Page 79 of First Love, Second Draft

Ten minutes into their walk, Noah was still struggling to find the right words. Same problem he always had when they were younger and she brought up his family. But something told him Gracie wasn’t concerned about the right words. She simply wanted to hear his story. So after a deep breath, Noah started using the words he had, whether they were the right ones or not. “First thing I should probably tell you is I had another brother. Owen. He was younger than me. Died when he was eight.” Noah let the words hang in the late afternoon air, swirling and dipping, before a crisp breeze carried them away.

“Second thing I should probably tell you is my mom had an affair.” A flock of geese flew overhead. Gracie’s grip on his arm tightened, her gaze focused on the ground, thankfully not him. Some information just came out better without having to look someone in the eye.

“My dad had no idea it was going on. Of course, when you’re working sixty hours a week, how would you? Looking back, I wonder if my dad knew he even had five sons for a while. Poor Owen probably slipped out without him even realizing at first.”

He sighed, watching the geese until they disappeared from sight. “Part of me gets it. Why my dad wasn’t around much. Owen was born with some complicated health issues. So dad was working like crazy to cover the medical expenses. Equipment. Therapy. Even withinsurance, I’m sure everything cost a ton. But when I say he was never around, I’m telling you he was never around. And since my mom’s entire world revolved around caring for Owen, it didn’t feel like she was around all that much either.”

Gracie squeezed closer to his side. He half hoped she’d speak up and say he didn’t need to keep going. But, of course, this would be the one time in her life she kept quiet and let him do all the talking.

“Things only got worse after Owen died. I can’t say his death came as a shock. We all knew it was coming for years. Even so, I can’t say any of us were ready for it. I mean, how can you ever be ready to lose someone you love? Doesn’t matter what your brain knows. Your heart’s just never ready. So we all took it hard. Dad completely disappeared for a while, and Mom couldn’t get out of bed. Eventually she did, but it was just to crawl in someone else’s bed. I guess having an affair felt better than missing Owen and trying to raise four rowdy boys on her own.”

“Noah, I am so sorry.”

He shrugged. “I don’t want you feeling sorry. I just want you to see why this isn’t my favorite topic. Definitely not something I want written down in a book for all the world to see.”

Bad enough telling Gracie in the privacy of the backwoods that ran the line of their property. But now that he’d started, may as well get it all out there.

“She died from a ruptured brain aneurysm. She was with the other guy when it happened.” Noah steadied Gracie as they passed some shallow roots from a tree. “By the time they got her to the hospital, there wasn’t anything they could do.”

“Is that how your dad found out about the affair?”

Noah nodded. “None of us boys knew the details, of course. Just that she’d collapsed. I knew my dad was acting weird, but...” Noah shrugged. “We’d lost Owen the year before. Now Mom had just died. We were all acting weird. Yeah, there were whispers at the time, but I was twelve. I had no idea what the whispers were about. Not untilthose whispers trickled from the adults down to the kids and became taunts at school.”

“I can only imagine what that must’ve been like for you and your brothers.”

“None of us handled it well, I’ll say that. I guess instead of losing himself in his job Dad decided to start losing himself in the bottle. And my brothers... well, you name it. Drinking. Skipping school. Starting fights. Even set a few fires. All three of them landed in juvie before their seventeenth birthday.”

“But not you?”

“See what a prize you landed yourself? The only Parker boy to stay out of juvie. No wonder you fell so hard for me.”

She gave him a nudge. “What kept you walking the straight and narrow?”

“I don’t know about straight and narrow, but there was one thing I had that my brothers didn’t have. And that was baseball.”

Gracie pretended to groan as she gave his arm another squeeze. “I should’ve known everything always comes back to baseball with you.”

“And charcuterie. Don’t forget that.”

“I only wish I could forget that,” she responded, offering a sweet smile. “So how did you get into baseball?”

“Found out I had a strong arm when I threw rocks to break out the windows at the old boiler factory in our town.”

“You little scallywag.”

“Told you I wouldn’t say straight and narrow.”

“How’d you go from rocks to baseballs?”

He reached for her hand still looped through his elbow. “Remember me mentioning Grandma Rosie?”

“The one who was obsessed with Glenn Miller?”

Seemed like Gracie’s limp had grown heavier, so he stopped walking and turned to face her. “She wasn’t technically my grandma. She was our neighbor. But she loved on me better than any grandma could. And in addition to Glenn Miller, she was obsessed with baseball. I think she saw the potential in me and knew I was going toslip through the cracks if someone didn’t help me along, so she connected me with one of her nephews. He played in the minors for a while, eventually helped out coaching one of the college teams in his area. He took me under his wing. Told me it wasn’t enough to have a strong arm and throw hard. You had to throw smart. Because all that separates you from getting a strikeout and getting your bell rung is a matter of inches. You can’t afford to miss by an inch, he said.”

A leaf had fallen and gotten caught in Gracie’s hair. Noah brushed it away, then let his fingers linger on the bottom strands of her hair. “I knew what he was really saying. One inch off—whether that be a suspension, a demeanor, or taking things too far with a cute girl on a date—could end my career before it began. He’s the reason I wound up here in high school. He knew I had to get away from my dad and his drinking, my brothers and their reputations. Shoot, I just needed to get away from that town. So he offered me the chance for a fresh start. And you know what, I thank God every day that I took it.”

Gracie’s hazel eyes, sparkling greener in the sunlight and full of more kindness than he’d seen directed his way in a long time, held his gaze. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this years ago? You said you were an Army brat.”

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