There’s no accusation in it. No ask. Just information delivered plainly.
I stare at the message for a long time before putting my phone in my drawer and going back to work.
The third game I don’t hear about until my father calls.
He doesn’t call to tell me about the game. He calls to invite me to Sunday dinner, the same way he always calls, the same standing offer that punctuates my weeks. I say yes, the same way I always say yes, and show up at six with a bottle of red wine he’ll drink with dinner and a second one I’ll need afterward.
He makes pasta. We eat at the kitchen table with the television muted in the background, and my father asks about the studio, the backpiece I finished, and whether I’ve thought any more about the expansion I mentioned six months ago and have mentioned three times since without following through.
“The space next door becomes available in January,” I say. “I’ve been thinking about it.”
“Think faster,” he says, which is his version of encouragement.
Halfway through the meal, he puts his fork down and looks at me, and I recognize the look. It’s not the coaching look or the protective look, both of which I know well. It’s the father look. The one he used when I was sixteen, and he knew something was wrong before I’d said a word.
“The Steele situation,” he says.
I take a sip of wine. “Is that what we’re calling it?”
“It’s what the blogs are calling it. I’m calling it what it is.” He folds his hands on the table. “You ended it.”
“There wasn’t much to end.”
He’s quiet for a moment, and I can see him choosing his next words with the care of a man who has learned over several decades that the wrong sentence to his daughter costs significantly more than taking an extra ten seconds.
“How are you?”
The question sits between us, simple and enormous.
I look at my pasta. “Fine.”
“Ava.”
“I’m managing.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
I set my fork down. The kitchen is warm, the same kitchen it’s always been, the one I grew up in, eating cereal on Saturday mornings while he read game footage on his laptop across from me. There’s a familiarity here that makes honesty easier and harder at the same time.
“I’m not fine,” I say. “I made the right call, and it was still the hardest thing I’ve done in a while, and I’m going to work through it.” If I look at him right now, I’ll cry, so I keep my gaze locked on the pasta. “Don’t make me say more than that.”
He nods. Accepts it. Pours more wine into both our glasses.
The silence that follows is a comfortable one for approximately forty seconds, and then my father does something I wasn’t expecting. He says, “His last three starts have been difficult.”
I stay very still.
“Not a collapse. His mechanics are sound, his command is there.” He turns his wine glass once. “But pitching is ninety percent mental. You can have a perfect arm and a wrong head, and the arm doesn’t matter.” He pauses. “He’s pitching with something unresolved.”
“Dad.”
“I’m not saying this to make you feel guilty.”
“It’s doing that anyway.”
“I know.” He looks at me directly. “I’ve been coaching for thirty years. I’ve watched players fall apart over personal lives, watched relationships become the reason for every bad outing, watched very talented people make choices with the wrong part of themselves and pay for it in the standings.” He pauses. “I’ve also watched players come into their best seasons because they found something worth pitching for.”
I don’t trust my voice, so I don’t use it.
