The Change Up (9 page)

Sam's face twisted a little, and his eyes shot to Rachel. “I, uh, don't play anymore, Mr. Reed. It's been a long time actually.”

“Oh,” her father said, looking confused. “I'm sorry to hear that.”

“That's alright.”

For one blissful second, Rachel thought that would be the end of it, and she could finally get her father out of there, but then Sam took advantage of the situation and added, “I'm glad I ran into you, Mr. Reed. I've been wanting to talk to you about something baseball related.”

“It will have to wait,” Rachel said, cutting Sam off and tugging on her father's arm. “I bet Mom is looking for us too, Dad. You guys are always getting your wires crossed.” Rachel played it off by giving Sam a quick smile. She hoped it conveyed this was all perfectly normal and her parents were a little crazy.

Thank God her father followed her. When she was sure Sam wasn't going to come after them just to plead his case on behalf of the trees, Rachel took a deep breath and prayed she'd covered well enough. The last thing they needed was for this to get around town and somehow tarnish the baseball team. She'd have to do damage control on top of everything else. With any luck, Sam had been so focused on trying to bend her father's ear about those damned trees that he hadn't noticed exactly how out of sorts her father had been. Yes, that seemed highly possible. By now, Sam had probably forgotten about anything other than winning the battle for the trees. Except …

Rachel could've sworn she'd felt his eyes on her back all the way to the tent.

• • •

Sam watched Rachel walk away arm in arm with her father. What the hell had just happened here? One minute he'd been helping his family at the Sutter & Sons Landscaping tent, and the next he was pulling Rachel's father out of the middle of the crowd, where he looked ready to pass out. There was also that whole awkward baseball conversation. Something wasn't right with the man, and Rachel had sure been acting weird.

When Sam got back to the tent, Luke asked, “Is everything okay?”

“I don't know,” Sam said honestly.

He kept glancing in the direction of the Reeds' tent, wondering if maybe the man had suffered a stroke or an aneurysm. Maybe none of those things were a possibility, but his gut told him whatever was going on, it was serious. Once the crowd died down around here, he would take a walk. It wouldn't hurt to make sure Mr. Reed was okay. It also wouldn't hurt if Sam was able to get the man alone for a moment so he could plug for those trees—as soon as he knew nothing terrible had happened, of course.

For the rest of the afternoon, the Sutters took turns fielding questions from potential customers and trying to attract more people to their tent. It wasn't hard. Sam's father was an attraction in and of himself—calling out to people in funny accents and offering kids candy as they passed. It helped take Sam's mind off the one thing he hated thinking about more than his mother's death: his reaction when people wanted to talk about his baseball career.

Eventually, things died down. The crowd thinned out. A lot of people had headed off toward the pavilion for the barn dance, and the rest were probably claiming their spots for the fireworks. Still, there were enough people lingering around that Sam's dad could be heard bragging about taking care of the baseball field while trying to convince some guy who owned several rental properties to use Sutter & Sons for his landscaping and snow-removal needs. Nearby, Luke was explaining overseeding to Mrs. Jennings, who was already their client but never satisfied with the plan she was paying for. And Mandy was FaceTiming with their two little ones, who were at home with a sitter and refusing to get ready for bed. That left Sam unoccupied when his neighbor, Dave Little, walked up wearing an Arlington Aces cap.

Sam glanced toward the Reeds' tent again. “What's going on, Dave?”

“Nothing much.” He reached over the wood-plank counter to shake Sam's hand. “Amy has the boys at the snack tent, so I thought I would hit some of the non-crafty tents while I have the chance.”

“Nice.” Sam glanced at the hat again.

Dave must've recognized the target of Sam's attention because he asked, “Like it?” and adjusted the brim. “Some woman tried to sell me season tickets. Seemed a little desperate.” He laughed.

“Rachel Reed,” Sam said mindlessly.

“You know her?”

“I do. She dated my brother back in high school. Now I deal with her over at the field.” At least until he finagled it so Ian could take his place … or she fired them after he filed a formal complaint about those trees. Dave just might be the neighbor he needed to get that ball rolling. Standing three feet away from his father wasn't the best place to discuss an act of treason, though, and Sam still wasn't sure he could pull the trigger on something so underhanded.

He'd thought about appealing to his father on behalf of his mother's love for those trees, but that could create an entirely different mess—one that started with his father agreeing that Rachel planting trees and making a donation in Mary Sutter's name was a nice compromise and ended with Sam admitting how uncomfortable he was with the idea of staring down a baseball field for the rest of his life. “We've been contracted to act as grounds crew,” he added, less than happily.

“You don't say. So when it rains, you'll be one of the guys rolling out the tarp?”

Hell no.
Sam wasn't going to be around long enough for that.

Dave kept right on talking. “Maybe I'll have to rethink those season tickets. I couldn't authorize something that pricy without talking to Amy first. Of course, she thinks it's a racket. She says we can drive to Pittsburgh and see real baseball a couple Saturdays during the season for less money and have a better time. I think she just likes the idea of staying in a hotel and having someone else clean up after us. You know?”

Real baseball?
That hurt. Sam knew what it felt like to be clawing your way up from the depths of a farm system. The odds stacked against guys in unaffiliated organizations were even worse. They deserved better than some offhanded comment by some guy who probably hadn't played the game past middle school.

“This
will
be real baseball, Dave, with real guys taking the field. Only these guys will be playing like there's no tomorrow, because for them, there's not. No long-term DL. No minor-league rehab. Just a bunch of men who love the game and are willing to play their hearts out for less than minimum wage and a chance at something.”

“Sounds miserable.”

Sam stared off into space. “Not if it's the air you breathe.” He'd been that way once, willing to play through anything. “For guys like that, it's one step away from heaven.”

“Really? So you think I should spring for those tickets?”

Sam looked at the man. “I can't tell you what to do with your money, but I can tell you those guys would be grateful to have a full house. And your boys will go nuts. If this league is anything like the minors, you'll have more than pierogi races and trivia contests between innings. Hell, out here you might have cows on the field.” Which added to his dislike for the grounds-keeping gig. “It will be a real father-son bonding experience. Talk about memories.”

“Hey, man, thanks.” Dave extended his hand. “I'm going to see if I can find your friend. What was her name again?”

“Rachel.” Sam stopped short of telling Dave she wasn't a friend, just a nuisance. Why bother going into details? Besides, a crack like that would seem unnecessarily cruel, considering something worrisome had definitely been going on with her father.

Again, Sam looked toward the Reed tent, where Dave was headed. A clear image of Rachel's troubled expression remained forefront in his mind.

Eventually, Luke asked, “Are we ready to pack it up?”

Mandy nodded enthusiastically and added something about getting home in time to kiss the kids. Paul agreed for the sake of snagging some of those food-truck tacos he suspected would sell out before sundown. And Sam had somewhere else he wanted to be, too.

After what had happened, any decent human being would check on Danny Reed … and his daughter.

Rachel sat on a box of books with her head in her hands. For the hour since her mother had swept her father away from the festival so he could rest, Rachel and her sister had lamented Danny's obvious decline until it came down to Helen Anne saying, “He's never gotten lost before.”

“So does that mean it's going to start happening more often?”

Helen Anne shrugged. “I don't know. If I didn't have the store and Macy, I would insist on being at the next appointment with them. Sometimes I think they don't tell us everything because they don't want us to worry.”

“Too late for that.”

Macy came bounding into the tent with a bag of cotton candy, which stopped the conversation and left Rachel on the box with her thoughts. How long before he really didn't remember anything—including them?
Long.
She sat a little straighter and told herself it wasn't anything a little medication adjustment couldn't fix. But she didn't know that for sure, so there was no real comfort there. One thing she did know, they couldn't keep the diagnosis quiet much longer. Other people had probably begun to notice something was strange. Sam sure had.

She slumped again, recalling the torturous look on Sam's face when her father had asked him about baseball. What had happened to his career? When she'd Googled him the other night just to make sure he wasn't some radical environmentalist with the likes of Greenpeace behind him, all she could find were a handful of statistical mentions about his time in the minor leagues. Nothing overly impressive. Nothing dramatic by any means. Now, she really wondered.

“Excuse me.”

Rachel looked up to see one of the men she'd tried to sell season tickets to. He was wearing an Arlington Aces hat.

“I'll take four,” he said.

A silver lining in the storm clouds.

She used her laptop to complete the purchase through the team's website and sent the man on his way with a confirmation emailed to his phone. The success of the sale went a long way in calming her frayed nerves, because closing a deal was the best medicine. She needed to focus on that bottom line.

“I'll be back,” she told Helen Anne, and then she hit the pavement looking for another sale. Four was better than none, but she wanted to go home with at least a dozen sold.

Since the twenty-five-tickets-free wording seemed to have worked for the last guy, Rachel stuck with that. Only to have two people wave her off and walk away before she could even start her spiel. How frustrating! If she had a PowerPoint presentation and her iPad, she'd be golden.

“Excuse me,” she called out to a couple pushing a baby stroller. The woman turned, and Rachel recognized her immediately as a former classmate, but she couldn't remember her name.

“Rachel Reed? Holy cow! Is that you?” The woman left the stroller in her husband's care and walked closer.

“It's me. How are you?” What the heck was her name?

“Great! I had a baby. Finally. Can you believe that?”

Rachel's eyes went wide as she shook her head with a disbelief she didn't feel. “That's wonderful! Good for you.” And then she braced herself for the inevitable questions about her family, her husband, her little ones. The whole damn world seemed hell-bent on tying happiness to the nuclear family. It used to make her mad; now it just made her feel sorry for them and their myopic view.

The woman eyed Rachel's baseball cap. “Are you back in Arlington full-time?”

“Not full-time. I'm actually selling season tickets for the Arlington Aces, helping my family out. If you buy a full season-ticket package today, you'll get twenty-five tickets free. Fifty percent off! That's crazy.”

Rachel smiled brightly, hoping to seal the deal, but the unnamed woman just stared at her for a moment before she said, “That is definitely crazy. I'll have to pass, though. Not much of a baseball fan. Take care.” She backed away, rejoined her husband and baby, and left Rachel without a sale once again.

Rachel threw her arms up, looked at the darkening sky, and said, “What am I doing wrong?”

“Well, you
did
just try to sell baseball tickets to a woman whose family fought the district to defund the athletic program in favor of the arts back when we were in high school.”

Oh my God!
But it wasn't. It was Sam Sutter. Again. She would've lamented his impeccable timing a bit longer had she not realized the faux pas she'd committed a few seconds ago. “That was Penelope Rollins?”

“Penelope Rollins-Sullivan. She's married now. Her husband is some big-time orchestra director in Pittsburgh.”

Well, that explained the strange look Penelope had given her.

Rachel slapped a hand to her forehead. “I didn't know.”

Sam shoved his hands into his pockets and nodded. “It happens. You miss a lot when you're gone.”

“Yeah, but that? That was kind of big.” And it was coming back to her in big chunks of distant memory now.

Helen Anne had been on the cheerleading squad the year Penelope's family had sued the school. The story had been all over the news because Arlington Area High School had been forced to cancel the entire football season due to the litigation. Rachel had heard about the endless drama from her very aggrieved sister, who, along with the cheer squad, had hand-washed every car this side of the Allegheny Mountains in order to pay for new uniforms they weren't even going to get to wear. “I just can't believe I missed something that big,” Rachel said, reflection in her tone. God, was she starting to lose her edge, too?

“Don't beat yourself up. I've missed bigger.”

She didn't know what he was talking about, but his face twisted like it had the moment her father had asked him about baseball. “Sam—”