Conviction (23 page)

I don’t know if they think I’m stupid or they can’t help it or what, but they’re having entire conversations with their eyes. If it wouldn’t be more awkward to get
up and leave, I’d do it. It’s Emily who looks away first. Her baby’s tugging at her hair, and she removes his fist and strokes his palm with her thumb. Then she turns to me and
says, brightly, “Well, if I remember right, it’s someone’s birthday today, isn’t it?”

I clear my throat. “You have a good memory.”

“I do. Seventeen now, right? Braden, do you know how old you’re making me feel right now?” To Trey, she adds, “Doesn’t it blow your mind? He just seems so grown-up.
Playing baseball, driving…Martin, when we were that age, that was the year you came with my family to Tahoe, wasn’t it? And you and I got lost on that awful hike, and I was sure
we’d die out there, and then my parents thought we’d done it on purpose so we could be alone?”

“Sounds about right,” he says, but the look he gives her means he doesn’t want to go in that direction. I think she’s going to ignore him—she sounds the way people
get when they’ve been holding something in and just want to come out with it, and anyway she always did that when they were together; he’d say he didn’t want to talk and
she’d press it—but she goes quiet.

Trey shifts in the booth like he’s going to offer her a seat, but then he doesn’t. “Uh—how’s Erik?”

“Oh, he’s fine. Still at the bank. We moved last year, so we’re remodeling. And of course we have our hands full with the kids.”

“What happened to your little one there? What’s the eye patch?”

“Surgery. Isn’t that the saddest?” She kisses the top of her baby’s forehead. “I cried for days. Emma—she’s three—wanted to get a matching patch
because she thought he might feel lonely being the only one.”

“Makes him look like a pirate.” Trey winces, then adds, quickly, “In a good way, I meant. A pirate baby. Cute kid.”

“Want him? I’m the youngest, remember, so I never knew how much babies just
cry
.” She nuzzles her chin against the baby. “Do you want to know an embarrassing story
about your brother, Braden?”

What I want, actually, is to be somewhere else. But I put on a smile. “Yeah, let’s hear it.”

“Once when I went to go visit Trey when he was at Santa Cruz, he took me to breakfast. We were sitting next to a mom with a little boy in a high chair, and I’d gotten up to visit the
ladies’ room, and when I came back Trey was sitting at their table, playing with the baby.
Complete
strangers, mind you.”

I force a laugh. That’s weird as hell.

“I always thought he liked little kids because they all reminded him of you.”

I don’t look at him and I can feel him not looking at me, too, but I think my face is going red. Obviously neither one of us says anything.

“And how about you, Martin?” Emily asks brightly, like she’s oblivious, which I doubt she is. “How’s your restaurant?”

Well. She has people to go home to at night, and my brother has his restaurant. Ouch. Trey says, “Holding up.”

“I’ve heard amazing things.”

“That’s kind of you.”

“You know, I saw you at the movie theater in Stockton last year. I tried to come say hi, but by the time I—”

“I wasn’t here last year.”

“In February? That weekend we had that awful storm? I thought you two saw me.”

“I haven’t been here in years.”

“I swear, you and—”

“No.”

There’s a long silence between them. Emily glances toward the door. She straightens her baby’s eye patch and rocks him up and down when he fusses. Then she says, quietly,
“Martin, I was so sorry to hear about your father.”

“It’s fine.”

“It isn’t. I tried to call, and I wrote to you, but you just disappeared. I asked Kevin, but—I just wanted to tell you that—”

He tilts his head toward me, barely, like I’m not supposed to see, but I do. She falls silent. Then she says, “If you’d give me your number, maybe we could talk
sometime.”

“I don’t really know how long I’ll be around.”

“All right.” She smiles again, a different smile. “Well.” She hitches her baby up on her hip. “Then I’ll let you get back to your dinner. It was so nice
running into you both. I’ll see you around, perhaps? Martin, you don’t—do you go to church?”

“Not so much these days.”

“I go to a different church now. First Episcopal of Stockton. You’d be more than welcome there.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Tell Erik hi.”

“Of course.”

She’s taken a few steps away when she turns, abruptly, and comes back. She puts her hand on Trey’s shoulder and he jerks away as if it’s searing hot.

“I forgot to tell you,” Emily says, “that when I heard you’d come back here just for Braden, I wasn’t surprised at all. I really wasn’t, because it felt so
like you. I wanted you to know that. And Martin—please, please believe me that I’m so sorry about everything that happened with your dad.”

Our burgers come flat and overcooked, the tomatoes crunchy and pink. Trey holds his up to study. “This is worse than I remembered.”

“I mean, it’s not birds you force-fed and strangled or whatever it is you have planned, but—”

“Ha. Don’t make me kick you again.” He takes another bite. “Just feels like you should be able to come up with a decent burger when you live somewhere that stinks like
cow shit half the time.”

“Don’t talk so loud. Mona will hear you.”

He surprises me then: he laughs, that little chuckle he used to have sometimes when he found something unexpected and amusing both. “You were just a little prick to her, so don’t
pretend you care.” He holds out his water glass. “Cheers.”

“Cheers.” I guess.

“Happy birthday, kid.”

When we finish, he lifts a couple fingers off the table to summon Mona when she walks by. I don’t say it, but it strikes me as rude. Mona says, “Now, Trey, did I see you talking to
Emily Fassel just now? When you two used to come in here and get milk shakes, I would tell myself, Well,
there’s
a beautiful young couple. I still have that picture I took of the two
of you sitting here together. I think I put it by the kitchen. I loved that picture. Erik Fassel is a lucky man.” She reaches for our plates. “But things go the way they go. And, hey,
you’re a lucky man, too: Emily paid your check.”

He jams the keys into the ignition and doesn’t look back as he reverses. I say, “Thanks for dinner.”

“Yeah, thank Em, apparently.”

“I meant thanks for going with me.” I glance at him. “Are you insulted?”

He shifts roughly into drive, then he sighs. “No. Emily always means well. One of the nicest people I ever met. Genuinely kind.”

“One of the nicest people you ever met and you dumped her after six years?”

“Make me sound like a monster, why don’t you.”

“Why’d you break up with her?”

“Braden, that was so long ago.”

“I really liked Emily a lot.”

“Fair enough. She’s a good person.”

“Then why’d you dump her?”

“Can you not phrase things to make me sound like a complete asshole? It just wouldn’t have been the right thing.”

“Did you not love her?”

“That’s an incredibly personal question, Braden.”

He sounds annoyed, but I think for just a second that, just because it’s me, I can get away with joking around with him and it’ll be all right. So I say, “Sorry you’re
jealous you don’t have your own pirate baby.”

He half smiles; I guessed right. But there’s something kind of sad about the smile, too. “You’re right. I could’ve had a pirate baby.”

“Nice going calling him that to his mother.”

“Yeah, thanks, asshole.”

I lean my head against the window and watch as we go past the school. “Anytime.”

That night the nightmares come again. My nightmares mingle now—the past and the future twisted together, the night of the arrest and the day I’ll have to go to
court. I struggle awake, my heart pounding, and then I get up as fast as I can and go downstairs. It’s stupid, maybe, but it feels like maybe they won’t follow me there.

There’s a scratching sound coming from the box Trey’s birds are in, and I toy with the idea of trying to hold one. Probably he’d be pissed. Every day he’s been feeding
them carefully, holding each one in place with one hand and pouring some kind of mashed-grain-and-water mixture down its beak with paper rolled into a funnel, writing notes about his dinner with
them that he sticks to the fridge. I leave their box closed, and I’m pouring a glass of water in the near-dark when there’s footsteps, and then the kitchen light flicks on and Trey
says, “Braden, it’s four in the morning. What are you doing up?”

I start to say I had a nightmare, but stop when I realize it’ll make me sound like a kid. “Just got thirsty.”

“What woke you up?”

I hesitate. Because that sounds like an invitation, maybe, so I’m about to tell him when suddenly there’s a noise from upstairs like someone walking, and I freeze. “What was
that?”

“Nothing. It’s fine.”

“No, Trey, didn’t you hear that? It sounded like—” Then I see his face. “Is someone…here?”

“Finish your water and go back to your room.”

“There’s someone here with you?”

“Go back to bed, Braden.”

“Who’s—”

“Don’t make me tell you again.”

“Fine, fine, I’m going.” But at the foot of the stairs, I turn around, barely hiding my grin. “Is it a girl?”

He practically herds me up the stairs. Maybe it’s just because I’m half asleep still, but I’m amused, even if he obviously isn’t. He waits for me to close my door, and
just before it clicks shut, he says, “I better not hear you come back out here again.”

I
n the entire history of Major League Baseball, exactly twenty-three people have ever thrown a perfect game. More people have been to outer space
or been president, and it’s happened only nine times in my lifetime. A perfect game means you allow no hits, no walks, and no hit batsmen, and unlike in a no-hitter, which itself is rare, not
a single batter makes it on base. You have to pitch a full game without relief. You face exactly twenty-seven batters, three in each inning, and whatever it takes, you have to beat down every
single one.

The thing about baseball is that when you’ve worked at it, when you trust yourself and you trust it, too, there’s always a part of you that believes, deep down, that anything could
happen. And days when things are going well, days you put away every batter who steps up to face you and you’re so dominant the strike zone belongs to you, there’s a time right around
the third or fourth inning when you start thinking:
Maybe
.

Of course, it never happens—a guy gets a cheap bunt off you in the seventh, maybe, or your left fielder loses a ball in the sun, or you put a guy on first with a walk. There are infinite
ways it can go wrong, but, like with everything, there’s only one way it can go right.

This past June, for the first time in Cardy’s career, my team made it to the state championship. We beat Brantley to take the league, Merced to take the district, Riverside to make it the
championship, and then, a Saturday in Long Beach, we played San Diego Day. I was throwing pure heat all day, beating batters down with such immaculate fastballs and changeups no one even got one
out much past the very tip of center field. It was in the sixth inning that I knew I had it, that I knew this game and every single player in it belonged to me, and that day, in front of eight
thousand people, including nearly a dozen scouts who kept calling my dad about me for weeks afterward, I threw a perfect game.

The night we came back home, Mona kept Jag’s open late for us, and half the town came out. My dad was the happiest I’d seen him maybe ever, and when I texted Trey to tell him, he
wrote back right away with just two words, all caps:
HELL YEAH.
It was the first time in my entire life I’d ever felt completely good about myself. The whole night was a rush, a flare
of energy I hadn’t come down from even on the long ride home, and when we finally went home that night I caught my dad as he was getting out of the car and bear-hugged him so tight I lifted
him off the ground, went upstairs, logged on to Facebook, and then sent a message to my mom.

Six months later, by the time I’d already given up, she wrote back. It was Christmas. My dad and I were eating steaks in front of the TV and watching
It’s a Wonderful Life
when I saw the message on my phone.

Hello,
it said.
Are you free on January 11th? There’s a Denny’s on Jefferson off the 110 that I can get to from my work. I can be there at four.