“How bad?”
“Embarrassingly bad.”
That earned the smallest smile.
Nathan picked up the baseball.
“Want to find out?”
Lucas looked at me.
I shrugged.
“Your choice.”
He took the ball.
Their first throw was terrible.
Nathan threw too gently.
Lucas threw too hard.
The second nearly went over Nathan’s head.
By the fifth, they were talking.
Not about abandonment.
Not about Teagan.
About baseball.
Nathan asked what position Lucas played.
“Shortstop.”
“I played second.”
“That’s easier.”
Nathan laughed.
“Apparently humility isn’t genetic.”
Lucas smiled.
I sat on the bleachers and watched them.
Something inside me hurt.
Because Teagan should’ve been there.
She should’ve seen her son.
She should’ve seen Nathan finally standing where he’d been too frightened to stand ten years earlier.
But another part of me felt something I hadn’t expected.
Peace.
Not forgiveness.
Not yet.
Maybe not ever in the way people imagine it.
But possibility.
Their first meeting didn’t transform Nathan into Lucas’s father.
He didn’t suddenly start attending every baseball game.
Lucas didn’t run into his arms.
Nobody pretended ten years hadn’t happened.
They met again two weeks later.
Then Nathan attended a game.
He sat several rows behind me because Lucas hadn’t decided what to call him yet.
Eventually, Lucas started texting him.
Mostly baseball questions.
Then school things.
Slowly, carefully, they built something.
Not the relationship they should have had.
That one was gone.
This was something different.
