His 47 Seconds of Silence Cost Him Everything novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Pink Bats

The boys used pink bats for the Mother's Day game.

Pink bats, pink wristbands, pink laces in their cleats.

The league bought a bucket of pink carnations from the Kroger floral counter, one for every player, and lined them up in a cooler by the backstop.

I'd kept the scorebook in the dugout for exactly two games.

Today I was too nervous to sharpen a pencil.

"You're going to snap that," Mike said.

I looked down. I'd bent the pencil into a curve.

"He might change his mind," I said. "He should. She's his mother. It's Mother's Day."

"He won't change his mind."

"How do you know?"

Mike took a sunflower seed out of his cheek and threw it in the dirt.

"Because he asked me Friday if he was allowed to," he said. "I said it's his flower. He said good, because he already picked which one."

The announcer's voice came over the speaker, crackly.

"Before today's first pitch, the Wildcats would like to honor the moms!"

The boys lined up along the third-base line, each one holding a carnation.

The moms came down out of the bleachers and lined up along the first-base line, laughing, taking pictures of each other.

Cory's mother stayed up in the stands.

Stacy came down the steps in a white sundress.

I knew that sundress.

It was the same cut as mine from the fundraiser, from the same store, two sizes smaller.

She'd done her hair and her lipstick and she had her phone in her hand, even though she wasn't allowed to film.

She stood at the very end of the moms' line, right by home plate.

I stayed in the dugout.

"Go on, Scorekeeper," Mike said quietly.

"I'm not his mother."

"He's not asking you that."

The announcer called the boys out one at a time.

The shortstop walked his flower to a mom in scrubs who'd come straight off a night shift, and she cried and hugged him and her badge got caught on his jersey.

The left fielder gave his to his grandma.

"Number twelve, catcher, Callen Ritter!"

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