Torn (40 page)

“JT, you sure about this?” He was
being super generous.

“Kid,” he stated seriously as he
leaned forward and clasped his large hands on the top of his desk. “Your dad
was my best friend. He knew the risks with the job he did, and I promised if
anything ever happened to him, I’d keep an eye on his family. I wasn’t much
help with your mom, I had no idea things had gotten so bad, but I’ll be damned
if I’m letting you and Josh down now. You need anything, you tell me, ok?”

“Thanks, JT, I really appreciate
it.”

“You ready for the funeral
tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” I nodded with a sigh. “We’re
not doing a wake. I remember how much she hated Dad’s, saying they were morbid
and depressing. Josh and I are going to drive over the border into Arizona,
take the car as close as we can to where Dad’s helicopter went down, then hike
out to scatter her ashes there. She’d have wanted to be with him.” I blew out a
deep breath as it hit me that I was an orphan.

“You’ve lost too much for a kid
your age, Nate, but you’ve got to keep moving forward now. With your baseball skills,
the world’s your oyster. Whatever team comes calling, and they will, you can
take your pick and go anywhere in the country. You and I know that, much as you
talked the talk, it was never gonna happen as long as your mom was alive. She’d
never have left that house, and you wouldn’t have been selfish enough to put
your career in front of your brother’s, leaving him behind to look after her.”

“JT.” I shook my head, wondering
how he knew the one secret I hadn’t told anyone, not even Sky. Hell, I tried not
to even admit it to myself.

Acknowledging that my love of the
sport, my aspirations and everything I’d worked for, was just a pipedream, that
I was actually going to have to stay here in Boulder City, would have broken
me. There was no way I’d have let my little brother carry that burden
permanently. It was my job to take care of him and protect him, no matter the
cost. I’d needed the motivation of a big contract to get through college, to
finish my degree. Without it, I had no chance of getting a decent paying job as
a sports therapist. Knowing that fantasy was actually now a real possibility,
that I was actually within striking distance of being offered a deal and being
able to accept, was suddenly something very tangible. I could taste it, and I was
hungry for it. Instead of feeling weary and tired all of the time, it was like
I’d had new life breathed into me. It just sucked that it took my ma’s death to
give me back my hope and future. I stood up and offered him my hand as he
rounded the desk, but he pushed it out of the way and pulled me into a bear
hug, which I returned.

“You’re a good kid, Nate. Your
dad would have been so proud of you, the way you manned up and took care of her
and your brother. His dream was to see you play for a major league team. Go
make it happen.”

“Looks like I’ve gotta move first,”
I chuckled, slapping his back before we released each other.

“Marty Biggs was a good friend of
your dad’s as well, I’m sure I can talk him into lending you one of his trucks
and a driver for free, if you and Josh don’t mind doing most of the heavy
lifting yourselves? If I’m not slammed here, I can help when you arrive.”

“JT, you’re a legend,” I beamed.

“Go on, get out of here. Some of
us have work to do, and it looks like I’ll be losing one of my trainees next
year.” He gave me a cuff around the back of my head and I laughed. “Damn shame you’ve
got that amazing pitching arm, kid. You’d have made a damn fine mechanic, and
unless my two girls change their mind, I’ve got no one to leave this shop to.”

“If I make it big, JT, I’ll buy
it and make sure it keeps your name, ok?” I called over my shoulder as I headed
out, ready to eat and share my news with Josh and Sky.

“I’ll hold you to that, kid. I’ll
hold you to that,” he yelled.

Nate

Sunday

“You ok?” I panted, as I dropped
my backpack after checking the compass to find we were at the crash site
coordinates. I was fit, but that hike, even in these cooler spring temperatures,
had taken it out of me.

“No,” Josh groaned, gasping for
air as he plonked himself down on a boulder. “Please tell me if I outlive you,
that I don’t have to hike out here alone to scatter your ashes.”

“As long as you promise the same,”
I agreed, twisting the cap off a bottle of water and taking a long, slow draw
from it before wiping it and offering it to him.

“At least we have one blessing,”
he stated after chugging some back.

“Which is?”

“Imagine if she’d died in July. We’d
have killed ourselves as well, walking out here in that heat.” He raised his
eyebrows and I nodded.

“You’re not wrong. But at least
they’ll be together, it’s what she would have wanted. And they’d both have
wanted us to have our dreams. Now I get to move wherever I get offered a
contract, and you get to apply to LVPD instead of staying in Boulder City.”

“True. So, is this the place? If
so, let’s get it done. There’s no way I want to be hiking back in the dark.
We’d be eaten by coyotes, then have our carcasses picked clean by vultures.”

“We’re here,” I chuckled. He’d
always had a flair for the dramatic. I pulled out the plain, cheap box that
contained her ashes, unable to afford anything better right now.

“So, how do we do this? Hurl
them, like she used to throw her Captain Crunch at you?”

“No!” I shot him a look and
rolled my eyes. “We can either tip the box, or take handfuls and throw them.”

“I vote tipping, gently. First of
all, I bet you didn’t bring anything to test the wind direction, and much as I
loved Ma, I don’t want to get a face full of her. Second, it’s kind of weird to
think I’ll be touching parts of her body.”

“She doesn’t have a body anymore.”

“I know that, but it’s still …
her.
I don’t want to stick my hand in there, it doesn’t feel right,” he shuddered. I
had to admit he was right, I didn’t want to do it either. I stared at him for a
moment as he frowned. “What?”

“Just seeing which way the wind
is ruffling your hair,” I confirmed, turning to make sure my back was to it.
Josh came and stood at my side as I opened the box and took out the large bag
that was filled with the off-white powder.

“That’s it?” Josh whispered. “A
whole life is condensed into
that
?”

He was right, it was nothing
really. But then again, she was nothing anymore. Just like Dad. Here one
minute, gone the next. I took a sobering breath and opened the bag, and Josh
helped me to hold it as we carefully tipped it, pouring it out onto the red
rubble below us. It looked like sand, the wind picking it up and gusting it off
as fast as it hit the ground. I felt like something was sticking in my throat
as the last few grains fell, then danced off into the air, but for some reason
my tears wouldn’t come, even when I heard Josh sob. I shoved the empty bag back
into the box and turned to pull him against me, holding him as he cried. He’d
cried during the service as well, but I just couldn’t. I hadn’t cried since I’d
broken down on Sky that first morning.

“We’re all alone,” he sniffed
when he straightened up and blew his nose.

“No, we’re not. We’ve got each
other, JT and all of Dad’s friends, not to mention Sky and her parents. We’ve
kind of got our aunt and Billy, though they haven’t been much help these last
few weeks. We’re no more alone than we were when we lost Dad. We lost Ma the
same day, we just didn’t know it at the time.”

“I guess,” he shrugged with a
nod. I reached into my pocket and pulled out Ma’s wedding and engagement rings.

“You sure you’re ok with this? I
don’t mind if you want to sell them and keep the money,” I asked, giving him
one last chance.

“No, do it,” he confirmed. He
picked up a pointed rock and used it to dig a hole, and I placed her rings in
it, letting Josh scrape the dirt back over them, then put the rock on top. “What
if someone finds them?”

“No one will find them out here.
They’re too deep to stumble on and we’re too far out for someone to come
scavenging with a metal detector.”

We stood silently for a moment,
staring at the place where they were buried, our parents finally reunited, just
the way they’d have wanted. Josh turned away first and started walking back the
way we came.

“I haven’t forgotten my promise,”
I spoke quietly to the sky, hoping wherever they were, they could hear me. I
could still remember the day that Josh had started high school as a freshman,
while I was a junior. My parents had taken me aside that morning and asked me
to promise to take care of him, make sure he wasn’t bullied or picked on for
being the shy book geek. I’d promised I’d never let that happen, that I’d
always look out for him, and I would. I looked around as I heard Josh yell
something, pointing at the sky. A helicopter was approaching, taking the route
from Vegas to the Grand Canyon, the one Dad had been flying when his helicopter
had failed. It was almost like he was coming to get her, letting us know that
he would take over from here. I wasn’t into religion or spirituality or any of
that, but I felt oddly at peace as I stuffed the empty box into my backpack and
jogged to catch up to Josh.

It was late by the time we got
back to Boulder City, and Josh went straight to bed. I made myself a sandwich,
but when I lay down, I couldn’t sleep. I felt like I wanted to cry the final
emotions of the last few weeks out, the ones I’d bottled up to take care of
everything, but my tears wouldn’t come. It was the middle of the night when I
got dressed and snuck out of the house and drove up to Woodacre Drive, parking
around the corner from her house. I keyed in the access code to the side gate,
ran down the steps, and gently knocked on her door. It was two a.m. I shouldn’t
be here, but I needed to see her. I knocked again, a feeling of nausea building
in my gut, trying to claw its way up into my throat. A soft light appeared
around the edges of the roller blind on the glass door, which slowly opened.
Sky appeared, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes as she stood there in her
pajama short set with bed head, never looking more beautiful to me.

“Nate? Is everything ok?”

“I just, I needed to see you,” I
uttered. She nodded and grabbed my hand, pulling me inside before locking the
door behind me, then leading me to her bed. She climbed in and patted the
sheets next to her. I stripped down to my boxers and did as I was told, with
every intention of pulling her into my arms. Instead, she held hers out and
seconds later, I was lying in them, my head on her chest as the floodgates
opened and I finally sobbed for all that I’d lost.

Sky

Thursday Night

Since there were so many of us
wanting to support Nate for his first game of the season, which was taking
place on his home turf, we’d had to take seats in the stands, but he’d made
sure we had them as close to the dugout as possible. The atmosphere was electric,
and even Pops had been taken aback to hear the home crowd chanting “Hudson,
Hudson, Hudson” as he’d stepped up to the pitcher’s mound. He’d turned to find
me before he’d thrown his first ball and I’d blown him a good luck kiss, making
him grin. He’d finally confessed that he’d known he’d never leave Boulder City while
his mom was alive, and that was why he’d never had any nerves out on the field.
He knew he had nothing to lose, but suddenly there was everything to play for,
and tonight he was feeling the pressure. It had only been a few days since his
mom’s funeral as well. I’d been so pleased that he’d turned up in the night and
finally cried again. He hadn’t shed a tear through the service and I’d known he
was putting on a tough front, the one he’d perfected for the last two and a bit
years, but he needed to deal with his grief so he could focus on what was
important. And right now, it was his baseball.