Page 34 of The Do-Over

“We get to watch in the players’ box, it’s so cool!” said Zack. “They have food and everything.”

Jenna made a little face, since that box was her least favorite part of attending games. She always felt out of place among the wives. Not that anyone was nasty or rude, but she was generally the only ex-wife there, which was awkward. The others didn’t know what to say to her, or treated her as if she’d come down with some fatal disease called divorce. As if she represented the worst possible thing that could happen to a baseball wife.

Then again, it could just be her imagination. As someone who’d spent her whole life in teensy Lake Bittersweet, Minnesota, much of it being raised by an eccentric genius artist, it didn’t take much for her to feel out of her depth.

“You didn’t enjoy the players’ box?” Lacey asked.

Jeez, how did she manage to catch every little nuance? That woman was damn good at her job.

“Of course I did,” she said with all the pep she could summon. “But I usually preferred to be closer to the field. The box is more about socializing. When I go to a game I like to watch the game.”

“Really? Are you a baseball fan?”

“Of course!”

“Jenna knows more about baseball than your average hardcore fan,” said Billy.

“Because of your husband?” Lacey asked, already jotting that down in her notes. “Ex, that is?”

“I was already a fan before Billy and I got together. It was because of Field of Dreams, she explained, feeling a little sheepish. “I saw that movie about fifteen times. That’s how I fell in love with the game.”

“So you liked fictional baseball.” Lacey smiled as she took a sip of her cocoa. That brandy was doing its job, making her softer, more relaxed. “The games are a different story. They can be kind of slow, no?”

Maybe not softer.

“Slow?” Jenna shook her head. “That’s only because so much strategy is going on. My sister and I used to try to guess what the players were saying and thinking during those long pauses. Of course we’d make up things like, ‘that’s the last time I eat liver for breakfast, I can still taste it every time I burp.’ Like, ridiculous things. We had no internet and my dad hated TV except for baseball games. So we figured out how to entertain ourselves.”

She drew in a breath, surprised that she’d rattled on so much about that. Looking around, she realized that her entire family was listening.

“You never told us that, Mom!” Zack said, almost indignant, as if he was supposed to know everything about her.

“I never talked about that?” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “It was silly.”

“It was hilarious.” Billy stretched out his legs and leaned back on his elbows. “Like a comedy routine. With voices and everything. I laughed my…butt off listening to them. I’ll never forget the first time I played opposite one of the players they did the voices for. I kept hearing Annika’s voice going on about how itchy that new laundry soap was and how he was dying to scratch his balls.”

Both kids burst out into howls of laughter. Jenna bit her lip as she stole a glance at Lacey. She and Billy weren’t particularly careful about language around the kids. He was a ballplayer, after all, and had been known to curse like a pirate. Not that “balls” was a dirty word…or was it?

One of her biggest parenting challenges was that she knew her own upbringing had been…odd. She didn’t know the “normal” ways of doing things, so sometimes she overcompensated. Like when she preplanned every lunch bag for the next month. And sometimes she let things slide that other mothers might not permit.

Whatever. She had two boys and they knew what balls were. So sue her.

She caught a wink from Billy, and they shared a secret smile.

“You’re doing great,” he always used to tell her, from their very earliest days of being parents. He’d always been a cheerleader like that. He’d never made her feel like she didn’t know what she was doing…possibly because he felt even more at sea than she did. Out of their respective childhoods, she was happy that at least she’d grown up in one house—the castle by the lake—with an artistic if unpredictable father who gave her and Annika lots of creative freedom.

He might have been neglectful, but he didn’t push alcohol on them.

“I understand Annika lives with you?” Lacey was asking. “I’m hoping for a chance to interview her as well.”

“That’s totally up to her.” But Jenna already knew that idea would go nowhere. Annika didn’t approve of any of this. “But yes, she lives here. She works a lot of night shifts. She’s a nurse.”

“And she’s an important part of your co-parenting system, is that right?”

“She is. Ever since…” She glanced at the boys. They soaked in everything the adults said, so she always watched her words when discussing anything to do with her and Billy. “She’s lived here about three years. It’s very helpful to have her around. School pickups, play dates, that kind of thing. Plus, she’s fun, right boys?”

The boys nodded through their yawns. Billy got to his feet and poked at the fire with the ironwork poker her father had made during a passing interest in welding.

“And Billy, how is it for you having your ex-sister-in-law around? I can imaging there might be some tensions, or areas of disagreement.”

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