Stef Ann Holm

by Lucy gets Her Life Back

  Shaking off those thoughts, he went on. “I moved through the minors fairly quickly, doing a lot of partying. I’m not proud of it, but that was just the way it was. Shit happened. You get caught up in a different world. Women are always available. Drinks are always in your hand. You don’t pay for anything and life is good. Then when the Cincinnati Reds stroked me a check for some serious money, I thought I was really something.”

  Lucy bit her lower lip.

  “I had some good years. When we were heading for the play-offs there was one game riding on me, and I remember standing on the bump. Sun in my eyes blinding me. My knees were shaking, palms sweating, and my stomach was in knots. I knew I couldn’t let the team down. I got us out of the inning with only one hit, and we won the game.” Drew’s memories rose at once, and he relived all those glory days. “If it hadn’t been for sports, I don’t know where I would have ended up.”

  “You would have done something useful with your life,” she said optimistically.

  He wanted to share her faith, but he couldn’t. He knew himself too well. “In ’87, I had my agent get me out of that Cincinnati deal so I could come home to L.A. The Dodgers signed me on, and the next year, we won the Series. It was sweet. I was on the top of my game, the winning pitcher, an MVP nod. Life just didn’t get any better than that. Unless it was at the bottom of a Patrón bottle.”

  In his mind, he tried to conjure the taste of tequila, the burn of it against his tongue, the heat in his mouth, the way it went down his throat. He couldn’t really remember. And he was glad. Every once in a while, he thought about having a drink, but he knew it only took one. He’d already had a half-dozen chances—and that part he recalled very clearly.

  His life had changed for the better since becoming sober. He lived well, lived healthy. He lived for the moment, rather than the glory. The blackouts were gone, the mindless sex with women he couldn’t remember, the lifestyle that was too large, the way he felt like death in the morning.

  Being who he was now actually took less effort. He liked who he’d become, but even so, he knew he could bring back a little of the old Drew Tolman anytime he wanted. That bad boy, the dude who could make anyone smile. He sort of liked that ability. It was flattering when women stopped, when they smiled. It was like living la vida loca, but without a hangover.

  “Remember that show MacGyver?” he asked, gazing at the lake, watching ripples of water glistening in the starlight. “I was asked to have a guest role on it, but I showed up drunk, got in a fistfight with one of the cameramen and was escorted off the set.”

  Lucy’s brows rose as she digested that news.

  Drew exhaled, wondering if she’d ever talk to him again after tonight.

  “I was paid big money to be a certain kind of man. A public figure. A sports star. I wasn’t a robot. I was a man who had warm blood, and sometimes it got hot in there running through my veins. So I started drinking. A lot.

  “The alcohol kicked my ass and I never minded sleeping on other people’s floors. I woke up, didn’t know where I was. The drinking started to affect my performance. I couldn’t accept it was my own destructive behavior that was doing it. Denial. You learn that in AA.”

  Her eyes remained on his, dark pools of emotion, and if he wasn’t mistaken, empathy. He didn’t deserve hers, but he appreciated it.

  “I was officially in a slump. Drinking daily. I over-analyzed every pitch. I started getting a little nervous entering a game. I got no velocity on my pitches, and hitters started hammering on me. I was brought into the front office, reamed out by my manager, by the bean counters, by everyone associated with the club. Being taken down verbally like that sucked. But I didn’t quit drinking.

  “That fall, my girlfriend called me an alcoholic and I told her she was full of it. She quit seeing me, and I drank more to put her out of my mind.” Drew rubbed his temple, made a face. “It was almost spring training and I wasn’t worth a crap physically. I’d lost weight and the trainers called me into the camp and told me I’d better knock it off. I couldn’t even remember the schedule for Vero Beach, but I knew I had to be there in a month. So I quit drinking. I needed to prove to myself that I could do it. And I did.”

  “That’s a good thing.” Lucy looked him in the eye, her tone one of encouragement.

  “I quit for all of a few months, then I was right back. We were at Vero Beach, training. And that’s where I met Caroline. Mackenzie’s mother. She was pretty, blond, a nice smile. She worked at the hotel where we stayed. I got her to come to my room and we were together the whole summer while I was there.”

  Lucy looked at him with heightened interest. “Well, then you had to know Mackenzie was yours.”

  “I didn’t know any such thing. You want to know how many times I’ve had women tell me I got them pregnant?”

  “No.”

  He felt like a shit, but he said it anyway. “Dozens. And you know how I know that none of them could be telling the truth?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Drew. You tell me.” For the first time since she’d sat down impatience rang in her words.

  “I used a condom every single time. I don’t care how far gone I was, I always made sure I didn’t get anyone pregnant.”

  “Condoms fail.”

  “Apparently this one did.”

  “When did she tell you?”

  “She was two months pregnant when she called me. We’d already gone back to L.A. to begin the season, and I told her she was wrong about it being mine, that there were any number of guys in that hotel who could have been the father.” With his heartbeat slamming in his chest, Drew waited for Lucy to tell him he was a jerk.

  He relived that conversation with Caroline, knowing now the life-changing pain he had caused her, the humiliation to her family and sister. To this day, he struggled to forgive himself. Maybe he never would.

  Lucy stared at him, licked her lips, but said nothing.

  “You can say it. I was a jerk.”

  “You were.”

  For some reason, that validation made him feel better.

  “Obviously, at some point,” Lucy said, “you told Caroline she was right.”

  “While I never saw a physical resemblance between me and Mackenzie, I guess I did half-ass believe she could be my daughter. I never threw any of her photos away, and I kept a couple in my locker. But booze clouded my judgment and it was years before I could admit to myself that Caroline had always been telling me the truth.” Drew dug into the past, a dark pit of recollection. “Mackenzie was seven when Caroline brought her to spring training camp and asked me to come into the bleachers and meet her. I refused.”

  Lucy sucked in her breath, and it almost felt good to feel her disdain. It opened the wounds again, made him feel raw. There were days now when he forgot about how painful it must have been for Caroline, and it was good to remind himself of that, to feel what she had felt. Perhaps in a way, Caroline was vindicated when he hurt, when his actions cut deep into his heart and made him accountable.

  “Yeah, I know.” Drew stared into the sky. “I did go see Mackenzie when she was twelve, looked into her face and knew in my gut she was mine. Still, I wanted a paternity test. Caroline told me to go to hell.” Swallowing, he said in an uneven voice, “And I did, literally, when the drug scandal broke wide-open and my name was everywhere.”

  “Steroids.”

  Drew gave a wry smile to cover the humiliation that surrounded him. “That’s an easy thing to believe, isn’t it? Hell, sometimes I wish.” Rubbing the rough bristle of a day’s growth of beard, he said, “I left baseball because I couldn’t hit a ball, I couldn’t throw one and I sure as hell couldn’t function as a player or a man. I was a raging alcoholic. So I walked. Cost me a small fortune to break my contract with the Dodgers and check into the Betty Ford Clinic under an assumed name.”

  “So…you didn’t do drugs?”

  “Alcohol is a drug.”

  Thoughtfully lifting her brows, she said, “Yes, I suppose you�
��re right.”

  “I am right, Lucy. I’m an addict.” Although he told very few people those words, they were still difficult to speak. Being addicted to something said he had no willpower, was a failure. Even sober, he would always be an alcoholic, always have the predisposition to overindulge.

  “I haven’t had a drink since 1998.”

  “Do you think about it?”

  “Sometimes,” he answered truthfully.

  The sky was suddenly alive with fireworks bursting in colorful showers, bombs going off, rockets glaring and popping. For a long while, the two of them sat there in silence and watched.

  Drew had a lot to think about. There were many old wounds that he still needed to heal. A bleakness settled into his heart. He wondered if he would ever be whole again.

  Lucy finally spoke through the noise of fireworks. “And what about Mackenzie? She was twelve when you saw her. When did you see her again?”

  “She was fourteen. I’d gone through the program, was able to live with clarity, and I wanted to tell her that I was sorry, that I knew she was my daughter—that I didn’t need a test. I apologized to Caroline, to her sister, Lynette, and I told them I wanted to make it up to everyone involved. But it was too late. Mackenzie didn’t want anything to do with me.”

  “I’m sorry. But now she’s here.”

  “Yeah. Since her mother passed away, Mackenzie’s had it pretty rough. I don’t want to mess her up any more than I have.” Drew shrugged in resignation. “I never got married. Sixth sense, I guess. I knew that Mackenzie would be a part of my life and I didn’t want to have to tell my wife that we’d have a knock on the door one day and it might be my daughter. I felt like one more complication in my life would be too much, and it wouldn’t be fair to anyone I got involved with.”

  “I’ve wondered….”

  “What?”

  “Why you were forty-six and you’d never married.”

  “That’s why.”

  “I thought that maybe Jacquie—”

  “Jacquie’s a good person. I know she comes across otherwise, but she’s a good person. She knew about Mackenzie. She’s been a friend to me in unexpected ways.”

  Lucy’s gaze lowered; she looked at her hands. “Do you miss her?”

  Drew answered truthfully. “Sometimes I miss her friendship, but I don’t miss the stress of our relationship and the direction it was headed.” His voice grew strained. “What about you? Do you miss your ex-husband?”

  Her lashes flew up. “Good grief, no!” Then she grew suddenly very quiet. “Well, yes…yes. I miss the ideal. The whole thing about being married forever, having a fiftieth wedding anniversary and growing old together. I feel cheated because he cheated on me.”

  “Do you ever talk to him?”

  “I try and avoid it. He’s supposed to be coming up to see the boys, but I’m not holding my breath. Divorce is horrible enough without an absentee father. Being there as a parent is huge, and the kids suffer when that doesn’t happen.” She drew in a breath, looked at him. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t referring to you.”

  “It’s okay. You’re right. I know what I did with Mackenzie will have a lifelong effect on her. Caroline and I were able to talk about it. She was an amazing woman and, at the time, I was too stupid to see just how wonderful she was. She did a great job without me, and I am very fortunate she raised my daughter for as long as she did.”

  “So what are you going to do now? Have you and Mackenzie talked about anything?”

  “I don’t know how to bring it up.”

  Warmth swam in Lucy’s eyes. “Just talk.”

  “Timing’s been off. I don’t want to upset her.”

  “Drew, I think she’s already upset.”

  “Yeah. I guess.”

  Lucy reached out, took his hand and held it. He absorbed the warmth and comfort she offered, accepting the gesture more readily than he’d anticipated. The night grew brilliant with reds, yellows and blues. Down on the beach, the “Star-Spangled Banner” played.

  A tightness settled in Drew’s chest, his heart, his lungs. His daughter was on that beach, she was here, in his life. But he didn’t know what to say to her, how to talk to her, what to tell her.

  “Drew…” Lucy’s voice pulled at him and he met her eyes. “Why don’t you just start by saying, ‘Mackenzie, I’m your dad and I love you’?”

  Jason tilted back on his lawn chair, the sand beneath his bare feet cold when he dug his toes in. Trying to act cool, he drank a sip of cola, gazed at the sky and watched the fireworks, ignoring Mackenzie, who sat next to him.

  They’d been talking about stuff. Like how it was to live in Florida and what there was to do. Jason never knew that swamp swimming could be fun. The way Mackenzie described it, everyone went into this big pond fed from a swamp. They had a tree rope and swing, sometimes someone brought beer and they had a few. She said she never did. She’d tried it once and hated it.

  She was different than anyone he knew. Maybe it was the way she talked. He loved the sound of her voice, the way she said words. He couldn’t figure out how she took the same word as him and made it sound pretty.

  “So what is it ya’ll said you did for fun in Boise?” she asked, breaking into his thoughts.

  It was cool he had her all to himself. The guys had been too busy being pyros to notice Mackenzie. A part of Jason had wanted to set off some more rockets, too, but he found he’d rather sit by Mackenzie and just smell her. She smelled nice. Like sun and sand and wildflowers.

  “We hung out at the skateboard park, my friend Brian’s house and just…you know.” If she didn’t drink beer, she sure wouldn’t have smoked pot. He didn’t want to tell her he had.

  “No, I don’t know,” she said in that accent he liked.

  “Just stuff. Hanging out, listening to CDs and talking about things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Just things.” He shrugged, lowering the lawn chair. He had to sound rad, like hotties loved him. “Girls.”

  She laughed, and the sound of her girlie voice made him smile inside. “Now ya’ll are talking about the same things we do. Boys.” She grew quiet a few seconds. “Do you have a girlfriend?”

  That she’d flat out asked sort of tripped him up. He wasn’t sure what a good answer would be. He thought a minute before replying. If he said yes—then he looked like a jock who had it going on. If he said no—then he looked like a benched loser.

  “Do you have a boyfriend?” he asked, wondering which answer would work for him.

  “I did.” When she spoke, he heard Ah did.

  For some reason, he really liked to listen to her, and he didn’t care what she had to say. But her answer did get his attention. She didn’t have a boyfriend now.

  Maybe he didn’t want to know, but he asked anyway. “What happened?”

  “He was messing around on me with my best friend.”

  Jason’s eyes narrowed. “That bites.”

  “I thought it was deplorable.”

  Deplorable. Was that a Southern word? He wasn’t sure what it meant—other than it was something she didn’t like.

  “What’d you do?”

  “I came here to get away from him and forget.”

  Taking another drink of cola, he swallowed. “So is Drew like your uncle or something?”

  She grew real quiet, her face becoming a shadow in the night. Her eyelashes were long against her cheeks, her hair soft around her shoulders. She had on a white sweatshirt, unzipped, and her legs were still bare. They were long and smooth and tan. Her pink lips shimmered with gloss that she’d recently put on. He wondered if it was that flavored kind. He’d never kissed a girl in his whole life.

  While he liked Mackenzie—a lot—he didn’t know what to do with her. He wasn’t ready for girls. His stomach felt like there was too much carbonation in it, like he’d eaten one too many hot dogs with too many chips and dip.

  “No, he’s not my uncle.” Mackenzie’s voice grew whisper soft and he alm
ost couldn’t hear her. “He’s my daddy.”

  Jason wasn’t sure he’d heard her right. “He’s what?”

  She looked at him, her eyes sad. “If I say it again, promise me you won’t tell anyone? I swear to God, Jason…I don’t know why, but I have to tell somebody in this town or I’m going to go crazy.” It almost seemed as if she was crying, but no tears fell down her pink cheeks. “I don’t have anybody here to talk to….”