by Tim Green
“So, how can we take pictures of Diane and Right Cross?” Josh asked.
“Well,” she said, “when someone’s walking down the street, you can film them. It’s when they’re someplace where you expect to have privacy, like the bathroom or a hotel room. Those are places you can’t record people. These two walked right out onto the sidewalk and started smooching. We get that and it’ll blow your dad’s mind.”
“That’s what we’ve got to get then,” Josh said.
“You help me finish out the day here with the kids, and I’ll take you to her office. Who knows if they’ll both be there, though.”
“Well,” Josh said, “we have to try.”
Josh went back inside with Jaden. They played Charades, and then when there was some extra time at the end, the kids all wanted Josh to read some more, so he did. When the center shut down at four, Jaden and Josh hurried down State Street to the old factory where Diane kept her office. Her white Audi was in the parking lot separated from the street by a black iron fence.
“We’re in luck.” Jaden nodded toward a black Chevy pickup truck jacked up onto oversized wheels. “That’s Right’s truck.”
“Where you going?” Josh asked.
“Inside.” Jaden pointed at the big brick building.
“She’ll see me,” Josh said.
“She’s on the first floor,” Jaden said. “We can watch from the balcony above. It’s all open. Haven’t you ever been in there?”
“No,” Josh said. “What if she sees me going in?”
“There are other places in there,” Jaden said. “A clothing store and a bunch of offices. You just say you’re with me and I’m shopping. As soon as we’re inside, we’ll go straight upstairs. The places up there are all empty. No one will see us, but we can see everything from there. Plus, it’ll get us close enough to record the mushy stuff.”
Thick green vines crept three stories up the side of the old factory. Josh could tell the entrance had been recently added because the bricks were smooth and bright, very different from those in the older part of the building. He was glad for the cool air-conditioned air but nervous that Diane might see him. No excuse Jaden could whip up would make Josh comfortable if he came face-to-face with her in the building where she worked.
“That’s it.” Jaden angled her head toward a glass storefront in the corner where an empty desk and some plants guarded two separate doorways within. Painted across the glass was CROSS LAND COMPANY.
“That could be homes or that gas lease stuff you talked about,” Josh said.
“Exactly.”
Arched steel beams rested atop brick columns. Fat globe lights lined the walls, but enough sunlight spilled in through the big windows that they were unnecessary. The place was quiet except for the secret hiss of the air-conditioning. A few people moved inside the other glass-fronted offices, but the common area was empty. The clack of their feet on the stairs made Josh look around nervously. On the second floor, they found a quiet spot along the gallery and sat down on the wooden floor where they could see the entrance to Diane’s office through the bronze railing.
The place was as quiet and cavernous as a library. The few people who did come and go moved quickly and quietly. Josh and Jaden had their backs to a long hallway leading to the fire stairs. They didn’t hear anything from that direction until someone cleared his throat and in a growl said, “What are you kids doing here?”
CHAPTER FORTY
JOSH’S MOUTH DROPPED OPEN.
Jaden gasped but then recovered, pushed a finger to her lips, and in a whisper said, “We’re keeping an eye on his dad’s girlfriend.”
The man, whose white hair and mustache made the pink in his weepy eyes seem almost red, gave them a puzzled look.
“Girlfriend?” he asked.
“Shhh. His parents are divorcing and that Cross woman is seeing Josh’s dad,” Jaden said, nodding toward Josh and explaining away as if she’d been asked the answer to a problem written out on the board in school. “We think she’s still with the ex-husband and if we can prove it, Josh’s dad might go back with his mom. We’re not doing anything wrong—she is.”
“No one’s supposed to be up here,” the custodian said, slipping two thumbs into the shoulder straps of his denim overalls.
Jaden looked around. “It’s a public place, right? I mean, anyone can come in here to that, like, dress shop, right?”
“Well,” the custodian muttered with a nod that shook the loose skin beneath his chin, “I guess I’d have to say it is.”
“Yeah, it is,” Jaden said, “and we’re not hurting anything, right? I mean, if she’s really running around like that, there’s no sense in letting her break up Josh’s family, don’t you think? Are you married?”
“Thirty-seven years,” the custodian said with pride. “Three kids and two grandkids.”
“See?”
“Well.” The man scratched the loose skin in his neck. “You just don’t get into any trouble then.”
“No,” Jaden said, shaking her head with a serious face, “we won’t.”
“And if you need to use the restroom, you use the ones on the first floor. I just cleaned the ones up here.”
“Of course,” Jaden said.
The man glanced curiously at Josh before disappearing back down the long hall, muttering to himself.
“Are you crazy?” Josh asked in a whisper when the man had disappeared.
“Why am I crazy?” Jaden looked confused.
“You just told that guy why we’re here,” Josh said. “Who does that?”
“It’s always better if you can tell the truth,” Jaden said. “People can sense the conviction that you say something with. That’s why so many times people know when someone is lying to them. So I told the truth.”
“What if he tells her?” Josh asked, nodding down toward Diane’s office.
“Him?” she asked, referring to the custodian. “He’s married thirty-seven years; you don’t think he’s on our side?”
“But you didn’t know that until you asked him,” Josh said impatiently.
Jaden shrugged. “I had a feeling. Call it a woman’s intuition.”
Josh thought about that in the silence of the building. It wasn’t until the inner doors of Diane’s office sprang open and four people burst out into the common area that the place exploded with noise. Diane laughed, the sound that somehow had made Josh’s father grin. To Josh, it sounded like a crow dropping onto some roadkill from the sky. Her ex-husband spoke in a loud, boastful voice about how smart they all were and how rich they’d soon become. The other two were both men, looking—as Jaden had said—somewhat suspicious and in need of grooming. Their faces were flushed with excitement, though, as they nodded and shook hands with the Crosses before leaving the building.
Diane and her ex-husband watched them go, then turned to each other, shaking hands on some deal of their own before Right bent over and kissed her. Josh looked over at Jaden, who eagerly held her phone out through a space in the railing, directing its lens at the couple. Josh looked back down, but the Crosses had already separated. The ex-husband crossed the lobby and left while Diane went back inside her office.
“Did you get it?” Josh whispered.
“I think so.” Jaden fumbled with her phone and held the screen up for Josh to look at, too. “Let’s see.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
JOSH STUDIED THE TINY screen, watching for the second time as the Crosses emerged from the office with their clients or victims or whoever they were.
“You can see it’s them, right?” Jaden asked.
“I think so,” Josh said. “And you can hear that stupid laugh that he loves so much. Yeah, he’ll know it’s her.”
They watched the departure of the two men and then the kiss.
“The other day,” Jaden said, “they were really going at it, but a kiss is a kiss, right? No way is your dad going to go for this. It proves they’re still together.”
“I don
’t think so either,” Josh said, shaking his head as he imagined one of his father’s angry faces.
“So, we got it.” Jaden snapped her phone shut.
“Can I take it?” Josh asked. His own phone was a basic model without a camera or video capabilities. “I’ll give you mine to use.”
“Sure,” Jaden said, handing it over and taking Josh’s phone in return. “When are you going to show it to him?”
“He’s supposed to pick me up for dinner, then go to the batting cage. When he sees this, I bet he’s back home before I leave for the regionals tomorrow morning.”
Jaden looked at him, her face suddenly blank.
“What?” Josh asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m having second thoughts. Maybe we should get more proof. Something like I saw the other day. Maybe a couple of times. People are funny about this stuff. Sometimes they believe what they want to believe instead of what they see. You’ve heard of the saying ‘Don’t shoot the messenger,’ right?”
“Yeah, but what’s that got to do with this?” Josh asked.
“I just don’t want this to backfire on you,” Jaden said. “Maybe it’s just because what I saw the other day was so much more mushy than what they just did. I mean, they had their hands all over each other.”
“Don’t worry.” Josh held up the phone. “This is enough. Trust me. Let’s get out of here.”
Jaden followed him down the stairs. He checked Diane’s office. The inner door was closed, so he knew she was in the back. They scooted across the lobby and outside into the heat. They walked up the hill together, passing the hospital, then Jaden kept going toward her own house while Josh took a left after thanking her for saving his life.
“Okay,” Jaden said. “I hope it works.”
“Don’t worry.” He grinned. “It’s guaranteed.”
Josh retrieved his lawn mower and pushed it back to the garage behind his house. The smell of cut grass drifting up from the lawn mower’s blade made him think of baseball and the contest just around the corner that was so big it made him shiver. He ached to get there, to a place where kissing grown-ups and unpaid bills were replaced by fastballs, double plays, and home runs.
When he went inside, his mom was at the kitchen table sorting through a pile of papers with a big blue binder full of checks in the middle of it all. She chewed on the end of a pen and studied some numbers with a frown.
“Mom?” Josh said, startling her.
“Hi, honey,” she said. “I didn’t hear you come in. These bills.”
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“Oh, we’ll make it,” she said, forcing a smile. “I thought things would finally get easier when your father got that Nike contract is all.”
Josh wondered if his mom somehow knew about Diane’s whole scheme and that the contract might be at risk, and he asked, “That’s not going away, right?”
“No,” she said, “I can’t see how that could happen. It’s a five-year deal, but having that money for one family isn’t the same as two.”
“Two?”
“Us,” she said, “and your father.”
“He doesn’t have another family,” Josh said, panicked at the thought of his father actually marrying Diane and being Zamboni’s dad, too.
“Not a whole family,” his mom said, “yet. But we still need money for two of almost everything. Two homes. Two cars. Two grocery bills, two light bills, cable TV, insurance, all that. Things will be tight again. That’s why I have to find a job. I feel bad not being able to go and support you, Josh. You know I don’t usually miss your games, but things aren’t usual anymore. I’ve got to find work.”
It looked like his mom was close to tears. Josh stuck a hand in his pocket and caressed Jaden’s cell phone.
“Mom,” he said. “I think I can fix everything.”
“What?” she said, her face rumpling like the blanket on an unmade bed. “What are you talking about, Josh?”
Josh took the cell phone out of his pocket and held it up with his heart racing in his chest like a cluster of brightly colored NASCAR racers taking a turn at a hundred and fifty miles an hour. He opened the phone, punched up the video, and handed it to her so that all she had to do was hit the play button.
“This,” Josh said proudly. “I’ve got a video of that Diane with her ex-husband. If Dad thinks she’s his, well, this proves she’s not. They’re divorced, but they’re still together. When he sees this, he’ll be back here before you know it. I know Dad. I’m sure he will.”
Josh looked eagerly at the expression on his mom’s face, which changed from puzzled to deeply sad.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Josh asked.
His mom slowly closed the phone and handed it back to him. “I’m sorry, Josh. I know how bad you’d like everything to go back to the way it was, but that’s just not possible.”
“Mom,” Josh said, his vision blurring with tears of his own as he clutched the phone, “I’m telling you, he’ll come back.”
“Even if he wanted to,” she said, shaking her head, “he can’t.”
Josh’s throat tightened so that he had trouble getting the words out. Finally they came.
“But why?”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
“I CAN’T JUST TAKE him back, Josh,” his mother said. “Even if your plan worked.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I know you don’t.” His mom threw her hands up in the air. “It’s an adult thing, but when one person breaks up a marriage for someone else, the person left behind can’t just take them back. Once a marriage is broken, there’s no more trust. The person who got betrayed has almost nothing left emotionally. It’s extremely painful, Josh. The one thing I have is my pride, and I can’t just give that away, too.”
“Pride?” Josh said, repeating it as if to himself.
“Your father can’t just come and go, Josh. No one can live that way,” she said. “We have real problems between us—things about him and me—that need to be fixed before it could ever work. Trust me, the only thing worse than what you and Laurel and I are feeling right now would be if we had to go through it all again. We’ll get through this. We’ll heal, but we can’t keep opening the wounds. You can’t live your life in a constant state of bleeding.”
“You make it sound like a war or something,” Josh said.
“It’s worse than war,” his mom said, gripping the pen and pointing it at him so that the soft blue veins stood out in her hands. “At least in war, you know the enemy going in. This is when the person you love and trust with your life walks away from you. It’s much worse. I know it might be hard for you to understand.”
“You’re right,” Josh said, waving the phone in the air. “It is hard for me to understand. I’m just a kid who plays baseball. I only know that when you want to win, you have to do things that aren’t always easy. Well, I want us to be together again. I want you to do something that might not be easy for you, but we all win in the end if you do.”
“This has nothing to do with baseball, Josh,” she said sharply, pointing the pen at her heart as if to stab it. “This is life.”
“It’s supposed to be the same, isn’t it?” Josh said. “That’s what every coach I’ve ever had has said, even Dad.”
“Do you think baseball is the same as life?”
“No,” Josh said, “baseball is way better. You know what you have to do and you either do it and you win, or you don’t and you lose. You know who’s for you because you all wear the same colors. Nobody changes teams during a baseball game.”
“Well,” she said, “in life, sometimes people change teams.”
“Then you know what?” Josh asked.
“What?”
“Life stinks.” Josh turned and sprinted out the kitchen door, slamming it shut before running down the driveway. When he reached the sidewalk, he went left and kept going with the phone clutched tight in his hand, his vision blurry, running toward a place he d
idn’t know.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
JOSH WANDERED THROUGH THE streets in the late afternoon heat, his head down. He found a stick and dragged it along the brick walls of the buildings on State Street, circling the people who lay in the shaded entryways of abandoned storefronts. Cars and trucks swept past, whipping up hot, grit-filled air in their paths. After a time Josh found himself under the highway. The traffic roared overhead, and the cavern of steel and concrete below moaned and groaned as if in pain.
Finally Josh sent a text to his own phone so Jaden would know he was on his way, then hurried along, winding through the city until he arrived at her house.
“Here,” he said, handing her the phone, “you might as well take it back.”
“Did you show him? What happened?” she asked, let-
“It’s no use,” Josh said, flopping down on her couch, the cool air from a window air conditioner blowing through his hair.
“Why not?” Jaden asked, sitting down beside him.
Josh told her what happened with his mom.
Jaden stared at the phone in her hand and shook her head slowly as she said, “I never even thought of that, your mom not wanting him back.”
“It’s not that she doesn’t want him,” Josh said. “Just not until they work things out, their problems, whatever those are.”
Jaden returned the phone to him and said, “But maybe this can get it started. I mean, it’s not an instant solution, but you keep saying you can’t stand Diane, and if he’s with her, there isn’t even a chance they’ll work things out, right?”
“I guess not.” Josh slipped the phone into his pocket.
“Of course not,” she said.
“I don’t know.” Josh shook his head.
“You’ve got nothing to lose,” Jaden said. “Why wouldn’t you?”
“I don’t know,” Josh said again. “He’s not going to be happy to see this. I’ve got to get ready for these regional finals, and I need time in the batting cage. He’s supposed to take me to dinner, then to the Titans’ batting practice he’s got lined up tonight. I don’t want him to freak out on me and cancel everything.”