and I, for one, don’t want to see you throw it all away. Now, if you need a tutor, you just say so. Or if you need more time for studying, we can certainly see about cutting back your delivery hours ….”
Less time dedicated to his on-campus job was a nice thought, particularly on days of lugging cadavers from Norwalk State Hospital for the Science Department. Yet a nice thought was all it was. Besides school expenses, TJ needed all the dough he could get for house bills and Maddie’s lessons and everything else in the goddamned world that chomped its way through a pocketbook.
“I’ll be fine, Coach,” he broke in. He repeated himself, taking care to stress his gratitude. “Really, I’ll be fine.” If it hadn’t been for the guy’s encouragement, TJ would have dropped out of college long before now.
Coach Barry rubbed the cleft in his chin before he heaved a resigning breath. “All right, then. You know where to find me.”
TJ obliged with a nod. He remained on the faded lines of the diamond as his coach walked away and disappeared from sight. At that moment, in the wide vacancy of the ball field, TJ suddenly realized why he had always been a pitcher.
Because alone on the mound, he depended only on himself.
Maddie stood on the Pier, searching, searching. Though unbuttoned, her long russet coat hoarded heat from her anxious rush across town. A current of strangers split around her like a river evading a rock. An ordinary rock, medium in size, nearly invisible. And Maddie preferred it that way. Only when channeling another’s composition through her bow did she now find comfort in the spotlight.
Scanning faces, she hunted for Lane’s distinct features, his sister’s pint-sized frame. Outside the Hippodrome was where he had asked Maddie to meet them. But they weren’t there, and she didn’t have the luxury of time to wait patiently. It was a quarter after noon. She had but fifteen minutes to spare. He couldn’t have left early; she’d told him she would be here as soon as she could. She needed to find him, before he left, before his train.
Before she lost her nerve.
“Lane, where are you?” At the very moment she whispered the words, she spotted the back of his familiar form blinking between passersby. His golden skin peeked out between his short black hair and the collar of his coat.
She prepared herself while striding over the wooden planks to reach him. “I’m so glad you’re still here,” she said, touching his arm. He turned toward her, revealing the face of a man with sharp Italian features. Mustard stained his large lips.
“Pardon me,” Maddie said. “I thought you were somebody else.” Then she streamed into the mass, head down. Blending.
The smell of onions from a hot-dog stand caused her stomach to growl. In her haste, she’d left the lunch Bea had insisted she take for the bus ride over. Macaroni salad and a baked-bean sandwich. Maddie had grown to love both as a child, long before she could comprehend which meals were served solely to survive the shop’s less-profitable months.
But she couldn’t think about any of that now. She had ten minutes to find—
“Maddie …”
She focused on the vague call of her name, filtering out the crowd’s chatter. Notes of “In the Mood,” from the band on a nearby stage, took greater effort to block; music dominated her hearing above all else.
“Maddie!” At last, the soprano voice guided her to Emma’s china-doll face. The girl was scurrying toward her with a smile that made perfect little balls of her rosy cheeks. Maddie used to secretly babysit her when Lane was in high school. Naturally, he had preferred outings with TJ over watching his pesky little sister. He’d been adamant about paying by the hour, though Maddie would have done it for free. And one look at the youngster reminded her why.
“Hiya, pretty girl.”
Emma leapt into her outstretched arms. Adoration seemed to flow from the child’s every pore. It filled Maddie’s heart so quickly she had to giggle to prevent her eyes from tearing up.
As their arms released, she noted a substance on Emma’s hands. “Ooh, you’re sticky. Let me guess, cotton candy?”
“And a caramel apple,” Emma boasted. Then her smile dropped. “Don’t tell my mom, okay?”
“My lips are sealed.” An easy promise to make. Running into the woman, unreadable in her stoicism, had always occurred by mere chance, and Maddie’s talk with Lane would do anything but change that. “Say, Emma, where’s your brother?”
Emma twisted to her side and pointed. There was Lane, weaving around a family ordering ice-cream cones. He wore a trench coat and sunglasses. A bright red balloon floated on a string clutched in his hand. When Maddie caught his attention, he flashed a smile, the breathtaking one that seemed crafted just for her. She felt a warm glow rise within her.
“I was getting worried,” he said, once they were close.
“Sorry it took so long. We had customers, so I couldn’t leave until Bea showed up.”
Emma tugged her brother’s sleeve, looking troubled. “I thought you were gonna get yellow?”
Lane glanced at the inflatable swaying overhead, as though he’d forgotten it was there. He squatted to her level. “Turns out they were out, kiddo. But since Sarah Mae’s favorite color is red, I was hoping this would do.”
Emma contemplated that, and nodded. “Good idea. Sarah Mae loves balloons.”
Maddie smiled at the reference to the girl’s doll, equally ragged and beloved, while Lane tied the string around his sister’s wrist.
“On
The Japanese term for “brother” was one of the few things Maddie understood about Lane’s foreign culture.
He checked his watch. “I guess we can. We only have a few minutes, though, so don’t go far. And don’t wade too deep into the water.”
“Okay, okay.”
“You promise?” he pressed.
Emma sighed, her pinkie drawing an x over her chest. “Cross my heart,” she said, and rolled her eyes, not in rebellious defiance, but in a gentle manner. As if at the age of eight, she could already see his barriers for what they were. An expression of caring. It wasn’t so different, Maddie supposed, from the strict guidelines TJ had instilled after assuming their father’s role.
Except that she herself wasn’t eight.
Side by side, Lane and Maddie walked toward the beach. Strangers with rolled-up pants and buckets and shovels speckled the sandy canvas. A choir of seagulls cawed as they circled yachts in the harbor, muting the hollers of a teenage boy chasing a scampering black puppy. The dog was yipping toward a pair of brilliant kites dancing in the air. With attentive eyes, Lane watched
