it.”

“Not going to happen. Besides, I’m not saying to not call Samantha because of her and Mom. I’m saying it because if all three of us gang up on him, he’ll get stubborn. You know him. We need to make this look like it’s a totally natural visit. Can you get the time off?”

The words got stuck in Lane’s throat. As of three days ago she had all the time off she needed. Instead of admitting that, she just said yes.

“Good, I’ve set something up.”

“What?”

“When Duff calls he’s going to ask you for a favor. You will not want to do this favor, but you have no choice because you know your ulterior motive is to assess Duff’s condition and get his butt to a doctor.”

Lane tried to imagine what kind of favor Duff might ask for—one she wouldn’t want to do. He was her father. She adored him. There wasn’t anything she wouldn’t do if he asked unless it was...

“Scout, is it about baseball? You know I’m done with the sport. Completely and irrevocably.”

There was a pause. “I wouldn’t use the word irrevocably so casually.”

Lane gritted her teeth. “I’m not. I’m quite serious. I’m done with the game and, most importantly, I’m done with the players. If you need me in Minotaur Falls, fine, I’ll come. But I’m not having anything to do with the game.”

“Then he’ll suspect something,” Scout replied. “Look, I get it. You married a crappy guy and it eats at you every day that you couldn’t make the marriage work. But I need you to suck it up and do this thing. For Duff.”

Lane hated it when her younger sister was more right than she was. After all it had been five years since her marriage was exposed for the sham it had become. Maybe it was time to start letting some of the anger go. Anger that was mostly directed at herself. Something she rarely told anyone. Why would she when she had such an easy villain she could point to? Her cheating husband.

Her cheating husband and Roy Walker.

“Fine. I’ll do it. Just out of curiosity, what is this favor? I mean, I assume you want me to treat someone. Some up-and-coming star with a muscle issue? Do I know him?”

Another pause. “Nah. Just another player. He signed a minor-league deal with the Rebels. Who knows if he’ll even pan out? But Duff likes him, so he’ll ask you to work with him. You’ll say yes?”

“Was that actually a question?”

“I need you, Lane. I wouldn’t call you if I didn’t.”

Once more the words felt like a physical blow to Lane. Scout really was serious. Which meant Duff was in trouble. When a parent reaches seventy-five a child had to start to thinking about things. Things like saying goodbye. Lane wasn’t ready yet. She was barely surviving losing a patient she didn’t know that well.

She couldn’t even contemplate what losing Duff right now would mean.

Sometimes, though, life didn’t give a person a choice. What worried Lane more than her own reaction was Scout and how she would cope with such a loss. “Hey, you know, kiddo, if there is something wrong—”

“Don’t say it. I mean, I know where you are going and I know why you’re going there, but don’t say it. I can’t hear it. Not yet.”

Lane nodded and, really, there was no point in borrowing trouble. Not until they knew they had trouble on their hands. “Okay. I’ll wait for Duff’s call.”

Scout hung up and Lane thought of all the things she would need to organize. Pack, of course. Maybe ask her neighbor to take in the mail. Then she realized there wasn’t anything else that required organizing.

It wasn’t like she had a boyfriend she needed to tell. Hell, she didn’t have that many close friends who needed a heads-up. Everyone she knew in town worked at the veterans hospital. Since she’d resigned, a few of them had reached out to her, but no one had been able to talk her out of her decision.

Realistically, Stephen had been only a patient. Another soldier with a missing foot. Her job had been to get him back on his feet even though one of them would be prosthetic. She’d been so close, too. When anyone asked her about his progress, she always gave the same answer. The patient was doing great. He was ahead of schedule. She’d said it with pride. Because of her, he would be using his prosthesis faster than anyone else had before.

Yeah, she’d been doing a hell of job.

Until the twenty-four-year-old took a sharp razor to his wrists and killed himself.

Lane dropped onto the couch and looked around her apartment. It all seemed so empty. For the past five years she had put everything she had into a job as a way to escape her failure of a marriage and now that was gone.

Her supervisor had said it wasn’t her fault. The doctor had said it wasn’t her fault. She was a physical therapist, not a psychologist. She couldn’t have known what was in Stephen’s head. No one did, which is why the tragedy had happened.

Lane knew better. She should have sensed his reluctance to work with the prosthesis. She should have picked up on the fact that he wasn’t ready to move forward with his life because he hadn’t dealt with the loss of his limb. Or the explosion that had killed two of his friends. She’d worked for Veterans Affairs for five years. She’d seen amputations of every kind. She knew what it could do to the psyche.

Instead, she’d gotten caught up in getting a kid up on his feet only to have him take himself off them permanently.

The worst part was that, logically, she knew she couldn’t blame herself. Unlike with some of her other patients, she and Stephen hadn’t formed any kind of personal bond. He hadn’t been overly talkative or particularly friendly. Still, he’d been a good patient—he had done everything she asked. A soldier through and through. Taking the orders she dished out without any back talk.

No, Stephen was no different than the hundreds who had come before him.

Only he was completely different because he was gone and she hadn’t seen one sign. Not one signal that he was planning to take his own life.

She could tell herself that taking herself out of the work wasn’t about punishing herself for her mistake. That quitting meant not being there for the next soldier. The next soldier who needed her help. She could tell herself that she had a responsibility to the hospital. Heck, she could even tell herself she needed a paycheck to live.

All good reasons to put this incident behind her and go back to work.

She’d tried. The day after she’d learned of Stephen’s death, she had tried to go in like it was just another day. She’d walked into the therapy wing, had seen people working out in various capacities and instantly had known she couldn’t do it.

The thought of being presented with another patient terrified her. Someone whose name she would learn. Someone whose life she would try to improve. Someone who might be hurting in ways she couldn’t see because she only saw the physical.

What if Stephen happened again? What if she failed?

Lane couldn’t do it. Not yet. Maybe not ever again. The easiest thing had been to resign and deal with the fallout later.

Home.

Yes, that made sense. It might seem like Lane was going home to help Scout, but really Scout was the one who had just offered Lane a lifeboat.

* * *

SCOUT PUT HER cell in her back pocket, chewed her bottom lip and wondered if she was doing the right thing. Her loyalty, after all, should be to her sister and no one knew better how much Lane hated Roy Walker than Scout did. Scout had been the first person Lane called when it all went down. The party, the irrefutable proof of what a scumbag Danny was, Roy’s involvement in the whole thing. And when they had needed a coldhearted, ruthless lawyer, they had called their older sister, Samantha, to mete out the punishment.

Sam had eaten up Danny’s lawyer and spit him out. But not for financial reasons. Lane hadn’t wanted his money. She’d donated most of the settlement Samantha had won her to various different charities.

No, it was a lesson the Baker girls had wanted to enforce so Danny and anyone else in the game of baseball got the message.

You hurt us, we hurt you.

Scout remembered asking Lane what form of revenge she wanted them to inflict on Roy, but Lane hadn’t wanted to even hear his name mentioned. It was as if the betrayal from him was somehow too big to deal with.

Bigger than her divorce from Danny.

Her sister’s reaction always made Scout wonder about Lane and her feelings for Roy. And that speculation made her feel slightly less guilty about not telling her who Duff’s favor was for. At the end of the day, it didn’t really matter. Scout needed Lane to pressure Duff to get his health checked.

Lane was probably right. He was getting older and slowing down. Scout could accept that. Hell, it’s not like she was going anywhere. She was here for him. Slow or not. She just needed some assurance there wasn’t something else, something more serious with far greater reaching consequences, going on.

It was fair to say, Scout didn’t like change. Very fair considering she’d lost the only man she ever loved because she wouldn’t change.

That nervous niggle in her stomach reared its ugly head. The one she could forget about for hours until suddenly it was there again making her nauseous. She couldn’t say why, but it sure felt like a whole lot of change was coming.

No, Scout definitely did not like change.

* * *

LANE PULLED UP to the stadium and thought about what it would feel like to walk through those doors. It had been five years since she’d done it. No matter how many times she had come home to visit, no matter how many times Duff had asked her to check out a game with him, she hadn’t once set foot in this place. The home of the Minotaurs.

For that matter, she hadn’t entered any other ballpark. Heck, she felt uncomfortable walking by a diamond in a park. She hadn’t watched a single game on TV. She hadn’t paid attention to any playoff runs or World Series.

She didn’t even know if her ex-husband was still on a team. Still playing. Still doing well. She didn’t care.

Her love for baseball had died that night. No, it had been murdered, by her. She’d purposefully ejected it from her life. Went so far as to stop treating all professional athletes because she hadn’t wanted to be remotely reminded of the lifestyle. She’d turned down a professional golfer’s offer of ten thousand dollars for one hour of therapy without blinking.

She’d even stopped eating hot dogs.

She missed hot dogs.

It wasn’t lost on Lane that after the failure of her marriage she’d turned her back on everything she loved except her immediate family. Her first major failure at her job, and she’d done the same thing to work.

Quitter.

The word sat ridiculously heavy on her shoulders. Was that what she was? Was that what she did? Did she quit when things got hard?

No, she told herself stubbornly. She made rational decisions to protect her mental well-being. It was not the same thing at all.

Besides she was here now, standing outside the stadium, wasn’t she? Scout needed her and Lane wasn’t going to let an old grudge get in the way of doing the right thing by her father. She would grant Duff’s favor and he would, in turn, do her a favor by making appointment with a doctor. Just a normal checkup. Something any daughter might prod her aging father into doing.

She left her car, swallowed the crazy nervous thing that was in her throat and walked through the stadium doors like it was no big deal. It was early March and snow was still on the ground in upstate New York, although it was melting. Today the sun was out and there was a hint of spring in the air. Enough to give a person a sense of hope that warmer weather was coming. It was just a matter of time.

Spring used to be her favorite season. The start of everything new. New flowers, new grass, new life and, most importantly, a new baseball season. She thought about the date, and realized opening day for the minors was three weeks away.

There might be players around the ballpark. Those making a run for The Show would be down in spring training. But the cast of players who knew they would start in Triple-A would already be warming up. Hoping to prove themselves enough for some scout to see them and give them a chance.

Lane headed toward Duff’s office, stopping just outside. She was supposed to meet the player Duff wanted her to work with. Like Scout, he’d played it off as no big deal. Just a pitcher who they wanted to gradually work up to full speed.

She figured he was someone coming off an injury.

A patient, she thought. That’s how she would deal with him. Not a player, not an athlete, just a patient. If she could maintain that distance, then it wouldn’t be like being involved in baseball at all.

Taking a deep breath, she knocked and opened the door. The outer office was empty and she could hear voices behind the inner door. Marching forward, she entered the office, ready to compartmentalize her task. She was here to assess her father’s health. The other task was simply the means to an end.

“Hey, Duff,” Lane said, seeing her father leaning back in his chair behind the desk. The player in question was sitting on the opposite side of the desk, his back to her. “Well, you got me back here. And I guess you’re going to be my patient for the next few—”

The player stood and turned to face her.

“Roy Walker. Wow,” she whispered. Because she really had nothing else to say.

Scout did this. Duff did this. They both did this to her. Yet another horrible betrayal by people she trusted. How could they force her to confront the one man she never wanted to see again?

The man who had ruined her marriage. Who had turned her into a failure.

It wasn’t his fault. It was yours...

“Lanie,” he whispered as if he, too, was not ready for the confrontation even though he’d at least had a heads-up it was coming. “You look...good. I mean, it’s good to see you.”

Lane shook her head. Roy was talking to her. Speaking actual words to her. She was in the same room as him. Unthinkable.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to say now.”

“Lanie,” Duff huffed. “Now, come on, girl. It’s been five years. The man did you a favor and opened your eyes. He gave you your life back. Stop holding on to history and get over it. I need you to work with him.”

“Oh, I can promise you that is not going to— Wait.” Her gaze flew to Roy’s face and she could actually see him brace himself for what came next. “What are you doing here?”

He swallowed a few times and she followed the movement of his Adam’s apple. She started to take in things about him now that the shock of seeing him was fading. The gray mixed in with the dark hair at his temples. His body still looked strong, fit. Wide shoulders and long arms, which gave him extra zip when throwing a ball. She knew he was thirty-seven, but the person Duff had asked her to work with was a minor-league player.

Roy didn’t play baseball anymore. He certainly didn’t play minor-league ball.

“I needed a job. Duff helped me out.”

“You needed a job? Yeah, right. You’re a multimillionaire. What happened to your grand plan? You said you were done with baseball. You said you wanted to leave on top and not hang around like all the other old-timers who didn’t know when to walk away. You talked about it constantly. Almost bragging about how smart you were to leave while the leaving was good. Now, five years later, you want to pitch again?” She shook her head. “You’re pathetic.”

Her voice was sharp and she wasn’t sure why. She didn’t know if it was anger from seeing the man whom she considered her mortal enemy. Or anger that she’d believed all those things he said to her once. Because when he said them it had felt as though he hoped she would understand why he was making the decision to walk away so young. As though he wanted her approval.

Or maybe it was anger because she remembered all those times when he’d talked to her about his future and she had felt that damn...pull.

Damn. She hated Roy Walker.

“Lanie!” Duff shouted. “I didn’t raise my girl to be a bitch. Maybe before you go spouting off on things you don’t know about, you might want to check that attitude.”

Lane looked at her father, who, she noticed, still hadn’t gotten out of his chair, even though he was angry enough at her to raise his voice. Since she was still pissed at him for blindsiding her, that confrontation would have to wait.

“What? This isn’t some attempt at a lame comeback? Let me guess, you couldn’t stay away from the game,” Lane said. “Is that it? The limelight. The rush. The glory. The fans, not that you had many of those. Had to have all that back?”

“No,” Roy said stiffly. “What I said was true. I need a job. And this is all I know how to do.”

It was the tone in his voice that stopped her. She knew Roy Walker. He was arrogant and smug on his worst days. A colossal ass on his best. He personified confidence and never let anyone forget that he knew to the dollar what his ability to throw a baseball was worth.

Now he stood in front of her with his head down. She didn’t think she had ever seen him so...defeated. And she’d seen him after losing an NLCS game that, had he won, would have sent him to the World Series.

He was Roy Walker, for heaven’s sake. A future first-ballot Hall of Famer. She wanted to slap him if for no other reason than to take that expression off his face.

“How can you need a job? What happened to all your money?”

He shook his head. “I lost it.”

“Millions? Tens of millions?”

“Eighty million to be exact. I have the house I bought my father, which he still lives in, and a town house in Society Hill in Philadelphia that’s up for sale. Other than that, it’s gone.”

Lane had a thousand questions about how that could happen, but quickly snapped her jaw shut. She wasn’t supposed to care about that.

She wasn’t supposed to care about anything when it came to Roy.

She hated Roy Walker.

“You seriously thought I would help you make this comeback?”

He smiled then, not his normal smile. Not the smile that said he knew more about everything than anyone else in the room. Not the smile that suggested he had secrets she might want to uncover.

No, this smile was completely self-deprecating and it didn’t fit on his mouth.

“Hell, no, I didn’t think you would help. I told them they were crazy to even ask, but Duff said—”

“I said she’s my daughter and if she knows it’s important to me, she’ll do it.” Duff leaned back in his chair, his eyes closed. As if he’d been napping during the tense confrontation unfolding in front of him.

“Why in the hell do you care about Roy Walker, Duff? You know what he did to me.”

“Yeah, and I told you I’m grateful to him for it. You were hanging on to that loser with two hands and it didn’t look like you were ever letting go. He was dragging you down, sweetie, like an anchor in an ocean.”

“I was trying to save my marriage, which is what you always told us to do.”

“Except you married the wrong guy!” Duff snapped. “When you marry the wrong guy, you walk away. Roy here forced you to do that. So, for that, he gets my help. However, my help will take him only so far. If he’s going to make it all the way, he needs more.”

Instinctively, her therapist brain started clicking in. Lane narrowed her gaze on Roy again. “How long has it been since you threw? I mean, before coming here?”

“Five years. The game in San Diego was the last time I picked up a ball.”

Lane knew that game. It was officially the last game she’d ever watched. He’d pitched a no-hitter. She’d been in a bar near the hospital where she had just gotten hired. She was eating a hamburger and drinking a beer and doing everything she could not to look at the television screens filled with a bunch of different baseball games when suddenly they had turned all the TVs to the sports network covering one game in particular.

After all, it wasn’t every day a pitching legend, during the last game of his historic career, didn’t give up a single hit. Against her will, she’d been as captivated as everyone around her, waiting as he threw each pitch, as he racked up each out, as batter after batter went down in a frustrated huff. Until the ninth inning, when the noise from the crowd at the stadium was so loud, she couldn’t imagine what someone standing on the mound in the center of it all might be hearing.

Three up, three down. Game over. His teammates had come in from the field, but no one charged him or lifted him off his feet as was typical with such an accomplishment. The catcher simply swatted him on the ass and handed Roy the ball. A few chin nods in his direction and that was it.

Because everyone knew his teammates didn’t like him. It had been almost hard to watch as the television commentators tried to explain to the national audience why the team’s celebration was so tepid. The best they said about Roy was that he was a loner. The worst they said was that he’d been known to be a cancer in the clubhouse, despite his great talent.

Lane swallowed the emotion the memory of that day caused her. In truth, she never really understood why she had left the bar to go home and cry her eyes out.

Letting that puzzle go, she focused on the present.

“How hard are you throwing now?”

“I’ve got my fastball up to about eighty-eight.”

“How does the arm feel?”

“Hurts like hell.”

“And your shoulder?” Back in the day when he sought out her therapy services it had always been his shoulder that had bothered him. Sometimes the neck, too.

“Stiff.”

Lane nodded. “You rush that arm too fast and you’ll tear something.”

“That’s what I told him. That’s why he needs you,” Duff said.

Lane looked at her father and remembered what this was really all about. She was here to make sure her father was okay. Roy was nothing but a sideshow. A particularly attention-grabbing sideshow.

Lane turned to Roy. “If I do this, it doesn’t mean I forgive you for what you did. You would be nothing but a body to me.”

“Damn it, girl,” Duff said. “How many times do I have to tell you you should be indebted to him, not angry with him?”

“You’re wrong, Duff,” Roy said. “You weren’t there. What I did was crappy and I know it. I never got the chance to say it then. I don’t know if you ever got my letter—”

“I tore it up and threw it out without opening it.”

Which in hindsight, made her feel like a spiteful, immature girl. Setting her up had been wrong. There was no refuting that. She’d thought they were friends and by manipulating her into that position, he’d hurt her. Some of Danny’s teammates actually had been laughing as she had to make her way out the door of Roy’s place that night. That’s when she’d figured out the other guys on the team had known. Everyone had known Danny was cheating on her.

She had to get tested for STDs because Danny couldn’t remember all the women he’d been with and couldn’t remember if he’d used a condom every time. The humiliation of that, of knowing how little she meant to him, had been crushing.

She would never be sure why Roy had done it, either. Why he hadn’t just told her the truth rather than let her find out that way. But, at the end of the day, he hadn’t forced Danny to bring that woman to the party. Hadn’t forced Danny to cheat on her for who knew how much of their marriage. That was Danny’s doing.

Worst of all, even though he’d initiated the kiss, that crazy kiss that had seemingly come out of the blue, she had been the one to respond. That was all on her. Five years ago it had been so easy to block out that part of the night and wallow in the pain and suffering of the divorce.

Danny cheated on her and Lane left him. That was a much simpler narrative than the truth. A truth she’d never told anyone. She had fallen out of love with Danny and had been struggling to hang on to something even while she was realizing she was attracted to another man. Yes, definitely much harder to wrap her brain around that.

“Anyway,” Roy said. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”

“You really need to throw again? This isn’t some joke to you?”

“Lanie, standing here in front of you...this is definitely not a joke.” He shrugged. “Pitching is the only thing I know how to do. The only thing I’m good for.”

Again, the sense of defeat in his words startled her. This wasn’t the Roy Walker she’d known five years ago. The ass whom she had always called out for his bullshit.

In a weird way she found herself missing that person—which made no sense to her at all. But since nothing in her life made sense right now, Lane figured this little episode was par for the course.

She had no job. She had no life. She had a father and a sister who, although they had betrayed her, did seem to need her.

And Roy. Roy Walker needed her and that was about the craziest thing she could imagine happening today.

“Fine. I’ll do it. It’s not like I have a choice, right? You’ve got my father involved. But don’t call me Lanie again. You don’t get to do that.”

Duff clapped his hands together, startling Lane. This wasn’t about Roy. She wouldn’t let it be.

“Now we’re talking,” Duff said. “You two get to work and turn that arm of his into a weapon.”

He pulled the brim of his hat over his eyes and settled in for what appeared to be his midday nap.