She looked down at me.
“I’m so sad for you, Jake,” she said.
I started to cry again.
“You know what?” I said after a while.
“What?”
“I’m mad at Edward,” I said. “For running into that tree.”
Maeve sighed.
“I am, too,” she said. “I am, too,” she repeated very softly.
“Edward was special,” I said.
Maeve looked closely at me.
“Of course he was. Like you and Sola and Wren and Will and Sabine…”
“No,” I said. “He was different. He was more special.”
Maeve looked surprised.
“Here’s what I think, Jake. If Edward seemed more special, maybe it was because of you.”
Suddenly, I thought about Edward, curled up next to me, falling asleep on the lawn. I could almost…almost smell him.
Maeve and I sat on Edward’s bed then for a long, long time. In that quiet empty room.
Sola carried Sabine into my room.
“I miss everything. I even miss the baseball games,” she said.
“You miss Edward,” I whispered. It was hard to say. My throat ached.
“Yes. And I miss the way things were,” she said.
I reached out my hand and touched Sabine’s cheek. She moved her head and looked at me. Her eyes were steady and serious. Sabine’s eyes and Edward’s eyes were all mixed up in my mind.
Edward’s eyes.
That night I dreamed about them, looking at me, that gold-flecked blue of the night sky when he was a baby. Looking at me across the yard—across the water after he dove from the boat—from the pitcher’s mound as he called out his strikes, “change up, slider, knuckleball.” I woke up from my dream and had to get out of bed and walk through the house to keep my heart from beating too fast.
It was a sign, that dream. Trick would have said so. Edward would have said so, too.
Two days later the letter came.
Chapter 17
It was late afternoon, Trick and Albert cooking a stew in the kitchen, my mother trying to save some of the flowers that had come, tossing out the ones that had gone by. Jack came in, carrying a small glass vase and holding a letter.
“I found these flowers on the porch,” he said. “Someone must have left them.”
“Poppies,” said Maeve, with a small smile. The first smile I had seen in days. “Beautiful red poppies, almost ready to bloom.”
Red poppies.
“Who left them?” asked Sola. “We’ve been here all day.”
Maeve shook her head. “I didn’t see anyone.”
Jack put the vase in the middle of the table.
He took Maeve’s hand.
“They gave me this letter. At the hospital,” he said. “It’s for us. You’ll want to read it.”
We all looked up at the strange, sad sound of his voice.
Maeve read it in the kitchen, the letter trembling in her hands. Trick and Albert stopped cooking, leaning against the counter, listening. Wren and Will sat at the table. Wren reached out for Sabine. Sabine touched Wren’s hair.
“Dear friends,
They won’t tell me your name, as you know. But I call you friends even though I don’t know you.
The corneas you have donated have brought back my life. I am a baseball player…minor league right now…but my eyes were getting worse.
You have changed my life. And I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I hope some day I can thank you in person.
I know you must have loved the person who gave me these wonderful eyes.”
Maeve sat down suddenly as if she couldn’t stand anymore. She dropped the letter on the table.
“It’s a nice letter,” said Jack softly.
“Yes,” said Maeve. “Yes,” she whispered. “I don’t know how to feel…sad or glad.”
“Both,” said Trick. “Both,” he repeated softly.
A baseball player. Of all the people in the world; painters, writers, mechanics, builders, teachers, waiters, dancers, singers, librarians, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers…
A baseball player!
Albert reached over to look at the letter.
“He doesn’t play too far away,” he said with a small smile.
He handed the letter to Trick.
“Close enough,” said Trick.
I looked at the name at the bottom of the letter: Willie Roberts.
It was quiet. And in that quiet something happened. A poppy bud in the vase trembled a little. As we watched, the husk fell to the table and very, very slowly the poppy opened.
Sabine turned to look. And then another trembled. The husk fell, and the flower slowly, more slowly than the first flower, opened. None of us moved or spoke. And then Sabine made a small chirp.
A sign. You know it when you see it.
I stood up.
“Music,” I said to Maeve. “It’s a sign. Please. Please, we need music,” I pleaded. “Sabine needs music.”
Maeve looked up at me for a moment. Then she got up and put a disc into the player.
Suddenly, music filled the room. Sabine waved her arms.
“Good night, you moonlight ladies. Rockabye sweet baby James.”
Jack put his arms around Maeve and they danced.
Wren got up and danced with Sabine. Maeve reached out and took Sabine, dancing with her and Jack. Maeve smiled and cried at the same time. And she began to sing, softly at first. Sabine smiled her toothless smile, and then, with her eyes on Maeve, Sabine laughed.
That sound, so new, made us all laugh. Something about that sound. I looked at Will and I could see the change in his look. Wren was different. Her worried look was gone.
Maeve put in another disc.
I went out to the porch, the sound of music following me.
“And when we die we say we’ll catch some blackbird’s wing.”
Albert came out, too.
I leaned down and picked up a small card that had dropped there.
It read:
The poppies are in memory of
Edward. He loved them.
—Angela Garden
I smiled.
The door opened behind me, and everyone came out and down the yard to the water.
And then, for Edward, because he had once said he wanted it, Jack sent off a rocket. It went high in the sky over the water, a big dandelion of light. Albert and I watched the sparks fall back to the water. Then it was quiet again.
“I want to find them,” I said.
“Them?”
I looked at Albert.
“Edward’s eyes,” I said.
“We will,” said Albert, putting his arm around me. “We surely will.”
Epilogue
Willie was three for four. One was a pop-up and I thought about when I taught Edward the infield fly rule, reading to him in the bathroom. I remembered Edward calling it to me from the baseball field in our front yard.
His last time at bat Willie hit to the opposite field. A solid drive.
“Good eyes,” said Albert under his breath.
Then he looked at me, suddenly knowing what he had said.
“It’s okay,” I said softly.
When the game was over and we got up to leave, Willie came up to us.
“This is Trick and Albert,” I said. “They played baseball.”
“I could tell,” said Willie. “By your throw,” he said to Albert.
Albert smiled.
“You had a good day,” said Albert.
Willie nodded.
“Better every day now,” he said, still looking at me.
I stared at his eyes, looking for Edward there. But somehow, the eyes that looked back at me were Willie’s eyes.
When we started to go, Willie called to us.
“Will you come again?” he asked.
“Yes,” I answered before Trick and Albert could answer.
Willie came over and put his arms aro
und me.
“Thank you,” he said softly.
Albert Groom drove home, Trick in the front seat, me in the back. I watched trees and houses go by, a pond and a marsh, tall cattails at the edges.
“Albert?”
Albert looked in the rearview mirror at me.
“Yes?”
“I think we should start the baseball games again.”
“Good idea,” said Albert.
There was a silence.
“And…,” I paused.
“Yes, Jake.”
“Maybe I’ll play baseball,” I said, surprising myself.
Trick turned to smile at me.
“Okay,” said Albert.
There was another long silence. I saw the bay off in the distance. Soon we’d be home. We rounded the head of the bay, light sitting on water.
“Maybe I’ll learn how to throw a knuckleball,” I said very softly from the backseat.
No one said anything. Maybe no one heard me.
We drove into the driveway and got out of the car.
Albert held up his hand for a high five. He’d heard me.
We were home.
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