Page 61 of Dear Henry, Love Edith
“No. Not really. I guess it never felt like home to me.”
“Even when you were married?”
Edith sighed and sank against the bleacher, Henry’s arm behind her. “We were never supposed to stay in Pittsburgh. Our plan was to see the world. Or at least I thought it was. Turns out it may have just been my plan.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I already did.” She bumped her shoulder against him. “In the letter. You pretty much know everything there is to know.”
“No, I don’t. Not nearly enough. I want to know more. Tell me why you want to travel. Why Pittsburgh never felt like home. Why you stayed to watch an entire peewee league game and why you’re still here with me now. Especially if you don’t like banana Popsicles.” He winked.
Edith straightened. “I don’t know, Henry. Honestly, I don’t. Because this isn’t what I want.” She pointed to thesky and the cornfields. “You’re right. It is beautiful and I get why you like it here, but... it isn’t my story. It’s yours.”
Edith stood, feeling restless. Needing to move. “Did you bring any baseballs to go with that bat?” She pointed to the hot-pink bat propped next to the cooler of Popsicles.
“Lance left a bag of baseballs in the dugout. Why? You wanting to do some batting practice?”
“The mosquitoes are eating me alive just sitting here.” It was as good an excuse as any. Certainly better thanI need to move away from you before I fall any further in love with you and make an even bigger mistake by staying here forever.
Henry grabbed the bag of baseballs from the dugout and carried it to the pitcher’s mound while Edith took a few practice swings at home plate. There was still enough sunlight to see for a while yet. She tapped home plate. “Bring the heat, Hobbes.”
He sailed a pitch past her faster than she could blink.
“Oookay. Maybe a little less heat, more like room temperature. Somewhere in the tepid range.”
He lobbed a ball over the mound. She swung and pinged it down the third baseline. “Hey! Did you see that? I hit a homer first try.”
“You hit a foul ball.”
“Tomayto-tomahto.”
Henry tossed her another pitch.
“So,” Edith said, swinging and missing the next pitch by a mile. “My parents had me young. Like, really young. Like my mom was only sixteen and my dad barely seventeen.” She lifted her bat for the next pitch. “They ended up staying together and getting married a few years later, but let’s justsay they were super protective. I think they were terrified I’d end up repeating the same mistake they did.”
Edith swung and missed again. “Would you stop throwing curveballs?”
“The only curve my pitches are making is downward. Because that’s how gravity works.”
Edith narrowed her gaze, then prepared for the next throw. “But I didn’t want to live in a bubble.” She clipped it foul behind her. “I wanted to explore, travel, live a life like my great-great-aunt Edith did.”
Henry bent over to grab another ball from the bag. “Is that who you’re named after?”
Edith leaned against the baseball bat like a cane, taking a moment to catch her breath. Who knew swinging a bat could be so strenuous? Heaven help her if she had to run the bases. “Edith McClintock. She was my dad’s great-aunt. She lived to be nearly a hundred. I used to play cribbage with her once a month when we visited her in the nursing home. She told the greatest stories.”
Henry tossed the ball up and down in his hand. “What kind of stories?”
“True stories. She was like a real-life Dr. Quinn, medicine woman. Except she never married. She became a doctor back when it wasn’t super common for women to become doctors. Her dream was to become a renowned surgeon in Bellevue Hospital. And she might have too, except for this one experience she had on a trip overseas. Of all the stories she told, that one was my favorite.”
Edith used the bat to scrape a line back and forth in the dirt. She was talking too much, wasn’t she? Sometimes shegot carried away. Why would Henry care about her great-great-aunt Edith?
“What was it?”
Edith lifted the bat to her shoulder and moved back to the plate. Shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Throw me another pitch.”
“What? No way.” Henry dropped the ball in the bag. “You can’t set me up like that, then say—” he imitated her sauntering to the plate with the bat on her shoulder and shrugging—“it doesn’t matter.”
“First off, I do not talk or wiggle like that.”
