Page 58 of Running Home to You
Winter Break
Kate seamlessly slipped back into farm life when she returned home for Christmas. She woke up to darkness, bundled in layers, tugged on her barn coat and boots, and clomped through the fog to the chicken coop. Since first grade, she’d tended to the family’s flock. All the Hutchins children helped maintain the farm, her mother assigning every child a task when they came of age. Kate preferred the chickens over the family dairy business, though she’d milked her fair share of cows and helped deliver more than one calf.
As she gathered brown and speckled eggs, bidding good morning to her favorite chickens, she breathed in and out to the count of four, narrowly avoiding hyperventilating as she’d done every day since returning. On the bus ride north for winter break, a premonition seized her. Well, not exactly a premonition, but the unshakeable sense that something horrible awaited. Some might call it anxiety, but Kate, for reasons she couldn’t explain, believed that danger lurked at home. The danger being that her mother and father would take one look at her and detect her impure thoughts, her lust, the tent, and Abby.
She longed for her in the frost, not much different from the coolness between them since the camping trip. Like so many times before, they never fully addressed the blurred boundaries of that night.
“I’m sorry about the tent,” Abby said at the next practice.
“We don’t have to talk about it.” Kate shook her head and repeated the phrase she told herself whenever she thought she might spiral into panic. “I was disoriented from the night before.”
Abby nodded. “Right. I was mostly asleep.” She bit her lip. “We’re good though?”
“Of course.”
After that, the only time they allowed each other a glimpse away from practice or studying was at the blue house, with their friends between them. Abby didn’t flirt, didn’t wink, didn’t make any pointed jokes that might rouse Kate’s temper, and did everything else at a respectable distance. It left Kate wondering which was worse—this new, sterile, safe version of them or facing the consequences of what she wanted.
She white-knuckled her way through Christmas with the secret, the danger, lurking inside. And while she successfully hid it, she suffered just as deeply. She didn’t dare say Abby’s name, let alone call and risk someone eavesdropping on one of their conversations, finding her overly joyous, flirtatious, the pieces aligning to reveal the truth. She sent a few texts instead, then hid her phone away, surviving off rations.
A few days before New Year’s, her father, Ray, drove them to the baseball field. The same field she’d spent her childhood longing to play on instead of watching from the stands while he coached. Kate still enjoyed the alone time with him—a rarity as the middle of seven. She credited him for always finding small ways to make her feel seen.
“It’s a blessed day to play God’s game.” Ray smiled at her, the same way he did his players. He said the phrase so often that after twenty years Eastern Washington Bible College painted it on the home dugout.
He lugged out a few buckets of balls, set up behind a net at the pitcher’s mound, and tossed Kate batting practice. She swung with abandon. She didn’t care about form. She simply unleashed. The last months of her hitting slump lingered, in fact, only seemed to worsen with her guilt, but away from Insley, she let herself go.
“Watch that back shoulder, Katie. Good.” Ray’s mild, patient instruction didn’t distract her. She nodded along, adjusted, and roped another ball. “Don’t forget the hips. Perfect.”
She crushed at least fifty softballs, sending the neon spheres to the frozen outfield. When they ran out, Ray pitched her baseballs, and Kate chopped at those too. By the end of the session, she shivered under a sheen of cold sweat.
“So much for a slump.” Ray threw an arm around her on the walk back to his truck.
“It’s easier out here.” Kate sighed.
“It’s the same everywhere,” Ray said as he tapped her forehead. “Remember, ‘It’s 90 percent mental. The other half is physical.’ ”
He chuckled at the Yogi Berra wisdom he’d quoted hundreds of times, and Kate laughed too. But on the ride home, the respite receded. The secret knotted her throat so tight she nearly choked.
“What’s on your mind, Katie?” Ray asked.
She met his eyes, duplicates of her own. “What do you mean?”
He shrugged. “We haven’t had much time to talk.”
Kate assured herself he wasn’t referring to her secret, even though she almost wished he would. Here, alone in his truck where they’d had countless talks about God and softball and life, she decided to untangle the cord if only to breathe. “I’ve been a little confused lately.”
“About what?
She wrung her hands as yellow farmland rolled by her window. “My friend Mick has a girlfriend.” Kate hated the stereotypical “friend with a problem” angle, but it was at least truthful. “They’re really happy together. I’m having a hard time understanding why it’s wrong.”
Ray nodded. He spoke with the solemn, methodical assuredness of a preacher. “Have you turned to scripture?”
“Yes.”
“And what has that told you?”
Kate bit her lip. “That it’s unnatural.”
“It’s sin.”
