Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 100713 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100713 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
“Let’s make a pact.” Moretti sounded serious, more serious than I’d ever heard him. “That no matter where we end up in life, twenty summers from now we come back to this spot and dig up our time capsule together.”
“Deal.” Cole put his fist out, like we did before games.
“Deal.” Griffin touched his knuckles to Cole’s.
“Deal.” Moretti added his fist.
“Deal.” I added mine.
A couple minutes later, we walked back toward the house, and I stopped off in the shed to put the shovel away. Closing the door, I hurried to catch up with them, throwing one final glance over my shoulder toward the maple tree.
I wondered if when I stood there twenty years later and we unearthed the box, I’d still be thinking about the same girl, or if she’d be a distant memory. Maybe I’d laugh at how big my crush had felt at eighteen. Maybe I’d have already had sex with like five girls or something—right now I was the only virgin left among us. But that didn’t bother me.
Much.
I wondered if I’d be happy. If I’d be rich. If I’d have a good job. For a second, I even wondered if the four of us would still be best friends.
Then I caught myself—of course we would.
They say friends are the family you choose, and the four of us had chosen each other a long time ago.
Some things never change.
One
Beckett
“I’m going to Chicago today,” my father announced at the breakfast table. “I need the box with the handles.”
I picked up my coffee mug and studied my dad for a moment. He was still wearing his pajamas, and his white hair was sticking out in several directions.
“You mean the suitcase?” I asked.
“Yes. That’s it.” He nodded in satisfaction and began buttering his toast. “I need the suitcase. Do you know where it is?”
“Probably in the attic. But why are you going to Chicago?”
“That’s where the game is tonight.”
“What game?”
He looked at me like I was nuts. “The baseball game. It says so right there on the schedule.”
I glanced at the fridge, where a Detroit Tigers schedule was held in place by a magnet that said I Love My Uncle, a gift from my seven-year-old niece, Daisy.
“Do you have tickets for the game?” I asked, even though I knew damn well he didn’t.
“Tickets!” he scoffed. “Players don’t need tickets. And I’m the best chance they’ve got to beat the Sox.”
“Right.” I regarded my eighty-one-year-old dad for a long moment, torn between wanting to chuckle at the vision of him in a Detroit Tigers uniform—strutting out to the plate, adjusting his cap and giving the pitcher his most cantankerous old-man stare—and wanting to yell at him to stop with the goddamn nonsense, he wasn’t a Major League Baseball player and he never had been.
He was a retired farmer with bad hips, arthritic hands, and a slow-as-molasses-in-January geriatric shuffle. It would take him a fucking month to get around the bases.
But rather than point this out, I took a sip of coffee instead.
Usually when confronted with his moderate cognitive decline, as the doctor called it—although how anyone could refer to his wild imaginings as moderate was beyond me—I tried to use reason and logic with him. Keep him grounded in reality. But nothing made my father more belligerent than being told what he believed wasn’t real, and I was trying to have more patience with him.
“I’ll find the suitcase for you,” I said.
“Good. I’ll pack after breakfast,” he went on. “I don’t want to miss the train. Can you give me a ride to the station?”
I took another sip and a deep breath. “Sure, Dad.”
“Thanks.” He dug into his breakfast again.
Not particularly hungry, I glanced out the large window next to the table that overlooked the ranch. It was a gorgeous June morning—the blue sky was cloudless, the sun was out, and the ground was dry for once. I’d been up since five, had watched the sun rise over my first cup of coffee, then gone out to do the morning chores before coming back inside to wake up my father and get his breakfast—a complete reversal of parent-child roles that never failed to make my head spin.
But rather than dwell on that, I went over the day’s work in my head. As the owner and sole full-time employee at Weaver Ranch, my to-do list was endless. I had a couple part-time hands, but most days, keeping this place running was a one-man show starring yours truly.
My days were long, dirty, sweaty, demanding, and occasionally made me question my sanity. In addition to all the physical labor, I also made all the executive decisions that kept us in business and paid all the bills that kept the lights on. But after years spent in high-rise Manhattan office buildings feeling penned in by cubicles and choked by greed and neckties, I could say with certainty that I wouldn’t trade this life for any other.