matched up against Matt Moore. How had he ever become interested in such a slow, boring sport to begin with?
He put away his groceries and settled onto the sofa. The Coben was terrific, and he got into it right away. Evers was so immersed that he didn’t realize he’d picked up the TV remote, but when he got to the end of chapter six and decided to break for a small piece of Pepperidge Farm lemon cake, the gadget was right there in his hand.
The Rays were up one to nothing in the eighth, and Dewayne Staats was so excited he was burbling. “Don’t want to talk about what’s going on with Matt Moore tonight, folks—I’m old-school—but let’s just say that the bases have been devoid of Crimson Hose.”
Close-up on Moore. He was sweating, even in the Trop’s constant 72 degrees. He went into his motion, the picture changed to the home plate shot, and there in the third row was Dean Evers’s dead wife, wearing the same tennis whites she’d had on the day of her first stroke. He would have recognized that blue piping anywhere.
Ellie was deeply tanned, as she always was by this time of summer, and as was the case more often than not at the ballpark, she was ignoring the game entirely, poking at her iPhone instead. For an unfocused moment, Evers wondered who she was texting—someone here, or someone in the afterlife?—when, in his pocket, his cell phone buzzed.
She raised the phone to her ear and gave him a little wave.
Evers shook his head no slowly.
His phone vibrated again, like a mild shock applied to his thigh.
“No,” he said to the TV, and thought, logically:
Ellie shook her phone at him.
“This is wrong,” he said. Because Ellie wasn’t like Soupy Embree or Lennie Wheeler or Young Dr. Young. She loved him—of that Evers was sure—and he loved her. Forty-six years meant something, especially nowadays.
He searched her face. She seemed to be smiling, and while he didn’t have a speech prepared, he guessed he did want to tell her how much he missed her, and what his days were like, and how he wished he was closer to Pat and Sue and the grandkids, because, really, there was no one else he could talk to.
He dug the phone from his pocket. Though he’d deactivated her account months ago, the number that came up was hers.
On TV, Moore was pacing behind the mound, juggling the rosin bag on the back of his pitching hand.
And then there she was, right behind David Ortiz, holding up her phone.
He pressed TALK.
“Hello?” he said.
“Finally,” she said. “Why didn’t you pick up?”
“I don’t know. It’s kind of weird, don’t you think?”
“What’s weird?”
“I don’t know. You not being here and all.”
“Dead, you mean. Me being dead.”
“That.”
“So you don’t want to talk to me because I’m dead.”
“No,” he said. “I always want to talk to you.” He smiled—at least, he thought he was smiling. He’d have to check the mirror to be sure, because his face felt frozen. “You’re wanted, sweetheart, dead or alive.”
“You’re such a liar. That’s one thing I always hated about you. And fucking Martha, of course. I wasn’t a big fan of that either.”
What could he say to that? Nothing. So he sat silent.
“Did you think I didn’t know?” she said. “That’s another thing I hated about you, thinking I didn’t know what was going on. It was so obvious. A couple of times you came home still stinking of her perfume. Juicy Couture. Not the most subtle of scents. But then, you were never the most subtle guy, Dean.”
“I miss you, El.”
“Okay, yes, I miss you too. That’s not the point.”
“I love you.”
“Stop trying to press my buttons, all right? I need to do this. I didn’t say anything before because I needed to keep everything together and make everything work. That’s who I am. Or was, anyway. And I did. But you hurt me. You
“I’m sorr—”
“Please
That stung. “Of course she wa—”
“—don’t expect any brownie points for that. You didn’t have time to cheat on me with anyone outside the company because you were always there. Even when you were here you were there. I understood that, and maybe that was my fault for not sticking up for myself, but the one it really wasn’t fair to was Patrick. You wonder why you never see him, it’s because you were never there for him. You were always off in Denver or Seattle at some sales meeting or something. Selfishness is learned behavior, you know.”
This criticism Evers had heard many times before, in many forms, and his attention waned. Moore had gone 3–2 on Papi.
“You were always too worried about what you were doing, and not enough about the rest of us. You thought bringing home the bacon was enough.”
“Dean? Are you hearing me? Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
“Yes,” Evers said, just as the pitch from Moore caught the outside corner and the ump rang up Ortiz.
“I know that yes! God damn you, are you watching the stupid game?”
“Of course I’m watching the game.” Though now it was a truck commercial. A grinning man—one who undoubtedly knew how to get things done—was driving through mud at a suicidal speed.
“I don’t know why I called. You’re hopeless.”
“I’m not,” Evers said. “I miss you.”
“Jesus, why do I even bother? Forget it. Good-bye.”
“Don’t!” he said.
“I tried to be nice—that’s the story of my life. I tried to be nice and look where it got me. People like you
“I love you,” he repeated, but she was gone, and when the game came back on, the woman with the sparkly top was in Ellie’s seat. The woman with the sparkly top was a Tropicana Field regular. Sometimes the top was blue and sometimes it was green, but it was always sparkly. Probably so the folks at home could pick her out. As if she’d caught the thought, she waved. Evers waved back. “Yeah, bitch, I see you. You’re on TV, bitch, good fucking job.”
He got up and poured himself a scotch.
In the ninth Ellsbury snuck a seeing-eye single through the right side, and the crowd rose and applauded Moore for his effort. Evers turned the game off and sat before the dark screen, mulling what Ellie had said.
Unlike Soupy Embree’s accusation, Ellie’s was true.
