His 47 Seconds of Silence Cost Him Everything novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Too Sensitive

I leave the ring on the kitchen island and move in over my sister's salon, and at midnight the baseball coach texts that his camera caught all forty-seven seconds.

"Nobody to him," I said.

"You heard me." Cory opened the fridge and got a beer. "You're the stepmother. You're the lady who packs his lunch. Stacy's his mother and I'm his dad, and if I say you don't see him, you don't see him."

"I've been at every game for five years."

"And you'll be at the next one, if you post the apology." He twisted the cap off. "It's one video, Ren. Half a minute. Laugh, say you knew, say Stacy's a riot. The whole thing goes away by Monday."

"The whole thing is you saying nothing while she told everyone she's having your baby."

"It was a bit."

"Then why didn't you laugh?"

He drank his beer instead of answering.

I went upstairs.

I got the big suitcase down from the closet shelf and laid it open on our bed.

I packed jeans, work clothes, my school lanyard, my laptop.

I took my grandmother's quilt off the cedar chest.

Cory came and leaned in the doorway.

"Where do you think you're going?"

"Jen's."

He snorted. "Your sister lives over a hair salon."

"She has a couch."

"You're really going to do this over a prank. You're really going to blow up our marriage on the internet."

"I'm not on the internet, Cory. I'm in our bedroom."

The doorbell rang.

He went down and I heard his mother's voice, bright and fluttery.

When I came down with the suitcase, she was standing at the island holding a casserole dish in two oven mitts.

Chicken and stuffing. She brought it to funerals.

"Renee," she said. "Sweetheart. Let's all just sit down and eat something."

"I'm not hungry, Mrs. Ritter."

"Nobody meant anything. Stacy's like that. You know how she is." She set the dish down. "We've worked so hard to all get along. For Callen. For family harmony."

"I know," I said. "I've worked hard at it too."

"Then don't throw it away."

Cory crossed his arms. "Tell her, Mom. She thinks she's going to keep seeing Callen after this."

His mother looked at him, then at me.

She didn't say anything.

It ran in the family.

I went to the fridge.

Callen's school pictures were stuck to it with a pizza magnet, kindergarten all the way through sixth grade, except kindergarten wasn't mine.

I'd met him at seven.

I took the six that were, first grade through sixth, and put them in my purse.

"Those belong to this house," Cory said.

"Then come take them out of my bag."

He didn't move.

I took off my ring for the second time that day.

I'd been carrying it in my fist and then my pocket, and I set it on the white quartz island next to his mother's casserole.

It made a small, clean click.

My phone buzzed.

It was the attorney.

"Got your message. I can see you Tuesday at 4. Don't post anything. Don't apologize for anything. Bring dates."

I turned the screen so Cory could read it.

Then I rolled the suitcase out the front door, over the welcome mat I'd bought, and down the driveway.

Jen's salon was on State Street in Uptown, one chair and a big front window that said JEN CUTS HAIR in gold paint.

She lived upstairs.

She opened the side door in her pajama pants and a black salon smock, with a box of wine under her arm.

"I saw it," she said. "Get up here."

Her apartment smelled like bleach and burnt popcorn.

She put me on the couch and handed me a coffee mug of wine.

"I'm going to key his bench," she said.

"Which one?"

"All of them. Every bus bench in Westerville. I'll do a mustache on every single smiling Family First face."

"Not yet."

"Yet," she said. "You said yet. I'm writing that down."

She actually wrote it down, on a salon receipt, and stuck it on her fridge.

Then she sat on the coffee table in front of me.

"Ren. He just stood there?"

"Forty-seven counts."

"You counted."

"I couldn't stop."

She looked at me for a long time, and then she got up and made me toast, because toast was the only thing she could make.

She burned it.

I ate it anyway.

At midnight I was still awake on her couch under my grandmother's quilt.

My phone lit up.

Callen.

I sat up so fast the quilt slid off.

"Hey, bud."

"Hi." He was whispering. I could hear a fan going. "Are you okay?"

"I'm okay. Are you okay?"

"Mom's editing. In the living room. She's doing a Part 2." He stopped. "I'm in it. She filmed me in the dugout, when you were walking away."

My stomach turned over.

"I told her it wasn't funny," he said. "Like you said it. I said it exactly the same."

"What did she say?"

"She said I'm too sensitive. Like Ren." His voice cracked on my name. "Are you still coming to practice tomorrow?"

I didn't know what I was allowed to say to him.

I didn't know what I was anymore, to him.

"I'll be there," I said. "I'll be behind the plate."

"Okay." He breathed out. "Okay. Night, Ren."

He hung up.

I lay back down and stared at Jen's ceiling fan going around.

My phone buzzed again.

A number I didn't have.

"This is Coach Mike. Mike Brandow. Callen gave me your number for the snack schedule in March."

Another text came right under it.

"The livestream camera behind home plate was still running. It caught all of it. The full forty-seven-second clip, plus the part where he puts his arm around her."

Then a third.

"What do you want me to do with it?"

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