In Her Defense

by Julianna Keyes

  “What—” I begin, lips flapping uselessly when I read The Closers on his pink polyester-covered chest. The C on his shirt is also peeling, but someone has colored in the bare patches with a black marker.

  “What are you doing here?” he asks, looking thoroughly entertained.

  “You coach softball?”

  “Mmm-hmm.” The truck beeps as he locks it, then he rounds to the cab to pull out a large, black gear bag, slinging it over his shoulder like it weighs nothing. “I guess you discovered that when you were stalking me.”

  “You wish.”

  “Don’t worry, I get it. I was there on Monday, too. It was hot and now you need more.”

  “You’re—”

  He chucks me under the chin with an evil grin. “O-kay,” he says patronizingly. “But just this once. Take off your shorts and hide behind that bush.” He nods at a clump of rambling plants on the far side of the field. “Not the one on the left, that has thorns. The one beside it. I’ve gotta drop off this bag, then I’ll be right there to service you.”

  “Can you hear yourself right now?”

  “I know what you said, it was a one-time thing and you wouldn’t become obsessed, but obviously you can’t forget me, so I’ll indulge you once more. But you have to promise not to get greedy. I’m an in-demand man.”

  He’s doing an admirable job of keeping a straight face, but I can’t say the same. Even though I know I’m not a stalker, my face is still hot with embarrassment and I can’t contain my unladylike snorts of laughter as I explain that I’m here with my niece.

  The wicked twinkle in his eye switches to genuine surprise. “Which team?”

  I nod at his shirt and we begin to walk to the field. “Yours, apparently.”

  “No way. Blood relation? One of the angels on my team is related to...you?”

  “You mean the star of Chicago’s Finest’s bestselling issue this year? Yes, that’s right.”

  “Wow.” He presses a finger to his lips in a thoughtful gesture, and squints at the pink-clad little girls running around the diamond. “Which one could it be? Is it Tanya? She has a potty mouth, I’ve heard her.”

  “Nope.”

  “Natalia? She beat up someone once. A boy.”

  “Try again.”

  “Li Wen? I’m pretty sure she stole from me. It was just a piece of gum, but still.”

  “My niece is not a criminal.”

  We reach the team’s bench and Eli sets down the bag, nodding hello to the opposing team’s coach across the diamond.

  “Caitlin!” Dorrie’s cry has us both turning to see her racing in from the outfield. “Watch this!” She does a lopsided cartwheel, then bows forward so deeply she falls down.

  I give her a thumbs-up, even though it’s awful.

  “No,” Eli breathes, horrified. “Not Dorrie. She’s one of the good ones.”

  “She can’t be too good,” I retort, “with an 0-11 record.”

  “Oh, not good at softball,” he replies. “They’re all terrible. But Dorrie’s sweet. So kind. So odd.”

  “I’m sweet.”

  He covers his mouth and coughs. At least, he tries to make it sound like a cough, then he turns his back and crouches in front of the equipment bag, pulling out a scorebook and baseball glove.

  “Well,” I say dryly. “This has been fun.”

  He straightens, looking down at me with his best serious face, lips twitching at the corners. “Do you know anything about softball?”

  “Yes.”

  “Really?”

  “I know about everything.”

  An eye roll. “Of course you do. Then you can keep score. My assistant coach broke her leg and is temporarily out of service.”

  “Are you sure she broke her leg? Maybe she just didn’t want to wear the jersey anymore.”

  He smirks and dips his head to speak into my ear. “Careful,” he warns. “Bad things happen to assistant coaches.” This time I roll my eyes. “But if you’re good, I’ll take you behind the bushes later.”

  “You wish.”

  He sobers for a second, tugging a baseball hat on his head and turning to the field. “I do,” he says.

  The pen I’ve been twisting between my fingers falls, and I barely manage to snag it with the scorebook. Eli catches the fumble and meets my eye as he picks up the pen and presses it into my hand, his voice notably deeper when he asks, “Do you think about it?” He holds my gaze and wraps my strangely numb fingers around the pen, his grip too hot, too knowing.

  My pulse is pounding. I feel sweat beneath my arms and behind my knees and grip the pen like a lifeline. He’s waiting for my answer, dark eyes zeroed in on my face, reading my unspoken response. “Yes,” I reply. Why bother lying when the truth must be painfully obvious?

  “Good,” he says, turning the glove over in his hand. “Me too.” He’s about to say something else when the umpire calls for the coaches to meet at home plate. Eli hesitates a second, then nods at the scorebook. “I’ve already done the lineup, just read it out to the girls when they’re seated. We’re up first. Make sure they put on helmets.”

  Assistant coach Winona arrives in the bottom of the third inning. I know her name because people have been talking about her like she’s in the running for sainthood—Winona didn’t keep score like that... Winona led cheers... Winona always brought sunflower seeds... Winona’s in the running for sainthood—and the parents, while polite, have been looking suspiciously between Eli and me for the duration of the game. In the second inning I’d asked him if he and Winona were an item and he assured me they were not, but it’s clear somebody thinks they are. The sudden volume of murmurs from the bleachers has me twisting on the bench in time to witness Saint Winona’s arrival.

  I’d pictured a demure soccer mom, but Winona is about my age, with dark hair liberally streaked with bright red highlights. She’s pretty, in the overplucked-brow kind of way, favoring dark lipstick and lots of eyeliner. She wears the team jersey, knotted at the waist, and dangerously small denim shorts, presumably to compensate for the full-size cast encompassing her left leg. She picks her way over the grass on crutches, taking a second to acknowledge her fan club, but her eyes are on me.

  “Hi,” she says shortly, lowering herself to the bench and eyeballing the scorebook in my lap. “Who are you?”

  “Caitlin. Dorrie’s aunt. You must be Winona.”

  “I am. You know Eli?”

  Well. She doesn’t beat around the bush, though she might be about to pee a territorial ring around it. “A bit.”

  Another pointed look at the scorebook. “And you know how to keep score?”

  “Mmm-hmm.” It’s certainly not hard to add zero to three, which is what I do when the final Closers batter pops out to the catcher and the inning ends. Thank God the innings have a five-run maximum, or we’d never be able to leave. Each team’s coach pitches to their players, and while The Closers occasionally swing the bats, they rarely make contact that moves the ball past the pitcher. And they never try to reach more than one base at a time. The score is 15-3, but the girls line up and high-five each other enthusiastically, their little faces splitting into excited smiles when they see Winona on the bench.

  “Winnie, you’re here!” Li Wen, the theft suspect, exclaims, flinging her arms around her neck.

  “Hi, girls!” Gone is the coldly suspicious woman I’d met, replaced with a charmingly enthusiastic, engaged assistant coach who makes a show of rising to her feet—or her foot, I suppose—to hug Eli for just a little too long. I try not to watch his arms wrap around her, the tan skin of his forearms offsetting the pale glow of her exposed midsection, the way she presses her breasts and pelvis into his. That seems a little excessive.

  I feel something and look up to find Eli watching me. He smiles slightly as he rele
ases Winona—Saint Winnie—and gestures to me. “Have you met Caitlin?” he asks.

  “Yes.” She spares me a smile. “It’s great you were able to get help for tonight.”

  “Good help is hard to find.”

  I mock gag.

  “We weren’t expecting you back for another month,” he adds, glancing down at her leg. “Aren’t you supposed to stay off it?”

  “Ugh.” She groans dramatically and brushes a nonexistent fly off his shirt. “It was so boring at home. And I missed this.” She leaves “this” deliberately vague, though I think we all know she means “touching Eli’s body inappropriately.” “I can’t wait to help. What can I do? Keep score?”

  My jaw almost hits the ground. I haven’t wanted to tackle another girl this badly since my sister performed open heart surgery on my favorite doll in fourth grade, then refused to sew her back up.

  “I think Caitlin’s got the scorekeeping under control,” Eli replies, winking down at me. “Why don’t you lead the cheers when we bat next?”

  Another sickly smile. “I can’t wait.”

  Ugh. I can.

  My phone rings and I tug it out of my pocket and scowl at the display as I answer. “Arthur?”

  “Caitlin. Hi. How...how are you?” His nervous voice makes my skin itch.

  “Fine.” I watch the girls take the field. For some reason six head for centerfield, then bicker amongst themselves about who’s supposed to be there and who’s supposed to be in the other empty spots. Eli shouts at them to get into position.

  “Um, good,” Arthur says after a moment. “Good. That’s good. Are you, um, busy? Right now?”

  “Yes. What do you want?”

  “It’s about the Teller case.”

  Despite myself, I sit up a bit straighter. The partners have made their position on this matter clear: the weeks before my two-week holiday are for transferring cases, not working on Teller. They’d clearly relayed this message to Arthur, because he’s been actively avoiding me—more than usual—ever since. This after-hours phone call only cements my conviction that, left to his own devices, Arthur will fail horribly. Unfortunately for him, I’m not sure what he expects me to do. Help and not take credit? That’s not how this business works. I frown. “What about it?”

  “Martina Novak just added Herbert Schwartz to her expert list,” Arthur says, naming our opposing counsel as though I might have forgotten who she was. “Herbert Schwartz was the whistle-blower engineer in the deep fryer case—”

  “I know who he is,” I interrupt. He’d testified in a similar trial against a different defendant five years ago, and his testimony had resulted in a fourteen-million-dollar verdict.

  “I have to depose him in two weeks,” Arthur continues, “and I was wondering if you’d look over my questions.”

  “Look over your—” I wince as the ball is hit into left field and rolls past the fielder, who had turned around to watch a bird. “Ask one of the partners to help you. They said they would, if necessary.” My tone makes it clear that it should not, in fact, be necessary.

  “I asked Morgan!” Arthur hisses frantically. “He said he had faith in me!”

  I pinch the bridge of my nose. Arthur is the least confident lawyer I have ever met, and no matter how solid his arguments, they always sound ridiculous coming from a stammering fool. If I was still on the case, I’d be the one doing the deposing, and Arthur would be assigned to sit there scribbling on a notepad, as though he had something valuable to contribute. But I’m not on the case, I’m at a softball game, and the other team has just scored again—Dorrie’s clapping for some reason—and I’m really tired of helping other people do their jobs. “Look,” I say icily. “You want my advice? Man up.”

  “Man—” Arthur’s voice is squeaky.

  “You’re a fifth-year associate at the best firm in town. If you fuck this up, they’ll fire you, and you’ll never work again. You know why? Because you’re on the right side. Laurel Francis is a fucking nutjob out for a quick payday, and now Herbert Schwartz is doing the same.”

  “But—”

  “Your job is to prove it, Arthur.”

  “I know—”

  “So look into Herbert, see what suddenly spurred this need to clear his conscience, and use it.”

  “Use—”

  “Everybody has their reasons. Teller hired me because I’m the best, and I have the track record to prove it. Morgan assigned you as co-counsel because for some misplaced, godforsaken reason, he has faith in you. Now give him a reason to justify that faith.”

  “I’m not so sure—”

  “Don’t call me again, Arthur. You wanted to be a lawyer, now be one.”

  It’s only when I hang up that I realize that Eli, Winona and the three girls remaining on the bench were listening to my every word. Shit. Did I swear? “Sorry,” I say, forcing a smile. “Work thing.” Then I notice that Winona has taken the scorebook. She watches this sink in, then smirks and carefully colors in another run. I look to Eli for assistance but he just stares at me with an inscrutable expression before turning back to watch the opposing team score again to end the inning.

  The second half of the game is worse than the first, now that I have no scorebook. Winona keeps score, calls the lineup, leads the cheers and touches Eli every chance she gets. Eli’s careful not to encourage her, but it doesn’t matter. He’s actively not encouraging me, and I feel stupid and useless sitting here doing nothing. By the time the game is over—they lose—I’m ready to run all the way home, just to be anywhere else.

  “Did you have fun, Caitlin?” Dorrie inquires as she changes out of her cleats.

  “So much fun,” I lie. “Did you?”

  “Yep. See? It’s fun even if we don’t win.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Ooh.” Winona winces as she stands, wobbling on her crutches.

  “You okay, Win?” Eli asks, glancing up from the equipment bag as he stuffs spare gloves and balls back inside.

  “Did somebody move the parking lot?” she asks with a weak laugh. “I swear it wasn’t that far when I got here.”

  He smiles sympathetically and I’m grateful my sunglasses hide my eye roll. It’d be so much faster if she just came out and asked him to carry her to her car. “Did someone drive you?” I inquire politely. “Perhaps they could help you back.”

  Winona’s helpless facade fades. “My father drove. He’s old. He’s waiting in the car.”

  “Eli, you should carry her!” Dorrie pipes up. “Like a fireman! I saw it on TV. Can I use your crutches?”

  “No,” I snap, before I even know I’m going to. “Don’t touch her crutches, Dorrie. They’re not toys.” And don’t carry her, I want to add for Eli’s benefit. Please.

  “That’s so funny!” Winona laughs, even though no one else seems to find it amusing. “I can make it back on my own. I was just joking.” Though she leaves an extra pause for Eli to interject, which he doesn’t.

  “Everyone ready?” he says instead, hoisting the equipment bag over his shoulder. I pick up Dorrie’s backpack and we trail after the departing parents and players to the parking lot, walking exceptionally slowly to account for Winona’s leg. What I’d really like to do is race to the car and get the hell out of here, but Dorrie’s busy peppering Winona with questions about the signatures on her cast, and Winona’s answering patiently. She may be fake as hell for my benefit, but she seems to genuinely care about the girls, and Dorrie’s eating up the attention. Even Eli’s smiling as he listens to the exchange.

  We reach the parking lot and Eli drops off his bag and walks Winona back to her car and driver, calling good-night to Dorrie and me. I wave hastily and stalk to the car, cursing under my breath as the smell of overheated garbage wafts out.

  “Ew,” Dorrie groans, pinching her nose.

 
; “Let’s open the windows to air it out a bit.”

  I turn on the car but remain standing, Dorrie doing the same on her side. We roll down all the windows and blast the air conditioning, hoping it will force out the stench.

  “Do you know Eli?” Dorrie asks as we wait. She yawns into the crook of her arm while eying me speculatively.

  “I—What? Why?”

  “Because you were talking to him before the game.”

  “Oh. Yes. Right. Well, we work together, actually.”

  “He’s a lawyer?”

  “No, he’s in IT. He fixes the computers at the firm.”

  “Are you friends?”

  “No.” I feel guilty saying so, but it’s not exactly untrue. “We barely know each other.” But we fucked in his truck.

  “He’s nice.”

  My umpteenth forced smile of the night. “Yes. He seems to be.”

  “So’s Winona.”

  “Mmm-hmm. Car should be okay now.”

  Dorrie climbs in and slams her door, hard enough that I can hear garbage rustling. I suck up my pride and look over my shoulder in the direction of Winona’s vehicle, and find Eli walking back to his truck alone, watching me. He inclines his head slightly to indicate that I should approach, and despite my better judgment, I tell Dorrie I’ll be right back, and walk the short distance to his truck.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “Who are you?”

  I cock my head, unimpressed. “Guess.”

  He taps his temple. “You’ve got Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde and about half a dozen other people living up there.”

  I look around the empty lot. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “So far I’ve met the banshee that attacked Todd on Monday, then the lonely woman at the pub, the very hot woman in the front seat of my truck and the nice lady who took her niece to a softball game. Then the banshee returned when you took the call back there. If I ask you out, who’s going to show up?”