Stef Ann Holm (21 page)

“Mackenzie is my daughter,” he said.

L
ucy didn’t respond in what felt like forever, and for a second, Drew regretted telling her the truth.

He’d been thinking about it for a while, ever since he saw Mackenzie and Jason were interested in each other. Call it a hunch, but he’d trusted Lucy the first time he’d met her. With her boys at Opal’s that day, it was evident she had a good heart, and was a grounded person. In the two months he’d known her, he’d seen her acting fair, being honest and always determined. He couldn’t think of anything he didn’t like about her.

“But she said her father was a truck driver,” Lucy finally said.

“I’m her real father. Bobby Wilder was someone her mother married when I denied getting her pregnant.” The words were hard for him to speak. He knew good and well they made him sound like a jerk. And he had been.

“You denied it?”

Drew took Lucy by the hand, walked her to the cliff where a picnic bench overlooked the lake. “Sit down. It’s a long story.”

She did, slowly lowering herself onto the bench, hands folded in her lap.

The July night was still and cloudless, and the stars were hazy from gunpowder smoke lingering in the sky. They’d yet to set off the big aerials paid for by city funds. Everyone was still busy setting off their legal fireworks bought at the local stands.

Turning toward him and meeting his eyes, she waited.

Drew fought to form the words. Besides Caroline and Lynette, only Jacquie knew most of the whole story. But when he’d told her, he’d left pieces out, glossed over some details that, at the time, were too painful for him to talk about.

Being with Mackenzie, having her here, trying to reconnect with her, he had been reexamining all his choices, going back as far as childhood and high school. He realized now that the pattern set up for him as a kid had influenced the decisions he’d made as an adult. It didn’t let him off the hook for all the stunts he’d pulled, but it explained things he hadn’t fully understood about himself.

“I was a hero jock in high school and not smart enough to do anything else.” He shrugged, painting a portrait of a ballplayer who hadn’t taken his books very seriously. “Why let school interfere with my education?” He laughed, trying to see humor. “I barely passed my classes, but I got a diploma. I went straight from Alhambra High into the bush leagues. I had a natural talent and had played most of my childhood. T-Ball. Little League. About the only thing my dad ever encouraged me to do was hit baseballs.”

Drew rested his forearms on his thighs and knitted his fingers together. He let his mind go, and it was as if he could see his past in front of him. He saw himself as a little kid in the front yard of their rambler with its single car garage, his dad pitching a plastic baseball for him to hit with a plastic bat.

“My dad wasn’t good at anything. He changed jobs a lot, was never content with one thing. It drove my mother nuts—literally. I don’t think they ever loved each other. One day she just left. It hit me pretty hard. But I got over it.” Pausing in reflection, Drew said aloud, “You know, out of all the people in Mackenzie’s life, I probably know best how she feels. My mom left me and I had to cope without her. Just like my daughter’s had to cope without me. Weird. But she doesn’t know that about me. I haven’t told her.”

Shaking off those thoughts, he went on. “I moved through the minors fairly quickly, doing a lot of partying. I’m not proud of it, but that was just the way it was. Shit happened. You get caught up in a different world. Women are always available. Drinks are always in your hand. You don’t pay for anything and life is good. Then when the Cincinnati Reds stroked me a check for some serious money, I thought I was really something.”

Lucy bit her lower lip.

“I had some good years. When we were heading for the play-offs there was one game riding on me, and I remember standing on the bump. Sun in my eyes blinding me. My knees were shaking, palms sweating, and my stomach was in knots. I knew I couldn’t let the team down. I got us out of the inning with only one hit, and we won the game.” Drew’s memories rose at once, and he relived all those glory days. “If it hadn’t been for sports, I don’t know where I would have ended up.”

“You would have done something useful with your life,” she said optimistically.

He wanted to share her faith, but he couldn’t. He knew himself too well. “In ’87, I had my agent get me out of that Cincinnati deal so I could come home to L.A. The Dodgers signed me on, and the next year, we won the Series. It was sweet. I was on the top of my game, the winning pitcher, an MVP nod. Life just didn’t get any better than that. Unless it was at the bottom of a Patrón bottle.”

In his mind, he tried to conjure the taste of tequila, the burn of it against his tongue, the heat in his mouth, the way it went down his throat. He couldn’t really remember. And he was glad. Every once in a while, he thought about having a drink, but he knew it only took one. He’d already had a half-dozen chances—and that part he recalled very clearly.

His life had changed for the better since becoming sober. He lived well, lived healthy. He lived for the moment, rather than the glory. The blackouts were gone, the mindless sex with women he couldn’t remember, the lifestyle that was too large, the way he felt like death in the morning.

Being who he was now actually took less effort. He liked who he’d become, but even so, he knew he could bring back a little of the old Drew Tolman anytime he wanted. That bad boy, the dude who could make anyone smile. He sort of liked that ability. It was flattering when women stopped, when they smiled. It was like living
la vida loca,
but without a hangover.

“Remember that show
MacGyver?
” he asked, gazing at the lake, watching ripples of water glistening in the starlight. “I was asked to have a guest role on it, but I showed up drunk, got in a fistfight with one of the cameramen and was escorted off the set.”

Lucy’s brows rose as she digested that news.

Drew exhaled, wondering if she’d ever talk to him again after tonight.

“I was paid big money to be a certain kind of man. A public figure. A sports star. I wasn’t a robot. I was a man who had warm blood, and sometimes it got hot in there running through my veins. So I started drinking. A lot.

“The alcohol kicked my ass and I never minded sleeping on other people’s floors. I woke up, didn’t know where I was. The drinking started to affect my performance. I couldn’t accept it was my own destructive behavior that was doing it. Denial. You learn that in AA.”

Her eyes remained on his, dark pools of emotion, and if he wasn’t mistaken, empathy. He didn’t deserve hers, but he appreciated it.

“I was officially in a slump. Drinking daily. I over-analyzed every pitch. I started getting a little nervous entering a game. I got no velocity on my pitches, and hitters started hammering on me. I was brought into the front office, reamed out by my manager, by the bean counters, by everyone associated with the club. Being taken down verbally like that sucked. But I didn’t quit drinking.

“That fall, my girlfriend called me an alcoholic and I told her she was full of it. She quit seeing me, and I drank more to put her out of my mind.” Drew rubbed his temple, made a face. “It was almost spring training and I wasn’t worth a crap physically. I’d lost weight and the trainers called me into the camp and told me I’d better knock it off. I couldn’t even remember the schedule for Vero Beach, but I knew I had to be there in a month. So I quit drinking. I needed to prove to myself that I could do it. And I did.”

“That’s a good thing.” Lucy looked him in the eye, her tone one of encouragement.

“I quit for all of a few months, then I was right back. We were at Vero Beach, training. And that’s where I met Caroline. Mackenzie’s mother. She was pretty, blond, a nice smile. She worked at the hotel where we stayed. I got her to come to my room and we were together the whole summer while I was there.”

Lucy looked at him with heightened interest. “Well, then you had to know Mackenzie was yours.”

“I didn’t know any such thing. You want to know how many times I’ve had women tell me I got them pregnant?”

“No.”

He felt like a shit, but he said it anyway. “Dozens. And you know how I know that none of them could be telling the truth?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Drew. You tell me.” For the first time since she’d sat down impatience rang in her words.

“I used a condom every single time. I don’t care how far gone I was, I
always
made sure I didn’t get anyone pregnant.”

“Condoms fail.”

“Apparently this one did.”

“When did she tell you?”

“She was two months pregnant when she called me. We’d already gone back to L.A. to begin the season, and I told her she was wrong about it being mine, that there were any number of guys in that hotel who could have been the father.” With his heartbeat slamming in his chest, Drew waited for Lucy to tell him he was a jerk.

He relived that conversation with Caroline, knowing now the life-changing pain he had caused her, the humiliation to her family and sister. To this day, he struggled to forgive himself. Maybe he never would.

Lucy stared at him, licked her lips, but said nothing.

“You can say it. I was a jerk.”

“You were.”

For some reason, that validation made him feel better.

“Obviously, at some point,” Lucy said, “you told Caroline she was right.”

“While I never saw a physical resemblance between me and Mackenzie, I guess I did half-ass believe she could be my daughter. I never threw any of her photos away, and I kept a couple in my locker. But booze clouded my judgment and it was years before I could admit to myself that Caroline had always been telling me the truth.” Drew dug into the past, a dark pit of recollection. “Mackenzie was seven when Caroline brought her to spring training camp and asked me to come into the bleachers and meet her. I refused.”

Lucy sucked in her breath, and it almost felt good to feel her disdain. It opened the wounds again, made him
feel
raw. There were days now when he forgot about how painful it must have been for Caroline, and it was good to remind himself of that, to feel what she had felt. Perhaps in a way, Caroline was vindicated when he hurt, when his actions cut deep into his heart and made him accountable.

“Yeah, I know.” Drew stared into the sky. “I did go see Mackenzie when she was twelve, looked into her face and knew in my gut she was mine. Still, I wanted a paternity test. Caroline told me to go to hell.” Swallowing, he said in an uneven voice, “And I did, literally, when the drug scandal broke wide-open and my name was everywhere.”

“Steroids.”

Drew gave a wry smile to cover the humiliation that surrounded him. “That’s an easy thing to believe, isn’t it? Hell, sometimes I wish.” Rubbing the rough bristle of a day’s growth of beard, he said, “I left baseball because I couldn’t hit a ball, I couldn’t throw one and I sure as hell couldn’t function as a player or a man. I was a raging alcoholic. So I walked. Cost me a small fortune to break my contract with the Dodgers and check into the Betty Ford Clinic under an assumed name.”

“So…you didn’t do drugs?”

“Alcohol is a drug.”

Thoughtfully lifting her brows, she said, “Yes, I suppose you’re right.”

“I am right, Lucy. I’m an addict.” Although he told very few people those words, they were still difficult to speak. Being addicted to something said he had no willpower, was a failure. Even sober, he would always be an alcoholic, always have the predisposition to overindulge.

“I haven’t had a drink since 1998.”

“Do you think about it?”

“Sometimes,” he answered truthfully.

The sky was suddenly alive with fireworks bursting in colorful showers, bombs going off, rockets glaring and popping. For a long while, the two of them sat there in silence and watched.

Drew had a lot to think about. There were many old wounds that he still needed to heal. A bleakness settled into his heart. He wondered if he would ever be whole again.

Lucy finally spoke through the noise of fireworks. “And what about Mackenzie? She was twelve when you saw her. When did you see her again?”

“She was fourteen. I’d gone through the program, was able to live with clarity, and I wanted to tell her that I was sorry, that I knew she was my daughter—that I didn’t need a test. I apologized to Caroline, to her sister, Lynette, and I told them I wanted to make it up to everyone involved. But it was too late. Mackenzie didn’t want anything to do with me.”

“I’m sorry. But now she’s here.”

“Yeah. Since her mother passed away, Mackenzie’s had it pretty rough. I don’t want to mess her up any more than I have.” Drew shrugged in resignation. “I never got married. Sixth sense, I guess. I knew that Mackenzie would be a part of my life and I didn’t want to have to tell my wife that we’d have a knock on the door one day and it might be my daughter. I felt like one more complication in my life would be too much, and it wouldn’t be fair to anyone I got involved with.”

“I’ve wondered….”

“What?”

“Why you were forty-six and you’d never married.”

“That’s why.”

“I thought that maybe Jacquie—”

“Jacquie’s a good person. I know she comes across otherwise, but she’s a good person. She knew about Mackenzie. She’s been a friend to me in unexpected ways.”

Lucy’s gaze lowered; she looked at her hands. “Do you miss her?”

Drew answered truthfully. “Sometimes I miss her friendship, but I don’t miss the stress of our relationship and the direction it was headed.” His voice grew strained. “What about you? Do you miss your ex-husband?”

Her lashes flew up. “Good grief, no!” Then she grew suddenly very quiet. “Well, yes…yes. I miss the ideal. The whole thing about being married forever, having a fiftieth wedding anniversary and growing old together. I feel cheated because he cheated on me.”

“Do you ever talk to him?”

“I try and avoid it. He’s supposed to be coming up to see the boys, but I’m not holding my breath. Divorce is horrible enough without an absentee father. Being there as a parent is huge, and the kids suffer when that doesn’t happen.” She drew in a breath, looked at him. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t referring to you.”