“That’s the thing,” I said. “I miss some stuff about those days, but this trip has given me a dose of perspective. I always thought of doing public appearances as a trade-off for getting to be with the person I love. But it’s wrong to be that passive about it. When we get back to London, I want to have a real voice in this. Will you back me up?”
He leaned in and kissed me firmly. “Yes,” he said. “Wholeheartedly. But do you mind waiting a day to plan our attack? We’ve got a surprise stop on the way home.”
“Hamilton isn’t a surprise,” I said.
Nick grinned broadly. “I’m not talking about Hamilton,” he said. “Although I did decide not to throw away our shot.”
* * *
“Fine. You were right,” Nick said the next day. “I don’t understand it, but I cannot deny it. Your watery beer tastes perfect when it’s cold and in a plastic cup on a hot day.”
“I told you,” I said. “Next time I say that it’s Miller Time, don’t make fun of me.”
Nick touched the brim of his cap, as if to salute. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Also, just FYI, I’m not sure you’ve ever looked sexier to me than you do right now.”
Nick winked, then gulped some beer and focused on the action from our nosebleed seats along the third base line. I pulled down my own careworn hat—Nick had packed it without me knowing—and looked out at what Earl Porter always referred to as our vacation home: Wrigley Field, where my beloved Cubs were taking on the Texas Rangers. When Nick told me yesterday in New York that he’d gotten tickets, I’d gone mute for a full minute.
“This better not be a joke,” I finally said.
“Bex. I would never joke about the Cubs,” Nick said.
“We’re going to an actual baseball game. In actual Wrigley Field. In actual seats.”
“I paid for the tickets, so if we don’t have actual seats, I’ll be cross,” he said. “That is, if you…”
He trailed off. Or maybe I stopped hearing him. My father and I had been planning to catch another Cubs game together, but instead he’d died on the way to one by himself. The ache of that loss pressed on my chest. I breathed slowly.
Nick put his hands on my shoulders. “Nothing’s been done that can’t be undone,” he said softly. “If this is too hard for you, say so, and it’s off.” He tipped my chin up toward him. “This was your special thing with Earl, and I don’t want to intrude on that. But I don’t know how feasible it’ll be to do this again, and I want to know this one massive part of you that I’ve never experienced. And of your father.” He swallowed hard. “I miss him, too.”
Crack. My eyes clicked back into focus. Anthony Rizzo belted a beautiful ball deep into center field, and I stood up to cheer as he rounded first and made it safely to second.
“And a man on third, and no outs,” I gloated, sitting back down. “We are about to bust this game wide open.” I covered my mouth with my hand and whispered, “Suck it, Rangers.”
Nick laughed. “Afraid of a lip-reading expert?”
“Yes, obviously,” I said. “I don’t want to start an international feud with Texas.”
In the end, we hadn’t told the press pack; we’d simply let everyone return home—our arrival in England wasn’t covered anyway—and then gone the other direction. We knew they’d be unhappy if they heard, but it was worth the risk. Nick wanted this to be as mundane an experience as possible for us both. No royal treatment, no throwing out the first pitch, no tour of the locker rooms, no customized “Clarence” jersey handed to us by Kyle Hendricks before he took the mound. The point of this detour was to blend in, one last time, and if anyone got photos, more power to the industrious person who sold them. So the PPOs had made a security plan with the Chicago PD designed for maximum discretion, and we dressed down in sneakers and hats, my hair tucked up into mine, both of us wearing sunglasses that hid a good portion of our faces. Nick’s were hideous wraparounds that were distant cousins of ski goggles, and they were so aggressively ugly that I worried they’d attract attention, but so far no one in Chicago cared. We were just two yahoos sitting in the upper deck drinking light beer and shoveling Cracker Jack into their mouths.
“This is an insanely pleasant way to spend an afternoon,” Nick said. “Cricket needs more organ music.”
“Wow,” I said. “Between this and your scandalous preference for coffee, I’m beginning to think you were born in the wrong country.”
“No kidding,” Nick said, licking the last drop of mustard off his thumb and tucking his third hot dog wrapper under the seat. “Maybe I should defect.”
The game had moved along at a brisk pace; aside from one run batted in by the Cubs, there had been no action until the bottom of the sixth. The seats around us weren’t totally filled, though I knew PPOs Stout, Twiggy, Popeye, and Furrow were fanned out in the adjacent sections. I’d caught Furrow standing up and yelling something that, by the reactions of the Cubs fans around him, had been very entertaining and not at all flattering to the ump.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
Finally headed into the thick of it. Last Wi-Fi I’ll have for a while. Where are you?
Freddie had been assigned to a Special Boat Service unit that was on furlough in Europe, giving him time to acclimate in a low-pressure environment before seeing any action. His dispatches were infrequent, but funny, often about something absurd he’d done in Frankfurt with his terrible Niles wig while trying to stay hidden—or, once, a selfie of him with Daphne, whom he’d visited during a holiday weekend. It was a relief to see him with a friendly, familiar face, as if she extended our reach across the globe
