I knew the feeling well.
Each drop-off and pickup came with its own small weight, a lingering reminder of the life we had built together and then promptly divided down the middle. But we made it work better than most, so I couldn’t complain.
“Have fun with Daddy,” Allie said, pressing one last kiss to Carolina’s forehead. “Mitchell and I will pick you up on Tuesday.”
“Okay!”
“I love you.”
“Love you, too, Mommy.”
Carolina darted past both of us and into the house, carrying her sourdough starter like a peace offering.
“Stove is hot, cutie,” I called after her. “Hands off.”
I left the door open behind her, allowing the scent of warm pine and rain-soaked pavement to drift inside.
The house was my own personal fortress, tucked back behind a winding gravel road, half an hour from the stadium, and surrounded by forest on three sides. Secluded, peaceful. Truthfully, it was the way I preferred it—I had never been much of a city boy.
Out here, the sound of the world felt muted. Fewer cars, fewer crowds, nothing but crows and the occasional low groan of branches shifting in the wind. Oh, and my friendly neighborhood rabbit, whom I had taken to calling Randolph. Hewas a cute fucker, though I was still salty about the havoc he had wreaked on my garden beds last year.
After years of living out of hotel rooms, and then in a high-rise, being in a place where I could hear the rain hit the roof and not a damn thing else felt like a kind of luxury I hadn’t earned but desperately needed. Four bedrooms was probably too much for one man, but when Carolina was here—running barefoot across the hardwoods, pretending the trees were dragons or that the driveway was a moat full of crocodiles, because if you asked her, her daddy lived in a castle—it felt less like a fortress of solitude and more like home.
“What are we cooking up tonight?” Allie asked. “Smells delicious.”
“Coconut curry soup. You’re welcome to join us.”
Her lips scrunched up as she weighed her options. “I really should head back before the rain picks up.” She quickly added, “Butif you feel like youhaveto send Carolina home with leftovers on Tuesday, you won’t hear me complaining.”
I nodded.
She continued lingering on the steps. There was something else she wanted to talk about. She had that look—subtle, patient, like she was choosing her words before she said them.
“What’s up, Allie?”
“We were talking about her birthday party this morning,” she said.
The season had just started last week. Carolina had been born at the end of May, so we were still a few months out from any party plans.
“It’s a little early, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but I wanted to put it on your radar now because she wants to have itherethis year.”
That landed harder than it should have.
We both knew that this was about a lot more than a birthday party. What Allie wasn’t saying, what she was too nice to say, was that I had missed enough already. Too many firsts, too many birthdays blurred together in FaceTime calls from hotel bathrooms and stadium tunnels with the sounds of batting practice in the background.
I’d missed her second birthday because of a wrist fracture during a grueling one-hundred-degree game in Arizona. Had missed her fourth when a rain delay had turned into a double-header.
Worst of all, I had missed herbirth—the whole fucking thing—because I’d been squatting behind the plate in Kansas City, two thousand miles away, trying to close out a no hitter. I remembered the call coming in during the seventh inning. I hadn’t seen it until after the Champagne had already been popped, and by then, I’d had two things to celebrate.
In all my years of ball, nothing could have prepared me for that moment, for the mix of joy and guilt.
Allie had understood; she’d always known this was a part of the game—pun intended. But that didn’t make it okay.
I must have watched the footage she’d sent me a thousand times, memorized every moment. Her voice in the hospital room, Carolina’s newborn cries, my name whispered like a question. I had always told myself I was doing it for her—for both of them—chasing the contracts, keeping the endorsements coming in, building a future for us.
But Carolina didn’t care about any game stats or World Series rings, even if she did like the way they “sparkled.” No, all she wanted was for her daddy to blow up a few balloons and cut her goddamn birthday cake.
