The Comeback of Roy Walker

Defeated.

“That about sums it up,” Roy said, not hiding anything from Duff. “I sank all my money into a video gaming company that went under. I was too stubborn to file for bankruptcy so I paid everyone off and now I’m broke. Really broke. I don’t have a college degree and the only thing I can put on my résumé is a failed start-up company. So I’m here hoping I have enough bullets in this arm to earn me enough money to try again.”

Duff nodded like it was a story he heard every day. “Why me?”

“I’ve got to find out if I can still throw. Before Charlie can put it out there that I’m looking for a team. I needed someone I can trust. Both to tell me the truth and to not announce it to ESPN that I’m trying to make a comeback.”

“How long has it been? Since you launched the rocket?”

“Five years. Since the no-no in San Diego.”

Duff let out a small grunt. “What kind of shape are you in otherwise?”

“I still run. Twenty miles a week. Still work out with weights. Physically, I feel good. In fact, my arm feels great.”

“Well, let’s go change that.”

* * *

ROY, DUFF AND SCOUT made their way to the field.

“You’ll start with throwing on grass before you take the mound,” Scout said, walking into the dugout and coming back with a ball, a catcher’s glove and a mask.

“Okay, wait,” Roy said, wondering if she actually expected him to throw to her. “It may have been five years, but my velocity still has to be pretty high.”

“Relax, slugger, this isn’t some scene from Bull Durham. I called Javier, who lives close by. He’ll come and catch for you. Also he’s a recent immigrant from El Salvador so he will have no idea who the heck you are and, even if he did, none of the sports reporters in town speak Spanish.”

At that moment, a young man with a round face emerged from the dugout. Scout spoke to him in Spanish and he took the catcher’s mitt and dropped to his haunches near home plate.

Roy stood in front of the mound on flat grass and gripped the ball in his hand. Like an old muscle memory waking up, he remembered the shape of the ball, the weight of it and how to hold it just so. There had been a time when the baseball had felt like a natural extension of his left arm. Like it had been grafted to his fingers with the thread of the seams.

He would hurl it as hard as he could, but those threads would retract and the ball would always come back.

When he threw it for the last time he told himself he would never pick up a baseball again. He used to tell himself that if he ever got married and had a kid he’d make sure his kid was into football or soccer. Anything but baseball. That’s how much he’d wanted to move away from the game.

Funny, now it didn’t seem so bad. He could admit, for the first time, that maybe he’d missed it. The grass on the field—although this field was mostly brown after a hard winter. The shape of the diamond. The sight of a masked man crouching sixty feet away waiting to catch whatever Roy threw at him.

“Keep it simple to start,” Duff called out. “Fastball.”

Roy nodded and he could see Scout had a radar gun pointed at him ready to record his velocity.

His throat tightened and his hand flexed around the ball. “Don’t time me yet. Let me get a few in first.”

Scout nodded and put the gun down.

Then Roy went through his motions—forward lean, left arm dangle, pull up, plant foot and fire.

He heard the snap of the ball hitting Javier’s glove. It sounded pretty fast. Javier tossed back the ball and Roy did it again. After his third warm-up he nodded in Scout’s direction. She held up the gun and he fired.

“Eighty-six!”

Roy held his glove up, asking for the ball. Eighty-six wasn’t fast. His fastest had been ninety-two, ninety-three miles an hour. But eighty-six after not throwing for a few years was...workable.

“Try a curve,” Duff suggested.

Roy changed the position of the ball in his hand and threw. It curved. It wasn’t his killer curve, but, again, it was something to work with. He threw over and over. All of his old pitches, even the changeup, just to test that speed. Every fastball got a little faster, every curve a little curvier.

They worked him for an hour and when it was over, his body was covered in sweat and his arm hurt like hell. But he knew. He knew what they knew.

“You can still pitch, Roy Walker,” Scout said, patting him on his right shoulder. Duff kept his hands in his jeans pockets and nodded his agreement.

“The New England Rebels are looking for pitching,” Duff said. “Might be willing to offer you a minor-league deal to see if you can get your conditioning and timing up to speed. I’m thinking in a starting role, too, to build your stamina. It’s a lot of ifs, but if we can get you back into form, if you don’t blow out your arm while doing it, it might be perfect timing for the Rebels, heck, any team, looking to add to their rotation after the all-star break in July.”

Roy nodded. “You really think the Rebels will give me a chance?”

“I don’t,” Scout told him bluntly. “No one will take a chance on what might be. You can still pitch, but you are nowhere near major-league ready. Plus you’re old. Sorry to be so blunt but—”

“No, I appreciate it. I...need it.”

Duff sighed. “They’ll take a chance. They’ll take a chance if I tell them to. Call Charlie, tell him to call Russell. He’s the Rebels’ new general manager. I’ll let Russell know what’s coming and what I saw. In the meantime, Roy Walker, you’ll fill a hell of a lot of seats in this stadium and that’s something that will make our owner very happy. I sure do like to make JoJo happy.”

“You might want to start by not calling her JoJo,” Scout said. “She hates it.”

Duff scowled. “No, she loves it coming from me.”

Roy tuned them out and focused only on what might be. The minors. Roy Walker, future Hall of Famer, was back in the minors.

Still, it was a start.

They walked off the field and Roy gave his thanks to Javier. Something he might not have cared about before. But the guy had come on his own time to help Roy and the least he deserved was a thank-you.

“You good pitch.”

Roy smiled. “Thanks. Gracias. See you around, maybe.”

With that, Javier smiled and headed through the dugout to the door that would lead to the locker rooms. Roy put his mitt in his bag.

“You know, I’ve seen a lot of guys try this comeback,” Duff said as they followed Javier to the locker room, where there was an elevator that would take them up to the second level.

Both Roy and Scout purposefully walked slowly to accommodate Duff’s slow gait.

“The problem is the technique won’t be there for a while, which means you could hurt yourself before you can get your arm into shape.”

“Duff’s right,” Scout said. “Seen it a million times. You’ll be almost there and then you’ll tear something because you’re not getting the right treatment. Treatment is the key.”

“Okay. I’ll try to find someone. You have any recommendations? A sports therapist you use for the team?”

Roy should have guessed by the look Duff and Scout shared but really, truly, he didn’t see it coming.

“I do know someone,” Scout said. “Maybe she can be persuaded to come home for a visit.”

Duff chuckled before he started coughing. “Yep. Got the best in the business on my team. And I hear she works cheap.”

Roy looked at Duff, then at Scout. They couldn’t be serious. “She’ll never do it. She hates me.”

Scout and Duff both smiled back. “Yep,” they said together.

CHAPTER THREE

“YOU NEED TO come home.”

Lane pressed her cell to her ear with her shoulder and opened the door to her apartment, two grocery bags hanging from her arms. “Hold on.”

Once inside, she shut the door, made her way to the kitchen, put the bags—recyclable, of course—on the counter along with her phone and hit the speaker button.

“Okay, Scout, I’m here. What do you mean come home? I was just there.”

“Months ago at Christmas. Things are different now.”

Lane took a deep breath as she unpacked her frozen entrées and tried not to let Scout’s anxiety get her freaked out as well.

“Has he been to a doctor?” Lane asked, knowing what Scout was worried about. This was about Duff. With Scout it was always about Duff. Or baseball.

“He won’t go. He says he’s fine, just old and tired—”

“Scout, he is seventy-five. I mean, he’s allowed to be tired.”

“It’s not like that. It’s not naps in the afternoon. It’s not dozing after dinner. Something is wrong and you are the only one in this family who has any kind of medical knowledge. If you tell him to go to a doctor, he’ll listen to you. With me he brushes it off as nagging.”

Home.

The word blasted through Lane like a bullet into the gut. Suddenly the idea made so much sense to her when nothing seemed to make sense six days ago.

Six days? Had it been that long since the doctor told her Stephen had died? The eerie sense of lost time had Lane wondering what had happened during the past week. Most of that time had been spent on a couch staring at four walls. Until she got hungry enough to go to a grocery store to get something besides potato chips and peanut butter sandwiches to eat.

Now with Scout’s worry about Duff, it suddenly felt like there was an answer. A place to go. A person to be. Not a physical therapist, but a daughter.

Because Lane was no longer a physical therapist.

Scout wasn’t prone to exaggeration and she certainly wasn’t the type to ask for help. Lane hadn’t missed the fatigue Duff seemed to suffer from at Christmas. If he was getting worse, then he needed to see a doctor.

“Should we call Samantha?”

“The traitor sister? No.”

Lane groaned. Sometimes family dynamics could be so draining. “Scout, you really need to get over it. Yes, she talks to our mother on a regular basis. That’s normal behavior between a mother and a daughter. You should try it.”

“Not going to happen. Besides, I’m not saying to not call Samantha because of her and Mom. I’m saying it because if all three of us gang up on him, he’ll get stubborn. You know him. We need to make this look like it’s a totally natural visit. Can you get the time off?”

The words got stuck in Lane’s throat. As of three days ago she had all the time off she needed. Instead of admitting that, she just said yes.

“Good, I’ve set something up.”

“What?”

“When Duff calls he’s going to ask you for a favor. You will not want to do this favor, but you have no choice because you know your ulterior motive is to assess Duff’s condition and get his butt to a doctor.”

Lane tried to imagine what kind of favor Duff might ask for—one she wouldn’t want to do. He was her father. She adored him. There wasn’t anything she wouldn’t do if he asked unless it was...

“Scout, is it about baseball? You know I’m done with the sport. Completely and irrevocably.”

There was a pause. “I wouldn’t use the word irrevocably so casually.”

Lane gritted her teeth. “I’m not. I’m quite serious. I’m done with the game and, most importantly, I’m done with the players. If you need me in Minotaur Falls, fine, I’ll come. But I’m not having anything to do with the game.”

“Then he’ll suspect something,” Scout replied. “Look, I get it. You married a crappy guy and it eats at you every day that you couldn’t make the marriage work. But I need you to suck it up and do this thing. For Duff.”

Lane hated it when her younger sister was more right than she was. After all it had been five years since her marriage was exposed for the sham it had become. Maybe it was time to start letting some of the anger go. Anger that was mostly directed at herself. Something she rarely told anyone. Why would she when she had such an easy villain she could point to? Her cheating husband.

Her cheating husband and Roy Walker.

“Fine. I’ll do it. Just out of curiosity, what is this favor? I mean, I assume you want me to treat someone. Some up-and-coming star with a muscle issue? Do I know him?”

Another pause. “Nah. Just another player. He signed a minor-league deal with the Rebels. Who knows if he’ll even pan out? But Duff likes him, so he’ll ask you to work with him. You’ll say yes?”

“Was that actually a question?”

“I need you, Lane. I wouldn’t call you if I didn’t.”

Once more the words felt like a physical blow to Lane. Scout really was serious. Which meant Duff was in trouble. When a parent reaches seventy-five a child had to start to thinking about things. Things like saying goodbye. Lane wasn’t ready yet. She was barely surviving losing a patient she didn’t know that well.

She couldn’t even contemplate what losing Duff right now would mean.

Sometimes, though, life didn’t give a person a choice. What worried Lane more than her own reaction was Scout and how she would cope with such a loss. “Hey, you know, kiddo, if there is something wrong—”

“Don’t say it. I mean, I know where you are going and I know why you’re going there, but don’t say it. I can’t hear it. Not yet.”

Lane nodded and, really, there was no point in borrowing trouble. Not until they knew they had trouble on their hands. “Okay. I’ll wait for Duff’s call.”

Scout hung up and Lane thought of all the things she would need to organize. Pack, of course. Maybe ask her neighbor to take in the mail. Then she realized there wasn’t anything else that required organizing.

It wasn’t like she had a boyfriend she needed to tell. Hell, she didn’t have that many close friends who needed a heads-up. Everyone she knew in town worked at the veterans hospital. Since she’d resigned, a few of them had reached out to her, but no one had been able to talk her out of her decision.

Realistically, Stephen had been only a patient. Another soldier with a missing foot. Her job had been to get him back on his feet even though one of them would be prosthetic. She’d been so close, too. When anyone asked her about his progress, she always gave the same answer. The patient was doing great. He was ahead of schedule. She’d said it with pride. Because of her, he would be using his prosthesis faster than anyone else had before.

Yeah, she’d been doing a hell of job.

Until the twenty-four-year-old took a sharp razor to his wrists and killed himself.

Lane dropped onto the couch and looked around her apartment. It all seemed so empty. For the past five years she had put everything she had into a job as a way to escape her failure of a marriage and now that was gone.

Her supervisor had said it wasn’t her fault. The doctor had said it wasn’t her fault. She was a physical therapist, not a psychologist. She couldn’t have known what was in Stephen’s head. No one did, which is why the tragedy had happened.

Lane knew better. She should have sensed his reluctance to work with the prosthesis. She should have picked up on the fact that he wasn’t ready to move forward with his life because he hadn’t dealt with the loss of his limb. Or the explosion that had killed two of his friends. She’d worked for Veterans Affairs for five years. She’d seen amputations of every kind. She knew what it could do to the psyche.

Instead, she’d gotten caught up in getting a kid up on his feet only to have him take himself off them permanently.

The worst part was that, logically, she knew she couldn’t blame herself. Unlike with some of her other patients, she and Stephen hadn’t formed any kind of personal bond. He hadn’t been overly talkative or particularly friendly. Still, he’d been a good patient—he had done everything she asked. A soldier through and through. Taking the orders she dished out without any back talk.

No, Stephen was no different than the hundreds who had come before him.

Only he was completely different because he was gone and she hadn’t seen one sign. Not one signal that he was planning to take his own life.

She could tell herself that taking herself out of the work wasn’t about punishing herself for her mistake. That quitting meant not being there for the next soldier. The next soldier who needed her help. She could tell herself that she had a responsibility to the hospital. Heck, she could even tell herself she needed a paycheck to live.

All good reasons to put this incident behind her and go back to work.

She’d tried. The day after she’d learned of Stephen’s death, she had tried to go in like it was just another day. She’d walked into the therapy wing, had seen people working out in various capacities and instantly had known she couldn’t do it.

The thought of being presented with another patient terrified her. Someone whose name she would learn. Someone whose life she would try to improve. Someone who might be hurting in ways she couldn’t see because she only saw the physical.

What if Stephen happened again? What if she failed?

Lane couldn’t do it. Not yet. Maybe not ever again. The easiest thing had been to resign and deal with the fallout later.

Home.

Yes, that made sense. It might seem like Lane was going home to help Scout, but really Scout was the one who had just offered Lane a lifeboat.

* * *

SCOUT PUT HER cell in her back pocket, chewed her bottom lip and wondered if she was doing the right thing. Her loyalty, after all, should be to her sister and no one knew better how much Lane hated Roy Walker than Scout did. Scout had been the first person Lane called when it all went down. The party, the irrefutable proof of what a scumbag Danny was, Roy’s involvement in the whole thing. And when they had needed a coldhearted, ruthless lawyer, they had called their older sister, Samantha, to mete out the punishment.

Sam had eaten up Danny’s lawyer and spit him out. But not for financial reasons. Lane hadn’t wanted his money. She’d donated most of the settlement Samantha had won her to various different charities.

No, it was a lesson the Baker girls had wanted to enforce so Danny and anyone else in the game of baseball got the message.

You hurt us, we hurt you.

Scout remembered asking Lane what form of revenge she wanted them to inflict on Roy, but Lane hadn’t wanted to even hear his name mentioned. It was as if the betrayal from him was somehow too big to deal with.

Bigger than her divorce from Danny.

Her sister’s reaction always made Scout wonder about Lane and her feelings for Roy. And that speculation made her feel slightly less guilty about not telling her who Duff’s favor was for. At the end of the day, it didn’t really matter. Scout needed Lane to pressure Duff to get his health checked.

Lane was probably right. He was getting older and slowing down. Scout could accept that. Hell, it’s not like she was going anywhere. She was here for him. Slow or not. She just needed some assurance there wasn’t something else, something more serious with far greater reaching consequences, going on.

It was fair to say, Scout didn’t like change. Very fair considering she’d lost the only man she ever loved because she wouldn’t change.

That nervous niggle in her stomach reared its ugly head. The one she could forget about for hours until suddenly it was there again making her nauseous. She couldn’t say why, but it sure felt like a whole lot of change was coming.

No, Scout definitely did not like change.

* * *

LANE PULLED UP to the stadium and thought about what it would feel like to walk through those doors. It had been five years since she’d done it. No matter how many times she had come home to visit, no matter how many times Duff had asked her to check out a game with him, she hadn’t once set foot in this place. The home of the Minotaurs.

For that matter, she hadn’t entered any other ballpark. Heck, she felt uncomfortable walking by a diamond in a park. She hadn’t watched a single game on TV. She hadn’t paid attention to any playoff runs or World Series.

She didn’t even know if her ex-husband was still on a team. Still playing. Still doing well. She didn’t care.

Her love for baseball had died that night. No, it had been murdered, by her. She’d purposefully ejected it from her life. Went so far as to stop treating all professional athletes because she hadn’t wanted to be remotely reminded of the lifestyle. She’d turned down a professional golfer’s offer of ten thousand dollars for one hour of therapy without blinking.

She’d even stopped eating hot dogs.

She missed hot dogs.

It wasn’t lost on Lane that after the failure of her marriage she’d turned her back on everything she loved except her immediate family. Her first major failure at her job, and she’d done the same thing to work.

Quitter.

The word sat ridiculously heavy on her shoulders. Was that what she was? Was that what she did? Did she quit when things got hard?

No, she told herself stubbornly. She made rational decisions to protect her mental well-being. It was not the same thing at all.

Besides she was here now, standing outside the stadium, wasn’t she? Scout needed her and Lane wasn’t going to let an old grudge get in the way of doing the right thing by her father. She would grant Duff’s favor and he would, in turn, do her a favor by making appointment with a doctor. Just a normal checkup. Something any daughter might prod her aging father into doing.

She left her car, swallowed the crazy nervous thing that was in her throat and walked through the stadium doors like it was no big deal. It was early March and snow was still on the ground in upstate New York, although it was melting. Today the sun was out and there was a hint of spring in the air. Enough to give a person a sense of hope that warmer weather was coming. It was just a matter of time.

Spring used to be her favorite season. The start of everything new. New flowers, new grass, new life and, most importantly, a new baseball season. She thought about the date, and realized opening day for the minors was three weeks away.

There might be players around the ballpark. Those making a run for The Show would be down in spring training. But the cast of players who knew they would start in Triple-A would already be warming up. Hoping to prove themselves enough for some scout to see them and give them a chance.

Lane headed toward Duff’s office, stopping just outside. She was supposed to meet the player Duff wanted her to work with. Like Scout, he’d played it off as no big deal. Just a pitcher who they wanted to gradually work up to full speed.

She figured he was someone coming off an injury.

A patient, she thought. That’s how she would deal with him. Not a player, not an athlete, just a patient. If she could maintain that distance, then it wouldn’t be like being involved in baseball at all.

Taking a deep breath, she knocked and opened the door. The outer office was empty and she could hear voices behind the inner door. Marching forward, she entered the office, ready to compartmentalize her task. She was here to assess her father’s health. The other task was simply the means to an end.

“Hey, Duff,” Lane said, seeing her father leaning back in his chair behind the desk. The player in question was sitting on the opposite side of the desk, his back to her. “Well, you got me back here. And I guess you’re going to be my patient for the next few—”

The player stood and turned to face her.

“Roy Walker. Wow,” she whispered. Because she really had nothing else to say.

Scout did this. Duff did this. They both did this to her. Yet another horrible betrayal by people she trusted. How could they force her to confront the one man she never wanted to see again?

The man who had ruined her marriage. Who had turned her into a failure.

It wasn’t his fault. It was yours...

“Lanie,” he whispered as if he, too, was not ready for the confrontation even though he’d at least had a heads-up it was coming. “You look...good. I mean, it’s good to see you.”