So instead she asked, “Would you like to play a game?”
“Sure,” he answered, not quite sure where she was going.
Gwen pointed out the windshield at the few people walking Buckton’s sidewalks. “All you have to do is pick someone out and invent a story about them,” she explained. “It can be about whatever you want. What they do for a living, where they went on vacation last year, the kind of movies they like to watch. Anything you can think of. The most creative story wins.”
“You mean make something up?” Hank asked hesitantly.
“Exactly. I’ll go first so you can see how it works.”
Farther up the street, a man made to cross, looking both ways for traffic before stepping off the curb. He was dressed smartly, his hat pushed back a bit on his head and a newspaper folded under his arm. From where Gwen sat, it looked like he was whistling.
She pointed and said, “His name is Lou Morris and he—”
“That’s Phil Mounts,” Hank interrupted. “He moved to town three years ago to practice law. He and his family bought the Palmers’ old place up on Sycamore. His wife teaches at the—”
“Shush!” Gwen cut him off. “The less I know about him the better. Otherwise it interferes with the story.” She’d had an elaborate tale beginning to form in which the man was off to visit his mistress after having just embezzled thousands from the bank. But now it would remain untold. “Let’s try again.”
“Gwen, I don’t—”
“There,” she said, pointing at an older woman just coming out of the five-and-dime carrying so many packages that she could barely see over them. Gwen thought it might be Carol Starks, a longtime fixture behind the counter of Buckton’s post office, but her view was obscured. Besides, as she’d told Hank, she didn’t want to know anything about her subject.
“That’s Marjorie Blanchard,” she began. “She married her husband, Jeffrey, because he was the wealthy heir to a manufacturing business, but now, after fourteen years of loveless marriage—”
“C’mon, this isn’t—”
“—she has a surprise for her whole family. You see, each one of those packages contains a gift that she purchased especially—”
“—funny. I don’t think that we should—”
Gwen was faintly aware of Hank saying something but she was so focused on creating a fictional history for the older woman that she wasn’t paying close attention. So when he finally made himself heard, she was shocked.
“Stop it, Gwen!” he snapped, his voice loud and angry.
She immediately fell silent, her heart hammering. Gwen looked at Hank, wondering what she’d done to make him so upset. He stared silently ahead, his eyes narrow slits, his jaw tight. When he tossed the last bit of his ice cream cone out his window, he no longer looked angry, but almost a little sad.
“What’s wrong?” she asked tentatively.
He didn’t answer.
“Hank, what did I do?”
For a while longer, he still wouldn’t reply. Finally he said, “I just didn’t want to play, that’s all…”
Gwen didn’t believe a word of it. Whatever had upset him, it wasn’t something he was going to reveal easily. It would’ve been easy to accept his answer, to drop the matter, but she couldn’t.
She needed to know the truth.
“Tell me,” she insisted.
Stubbornly, Hank kept staring out the window.
“Please,” Gwen pressed, overcoming her earlier reluctance and gently placing her hand on his arm. Hank made no move to pull away. Her touch proved enough to lift his gaze to her. Trying to read his expression wasn’t easy; she saw pain and confusion, but she also recognized indecision, as if he was weighing telling her what she wanted to know.
“After Pete died, I mostly kept to myself…” Hank began, his words slowly unspooling. “That was because whenever I came to town, someone would always be looking at me. It didn’t matter if I was walking down the street, in line at the bank, or in my truck; I’d see them watching, whispering. It made me so angry.”
Gwen listened breathlessly. Ever since she’d learned about the car accident that had claimed Pete’s life, she’d wanted to know more, but she’d been afraid to pry into Hank’s past, to upset him. She had hoped that he would eventually reveal it himself. Now it seemed as if her patience was about to be rewarded.
“Everyone was judging me for something they knew nothing about,” he continued. “There’s only one person who knows exactly what happened that night, and that’s me.” Hank turned to her, staring hard, his eyes pleading, as if he desperately wanted her to believe him. He shook his head. “But that sure as hell didn’t stop damn near the whole town from inventing their own version. There were more rumors floating around than stars in the sky.”
Gwen thought about her parents. She was certain Warren and Meredith had heard all the wild speculation about the night Pete died. She was also convinced that they’d done their part to make things worse. Gwen could easily imagine her father leaning against the bakery’s counter, spreading the latest gossip, loudly declaring Hank’s guilt. Samantha, Sandy, everyone in Buckton had likely done it.
Slowly, she began to understand why Hank had gotten so upset.
“You didn’t like me making things up about people,” Gwen said.
Hank nodded. “I imagine folks sitting in cars, just like we’re doing now, watching me go by and saying terrible things. That I’m a drunk, a murderer, that if it weren’t for me, my brother would still be alive, that they wish I was dead.” He took a deep breath. “Those people don’t know the truth. They think they do, but they’re wrong!” Hank grabbed the steering wheel, squeezing hard. “I just want to whip open their doors and scream that they’re fools, that they don’t understand, but I…I…just…” Though Gwen desperately wanted more, Hank stopped talking.
Voices drifted in through the open windows, a few people on the sidewalks braving the summer sun, but inside the truck’s cab there was silence. Gwen’s thoughts raced. There was something Hank wasn’t telling her, that much was certain, a secret about the night of the accident. Sitting there watching him, Gwen understood that Hank had become important to her, maybe more than she was willing to admit. He’d saved her life, but her feelings for him weren’t made up only of gratitude. She had been surprised by how much she enjoyed their drive to Mansfield. When her article had been accepted at the Bulletin, Hank was the first person she’d wanted to tell. Even now, under the circumstances, she was happy to be in his company. She wanted to know his secret, not because of the curiosity that drove her as a writer, but because if he told her, if he could bring himself to trust her, it would strengthen the bond growing between them.
“If you ever wanted to talk about that night…about what happened to Pete…I would listen…” Gwen tentatively told him.
Hank looked at her with such intensity that she had trouble holding his gaze. His mouth opened, then closed. He seemed unsure of what to do, as if he was weighing her suggestion. But then he shook his head.
“Gwen…I, I can’t…”
She fought back a feeling of disappointment, then again reached out and put her hand on his arm, more purposefully than before. “It doesn’t have to be now.”
He nodded, then surprised her by placing his hand on top of hers. His touch was rough yet warm. Gwen wondered how Kent or her parents would react to seeing her and Hank like this. Undoubtedly there would be questions, hurt feelings, even anger. But she had no desire to move away. This was right where she wanted to be. As the seconds slowly ticked past, as their touch lingered, Gwen pleasantly realized that even though Hank hadn’t told her what she’d hoped to hear, somehow they had still managed to grow closer.
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” she said, wanting to make things right, worried that she’d pushed him too far.
“I know,” Hank replied, his voice empty of annoyance. “It just caught me off guard, is all. If anything, I should apologize for reacting the way I did.”
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“How about we just call it even?”
“Fair enough.”
But then, before she could suggest that they go for a drive so that Hank didn’t feel like he was being watched, he turned the key in the ignition and the truck’s engine grumbled to life. “I’ve got an idea,” he said.
“What is it?”
Hank flashed a thin smile. “Our first go-around at playing a game might not have gone so well,” he explained, “but maybe the second time will be better.”
“What do you have in mind?” Gwen asked.
“I’m not telling you that easily,” he told her with a warm chuckle. “Now it’s my turn to have a surprise.”
“Oh, really?”
“I even have everything we’ll need,” he said, thumbing out the rear window into the back of the truck. “You want to give it a shot?”
Resisting the urge to look in the truck’s bed for some clue as to what Hank was planning, Gwen nodded. As they pulled away from the curb, quickly accelerating down the street, she was filled with anticipation.
So far, from the fateful night in the Sawyer River until now, their time together had been one heck of an adventure.
Chapter Fifteen
GWEN LISTENED AS Hank sang along softly to a Tony Bennett tune on the radio, a ballad that she and her friends had played again and again back at Worthington. He drove from the center of town through quiet neighborhoods, toward the river. She leaned against her door, still wondering where he was taking her, trying to imagine what sort of game he had in mind. Gwen considered asking more questions but chose to let him keep his secret a little while longer.
Though in many ways Hank was still a stranger, Gwen was surprised by how comfortable she felt around him. With some people, there was a constant pressure to say something, an awkward need to keep the conversation going. But with Hank, she found that even the silences felt right, as if they’d known each other forever, which in an odd way they had. Just sharing his company was enough. So while he could have been taking her anywhere, a fact that would surely have unnerved her father, Gwen wasn’t worried. She trusted him.
A mile or so outside of town, Hank turned down a short gravel drive and stopped the truck. Looking out the window, all Gwen could see was an empty pasture ringed by trees. There wasn’t a house in sight.
“We’re here,” he said.
“For what?” Gwen asked without the faintest idea of the answer.
“You’ll see.”
When they got out, the sound of their doors shutting echoed faintly off the distant trees. Hank began rummaging around in the truck’s bed. “Are you right-handed or a lefty?” he asked.
“Right,” she answered.
He tossed something at her. Reflexively, Gwen raised her hands to catch it, but she still almost managed to let it fall to the ground. Turning it over in her hands, she took in the dark leather and heavy stitching, but couldn’t make head nor tail of it. “What is this?”
“Seriously?” Hank blurted in amazement. “It’s a baseball mitt. You told me you went to a Cubs game, right?”
“Well, I wasn’t in uniform or out on the court.”
“The diamond,” he corrected her.
“Whatever.”
Looking closely, Gwen could see that there were spaces in the mitt for her fingers, but when she tried to stick her right hand in it, everything felt wrong.
“It goes on your left,” Hank explained. “You use it to catch the ball and then you throw it with your good hand.”
Embarrassed, Gwen did as he instructed. It felt strange.
Hank led the way from the truck into the field. “Stand right there,” he told her before walking a couple dozen paces away. When he turned around and looked at her, he frowned, then moved closer. “Are you ready?”
“For what?” she asked.
“To catch this,” Hank answered, holding up a baseball.
Gwen’s eyes went wide. “Wait a second! You’re going to throw that at me?”
He chuckled. “Well, yeah. That’s how you play catch.”
“But…but what do I do?”
Hank jogged back and stood behind Gwen. Holding her left arm, he raised her gloved hand. “Keep it steady,” he explained. “Palm up. When I throw the baseball, all you have to do is move the glove and try to catch the ball in the webbing. When it hits, just squeeze your hand shut and that’s that.”
While he talked, Gwen struggled to pay attention. All she was aware of was Hank’s free hand on her waist and his chest brushing against her shoulder.
Back in place, Hank held up the baseball. “Ready?”
Even though she wasn’t, Gwen nodded.
The ball left his hand and began a gentle arc toward her, floating across the few clouds in the sky. Tracking it, Gwen took a couple of tentative, awkward steps forward. She stuck out her hand as Hank had shown her and then, just as she was sure the ball was about to strike the glove, she closed her eyes.
But nothing happened.
She heard the baseball land with a thud in the grass behind her. She looked at Hank. “Was I close?” she asked.
He smiled and generously offered, “Kind of. Now throw it back.”
Gwen picked up the baseball and took a closer look. She rubbed her thumb across its surface, liking the way the red stitches felt. It was much lighter than she had expected. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d thrown something—probably a rock down at the river when she’d been a girl—but she was too embarrassed to ask Hank for help.
Here goes nothing…
From the moment the baseball left her hand, Gwen knew that she’d done something wrong. She had no idea where it was going to go, but was certain it wasn’t going to end up as intended in Hank’s glove. “Whoops!” he shouted, racing to his left, stretching futilely as the ball dropped at his feet.
“Sorry!” Gwen apologized.
“You did fine for your first time,” he told her. “But when you throw, step forward on your left leg, then bring your arm up and over, only letting go of the ball when your hand is at the top.” He demonstrated in slow motion.
“Got it,” Gwen said, hoping she sounded more confident than she felt.
“Let’s give it another try.”
And so they did, but with only the slightest improvement in results. A couple of times later, Gwen was able to touch the baseball with her glove, but she never managed to actually catch it. Hank began to regularly snag her errant throws, but only because he quickly understood that he needed to start running just as soon as the baseball left her hand.
“Let’s try something else,” he finally said, heading for the truck.
Gwen thought he meant that they were giving up on playing, but Hank reached into the bed and pulled out a long, tapered piece of wood. Ignorant as she was, even Gwen knew that it was a baseball bat.
“You want to give this a shot?”
Gwen shook her head. “With as bad as I throw, there’s no way you could ever hope to hit the ball.”
Once again, Hank laughed. “You’re probably right. That’s why I’m going to pitch and you’ll be the batter.”
Hank showed her how to position her hands on the bat and watched as she took a couple of practice swings. Unlike the baseball, the bat was much heavier than Gwen had anticipated. The first time she swung, she nearly fell over.
After Hank had backed up a bit, he held up the baseball. “Here it comes,” he said. “Give it a good whack.”
But in the end, Gwen had just about as much luck hitting the elusive ball as she’d had trying to catch it. Time after time she swung, and time after time she missed. Once, she managed to nick it, sending the baseball squibbing off to the side and into the grass, the impact causing stinging tremors to race up her arms. It didn’t take long for sweat to dot her brow.
“This is your idea of fun?” she eventually asked.
“It sure is,” Hank declared proudly. “I’ve loved baseball for as long as I can remember. What’s not to like?”
Gwen had an answer on the tip of her tongue, one she suspected he wouldn’t want to hear, but she became distracted by a memory of Hank’s brother running down the sidewalk, a baseball bat slung over his shoulder. “Pete loved it, too, didn’t he?”
“Yeah, he sure did,” Hank answered, smiling as he stared off into the distance. “Some summers, we would play from sunup to sundown, until we could barely see the ball. We’d listen to games on the radio, read box scores in the newspaper, and buy packs of bubblegum cards down at the five-and-dime. Even in the winter, we’d while away the days thinking about spring, about the season to be played. There’s nothing we loved more than baseball.”
“You must be pretty good at it, then.”
“I’m not half-bad,” he answered modestly.
It was obvious to Gwen how much happiness Hank got out of the game. Still, her own experience with it—short, sweaty, and filled with plenty of failure and frustration—wasn’t anywhere near as much fun. “Even when you were seven, I bet you were better than I am now,” she groused. “I’m never going to hit that ball.”
Hank frowned. “Not with that attitude, you won’t.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Gwen asked, a little fire in her voice.
He stared at her, tossing the ball into the air and effortlessly catching it without even looking at it. “Do you remember the first thing you wrote?”
“Sure…” she answered, wondering what he was getting at.
“Was it any good?”
“Not really,” Gwen answered. “It was all over the place, mostly because I had no idea what I was doing.”
“I bet it was hard to write,” Hank said.
She nodded. “What does this have to do with me hitting a baseball?”
“In some ways, nothing,” he answered. “In others, everything.”
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