Serial

57

Edmundsville, 2008

Beth’s recommendation had worked. Link Evans was hired at Arch Manufacturing. He worked for a while on the line, but it didn’t take long for his bosses to see he had more to offer. As soon as seniority allowed an opening, he was promoted to forklift driver. Beth liked that. Link wasn’t so tired when he got home, and he could spend more time with Eddie.

There was no doubt in her mind that Link loved Eddie. They’d play catch sometimes in the evenings until Eddie got tired of throwing the ball. Link was convinced Eddie had baseball talent. Maybe he was right. Beth was no judge.

As Eddie got older, he hadn’t filled out physically in the way Link expected. He remained a spindly kid. Though he could still play ball well, his real talent seemed to be in scholastics. Eddie had been a whiz in Edmundsville primary school, with grades at the top of his class. Not only that, he was an amiable kid well liked by teachers and his fellow students.

High school was only slightly more difficult for Eddie.

That was all fine with Link. He bragged on Eddie’s grades. It was obvious that Eddie was going to be more of an intellect than an athlete. Not that he and Eddie didn’t still play catch.

In fact, they played catch even more often than when Eddie was younger.

There was something about these relentless games of catch, Beth thought. It was simply tossing a sphere back and forth, yet it forged a bond between father and son that a woman might not understand. Beth didn’t, quite. It might have something to do with giving and receiving, and then giving back. Beth wondered, had men played catch with their sons through the ages? Had primitive men and their sons tossed stones back and forth?

She bet they did.

Men were still a puzzle to Beth.

“Don’t you guys ever get tired?” she asked one night, from the wooden Adirondack chair they’d bought and Link and Eddie had painted.

Plop! Went the baseball into Eddie’s glove. Eddie grinned and fired it back. Plop!

“Tired of what?” Link asked. He’d put on a few pounds while working and eating regularly, but he was still a lean man, and athletic.

“You know. Playing catch.”

“No, it’s natural.” Talking to her had made Link glance over and drop the next pitch from Eddie. He bent low to pick up the ball and tossed it back sidearm and hard.

Plop!

“Natural, Mom!” Eddie said, with a touch of braggadocio.

Beth sat back with her eyes closed, sipped lemonade, and listened to the rhythm of summer and growing up. Hers was, she decided, a good life to be living.

Except for… small things now and then.

Plop!

Well, maybe the same small thing. It was something she hadn’t yet let crystallize into an actual suspicion. Her mind still danced around it, and only at odd times when the notion caught her off guard. Sometimes it was because of a certain light, or a certain angle, or a manner of speaking.

Acquired, Beth thought. It all could be acquired.

But not the angle of nose, the eyebrows, and the dark eyes.

Imagination?

Beth didn’t know what to think, what she’d do if she opened the gates and let the suspicion take root. Let it become serious.

The lazy rhythm of the ball zipping from one glove to the other momentarily ceased-a break in the order of the universe-and then continued. Somebody had dropped one.

It had been years, another world, and she’d caught only a fleeting glimpse of her attacker. But people’s looks could change over time, especially when they gained or lost a lot of weight. Link was about the right age. And the rape had occurred at night. She’d seen her rapist only by moonlight.

But it was true-at least she sometimes told (admitted to?) herself-that with more weight, and with a full and darker beard, Link might fit Vincent Salas’s description.

Beth tried, as she too often did these days, to recall the glimpses she’d had of her attacker so long ago, reimagining over and over the bulk of his body, the quick movement of an arm and hand to snare her wrist and pin it to the ground, the line of his bearded cheek as he raised his head to glance around, the quick white glint of an eye in moonlight.

Crazy!

Beth bent her thoughts in other directions. She should be immensely pleased that Link and Eddie got along so well. Link was a wonderful, loving, and attentive father. And husband.

He’d gotten Eddie interested in something beyond baseball and fishing-coin collecting. Link had become something of a serious coin collector, well beyond the stage of wheat pennies and coins with silver content. He’d even begun attending conventions, and after each such gathering of serious collectors, he would return with coins he’d bought (as an investment), and some old coin or other for Eddie. Eddie had a growing collection of his own.

Coins. Eddie and Link would sit for hours arranging and talking about their collections, what Link seemed to see as the romance of rare coins. Beth saw rare coins merely as something else to foster even stronger bonding between Eddie and Link. A bonding and a closeness that threatened to block out Beth.

Is that what I’m worried about? That I’ll be odd woman out?

She actually laughed out loud, half amused and half ashamed of herself.

“Something funny?” Link yelled from where he stood in front of the wire fence in case the ball got past him.

“Me,” Beth said. She smiled. “Nothing you two guys’d be interested in.”

She closed her eyes, sipped more lemonade, and listened to the ball slapping into the oiled leather gloves, back and forth, two-way catch.

Exclusively.