Page 106 of Diamond Ring
“You gonna let me see what you’re working on?” he asks.
“Later, when it’s better.” She waves her hand and yawns again. “Is the travel always this bad?”
Usually it’s worse. “Get some sleep, kiddo,” he says instead, mostly to watch her roll her eyes and shuffle down the hallway to the guest room, a reminder of when he used to carry her, the strange peace of her head against his shoulder.
He’s read a lot—books, articles, testimonies from foster kids and adoptees, many of which are angry and regretful. The same anger he felt when they separated him from Sofia that took years to even name, one that’s hard to untangle from seeing his teammates with their own families. Of wanting something he’s not quite sure how to have.
Sofia’s puttering in the kitchen; she puts down a dish when he comes in. “That was quite a game yesterday,” she says.
“Yeah.” Though now that it’s over, he’s mostly tired.
His mood must show. “You look like you have something on your mind,” she says.
The same thing she used to say when he first lived with her, during those months where his voice seemed stuck in his throat. “Could you draw cards for me?”
“I’ll get a deck.”
They settle in the living room; Sofia shuffles the cards, then places the stack on the table. She looks at him, waiting for his question.I’m not sure what to do after this season. Which isn’t really the full truth, and he knows this process is only as honest as he is with it.
“Jake wants to play in Japan next season. But I was looking at maybe”—he takes a breath—“adopting a kid. Probably starting with fostering if I can do that without something like what happened with me.”
Sofia looks briefly surprised. “What does Jake have to say about that?”
“That I’d be a good dad.”
She nods. “You would.”
“He wants to keep playing. He’s worked so hard—it’s not fair for me to ask him to stop.”
She taps her fingers across the deck. “No, seems like it’s not.”
“But the past few years, it’s like I’ve been waiting for baseball to be over.”
“I got that sense. Does Jake also want kids?”
“He does. I don’t know how that’d work with us being apart.” He nods to the deck. “Whatever cards you draw are going to tell me to talk to him.”
Sofia smiles at that. “Probably.”
“And that we need to discuss how to make the long-distance thing work or break up.”
She offers him the deck, which he cuts, then lays out four cards facedown. Slowly, she turns one to reveal a figure staring at the horizon from a hilltop.
Sofia hums contemplatively. “The three of wands. A reminder to pause before beginning a new phase.”
A luxury he doesn’t exactly get during the Fall Classic. “Everything feels too fast and too slow right now.”
Another hum. “It can also mean pursuing a new adventure.”
“Like becoming a parent?” he asks.
“Or going on a journey. Possibly overseas.”
“I should go to Japan with him?”
She turns over the three remaining cards, a cycle of them that all seem to concur. “When you adopt a kid, they tell you that a lot of them end up feeling like they owe you something, even when they don’t.” Her eyes go slightly damp, and Alex nudges the tissue box sitting on the coffee table toward her. “I worried about that—that you were playing because you felt you had to. And now, maybe you aren’t leaving enough space for yourself before you start the next big thing. I never really got a chance to explore the world much. I want you to, if that’s what you want.”
Something that’s occurred to him before—that she put her life on hold to raise him then Evie. “So the cards are telling me I should go?” he asks.
