Call Me By Your Heart novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Birthmark
Brynn finds a sleeping boy in the owners' box with her own birthmark behind his ear; the star pitcher catches her touching him.
The Herons won in the ninth, and I was the only one in the building who didn't care.
By midnight the crowd was gone and the lights over the infield were burning down to nothing.
I pushed my cart along the owners' level with a bag of trash on each hip.
My crew polo was soaked through at the back.
My shift ended at four, and I still had eleven suites to do.
The last one was the owner's box, the big glass room with the leather couches.
Nobody was supposed to be inside it after a game.
Somebody was.
A small shape lay curled on the long couch with a Herons jacket pulled up to its chin.
It was a boy.
He was asleep with his mouth open and one sneaker half off.
I stopped with my hand on the cart.
I told myself to turn around.
Kids got left in the suites all the time, and a security guard always came for them.
Instead I walked in and crouched beside the couch.
I don't know why.
His cap had fallen off.
His hair was dark blond and damp at the temples.
He had a smear of mustard on his chin.
He looked about seven.
I had not let myself count that number in a very long time.
I tugged the sneaker the rest of the way off so his foot wouldn't hurt.
Then I saw it.
The hair behind his left ear had folded forward, and under it was a small brown mark shaped like a crescent moon.
My hand went to my own head before I could stop it.
I pushed my braid aside and found the same mark behind my own left ear.
My mother used to kiss it.
She said an angel had pressed a thumb there and then forgotten to let go.
I couldn't breathe right.
Seven years and four months ago I had given birth in a small hospital in Pennsylvania, alone.
A doctor with tired eyes had come in an hour later and told me my son was born without a heartbeat.
He hadn't let me hold him.
He had handed me a typed letter with a seal on it, and I had signed where he showed me.
I had not even had a name picked out.
Now a boy slept on a couch in the Herons' owner's box, seven years old, with my mother's angel mark.
It could be nothing.
Lots of people have birthmarks.
My fingers were already lifting the hair away from it to be sure.
He stirred.
His eyes opened, grey and unfocused, and he looked straight at me.
"Are you the cleaning lady?" he said.
"I am."
"I fell asleep." He yawned. "I wasn't supposed to."
"That's okay."
My voice came out wrong, and I cleared my throat.
"What's your name?"
"Jamie." He rubbed his eye. "Jamie Tolland. My dad's Scott Tolland, he's the pitcher. He struck out eleven tonight."
Scott Tolland.
I knew that name.
Nobody on the crew knew it meant anything to me.
When I took the job at Lakeshore Park three months ago, I had stood in the stadium tunnel and told myself I could scrub floors in his building and never see his face.
I had been right.
Until now.
"Is he coming to get you?" I asked.
"He's talking to the reporters." Jamie looked at my hand, still at his ear. "Why are you touching my ear?"
"You have a mark here."
"I know." He grinned, proud of it. "Mom says it's where the angel held me."
My whole body went cold.
Behind me the glass door opened with a soft click.
I knew the footsteps before I turned.
I had listened for them on the stairs of a dorm building when I was nineteen, back when I still believed in things.
Scott Tolland stood in the doorway in his game pants and a gray team shirt, with his cap in one hand.
He was taller than he'd been then.
His shoulders were broader, and there was a new line cut between his eyebrows.
He looked at me crouched over his son, with my fingers in the boy's hair.
Something went through his face that was not surprise.
"Dad," Jamie said sleepily. "The cleaning lady likes my angel mark."
Scott didn't look at his son.
He looked at me, and his voice dropped to something I had never heard from him.
"Take your hand off my son."
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