Page 120 of Running Home to You
She watched batting practice with him along the first-base line, soothed by the rhythm of hits echoing through the empty stadium. Abby nudged him as a rookie dinged bloopers to right field. “He’s off-balance,” she said.
Audie’s eyes widened. “What?”
“On the breaking ball.” She spit a few sunflower seeds over her shoulder. “I mean, he’s making contact, but it’s weak. He should shorten his swing.”
“And how do you know?”
Abby furrowed her eyebrows. “Because I can hear it. Can’t you?”
A week later, the Padres organization sent her to scout school. While she cringed at the clear nepotism, she also couldn’t deny it was a perfect fit—she spoke multiple languages, had lived and played in various countries, and most importantly, she could hear it. The game struck again. She could almost feel it.
Those first few months on the road presented new challenges.Missing flights, renting cars, adjusting to little sleep and shitty meals. The temptation of bars or a drink at the airport nearly broke her more than once, but she called her sponsor, found a meeting, muttered the Serenity Prayer with her teeth gritted. And each time she made it through another day, another game, another city, she proved something to herself. That she could be steady, that she could be patient, that she could be more.
“My name is Abby and I’m an alcoholic and addict.” She stood at the head of her AA group when she accepted her one-year chip. “For a long time, I used to believe that I was cursed. Maybe it’s the ballplayer in me, but I wore it, carried that shame like a fucked-up badge of honor. Because there’s something secretly glorious about curses. I’m sure the Red Sox and Cubs are happy about their World Series rings, but I think sometimes they miss the curse. That splintered, broken, unlucky part that becomes who you are. It’s a lot easier to blame your mistakes or a poor performance on a curse. To say it’s out of your hands. But it’s not. It’s in my hands now. It always was.”
A year later, when she spotted Kayson Cannon, Abby knew it was time. He played like his entire heart lived in it, the same love she recognized in Kate. One she hadn’t seen since. She just didn’t know if she was ready.
So like the many other instances when she didn’t know what to do, Abby picked up a bat. She tested its weight in her hands, took a practice swing, gazed out at the immaculate grass where so many greats had taken the field. She hadn’t hit in two years. Not since she smashed a dozen cars, landed in jail, and didn’t know if she’d ever pick a bat up again. If she’d ever feel it in her chest. But as she sauntered onto the dirt where Audie was wrapping up with a player, it surged in her.
“Hey, Dad, you got time for one more?”
He snapped his head to her, eyes stretched wide. She hadn’t called him that since he picked her up from the precinct and before then, not since she was a little girl.
“Claro que sí,” he said with a smile. He tossed her a few balls, andshe smacked each one. Not as powerful as before, but her body fell back into the old ways, no longer numb or empty.
“You are hitting lefty now?”
“Easier on the knee,” Abby said between swings. “There’s a kid out of Insley.”
“He good?”
“I think so.” She sliced another ball with a grunt. “I don’t know if I should go back though. If I’m ready. Maybe they should send someone else.” She paused. “What do you think?”
He smirked as he rotated a baseball in his hands. “I think we go where the game calls us.”
Audie tossed her a dozen more pitches, and she wondered how many times they had missed this chance. But as the stadium lights droned, as the players filed out, as everything fell quiet except her breath, except the ball, she thought perhaps it was because the game hadn’t called them back yet.
The bucket of balls emptied.
“A few more?” he asked her.
She adjusted the bat and nodded. “Yeah,” she said. And it felt like forgiveness. For her and for him. And for the first time in a long time, she knew exactly what came next.
The Case
The partners thought she’d have an interesting perspective when they assigned herWatterson v. First Foundations Charter.Kate never asked why and would long wonder if it was because they knew of her religious background, her dissertation on Title IX, or something else that she often worried was written across her face, though never spoken aloud. Either way, she dutifully dove in, invigorated by the notion that everything led her to this case—for more reasons than one.
Marcus Watterson, a teacher at First Foundations Charter, filed a lawsuit against his employer for wrongful termination after they claimed his views didn’t align with school values. He claimed the “views” in question were his sexuality. That, and just a few months prior, he’d agreed to be the advisor for a new LGBTQ student alliance club, which the principal and governing board shut down for the same reason.
The students protested with rainbow pins and flags, backed by Marcus, who used it as a teaching moment about the First Amendment. Little did he know the lesson would stretch beyond the classroom. When he and a handful of students and parents confronted the governing board about shutting down the club, the board said they were filing for religious exemption. They let Marcus go a week later.
Kate took on the case despite her lack of courtroom experience. Cortell & Griffin didn’t leave her or their reputation out to dry, of course, providing a full team and resources, but this constituted a plunge into the deep end. A make-or-break-your-career moment that both exhilarated and terrified her.
She needed the case for other reasons too. Mick’s wedding was just a month behind her, meaning Abby was just a month behind her. Their last conversation tormented her most nights as she tossed and turned and prayed for conflicting solutions—to stop worrying about Abby, to stop loving Abby; for Abby to call, for Abby to never call; most of all, for Abby to save herself, since she no longer could.
Ryan took Abby being her ex surprisingly well. He chalked it up to curiosity and youthful mistakes, though diminishing what they once had stung, even if it made him feel better. Still, if she spoke too long with a female colleague or another woman at church, she’d catch his watchful gaze across the way with his brow stitched.
She couldn’t say for certain whether that or the new high-profile case inspired his proposal, but the timing was suspicious.
