Rafe Escobar, 51, has spent 22 years as a Midwest League minor league scout, crisscrossing Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas in a dented 2018 F-150 with a camper shell bolted to the bed. His only consistent companions are a radar gun with a sticky trigger, a cooler of craft lager, and a habit of bailing on any connection that threatens to last longer than a post-game beer. The flaw kicked in 11 years prior, when his ex-wife filed for divorce the day he missed their daughter’s 10th birthday to catch a left-handed pitcher’s no-hitter in Sioux City. He hasn’t bothered explaining himself to anyone since.
He’s parked at a picnic table on the edge of a small-town Iowa beer garden, post-high school showcase, when she slides onto the bench across from him. He recognizes her immediately: Mara, the mom of a shortstop he scouted three years back, who now plays Double-A for the Royals affiliate. She’s holding a paper napkin wrapped around something warm, and she sets it down between them, her forearm brushing his calloused knuckle when she leans in. The contact sends a small jolt up his arm, and he can smell vanilla extract and cut clover on her shirt, the faint tang of chlorine from the community pool two blocks over.
He’s wary at first. Everyone in this 1,200-person town thinks she’s still married to the local high school baseball coach, her high school sweetheart. He’s seen them pose for photos at the diamond all day, her arm slung around his waist while he talked to college recruiters. He’s got a strict rule about not messing around with people tied to local prospects; gossip kills access, and access is the only thing keeping him employed past the league’s next round of budget cuts. He goes to grab his beer, avoids eye contact, ready to mumble a thank you and make an excuse to leave.
She taps the napkin with a polished, chipped red nail. “Peach empanada. Saw you skip the concession line all day, lived on sunflower seeds and that sad gas station protein bar. I bake empanadas for the team every Saturday. Figured you earned one.”
He picks it up, the crust still warm enough to seep through the napkin and stick to his fingertips. The peach is sweet, a little tart, oozing out the side when he takes a bite. He glances up, and she’s watching him, her dark eyes crinkled at the corners, no ring on her left hand. “Separated eight months,” she says, like she can read the question on his face. “Haven’t told anyone but the kids. Youngest is a junior, doesn’t need the team talking about his parents splitting right before college recruiters start showing up in droves.”
He nods, takes another bite. The sun is dipping below the cornfield at the edge of town, painting the sky pink and tangerine, and the crickets are starting to hum in the grass by his feet. Some kids are screaming on the nearby playground, a distant crack of a bat echoes from the rec field where a men’s league game is just getting started. She shifts closer on the bench, their knees bumping under the table, and he doesn’t move away. He’s spent so long keeping people at arm’s length he’d forgotten what it feels like to sit next to someone who doesn’t want anything from him – no autographs, no preferential treatment for their kid, no questions about why he’s never home.
A gust of wind blows a strand of her gray-flecked dark hair into her face, and she lifts her hand to tuck it behind her ear, her knuckle brushing his jawline by accident. The contact is light, almost imperceptible, but his skin burns where she touched him. He sets the half-eaten empanada down, rests his palm on the rough picnic table wood an inch away from hers. “Got a showcase in Des Moines day after tomorrow,” he says, before he can talk himself out of it. “The drive is three hours. Got an extra ticket to the post-showcase BBQ. You could see your oldest play, if you want. I can pick you up here at 7.”
She laughs, a warm, throaty sound that makes his chest feel light. She runs a finger along the edge of his radar gun, sitting on the table next to his crumpled scout notes. “My sister can cover the bakery for the weekend. I’d like that.” She squeezes his wrist, light and firm, before she stands up, slinging her canvas tote over her shoulder. She tells him she’ll bring a dozen peach empanadas for the drive, and to make sure the truck’s AC works.
He watches her walk back to her beat-up blue pickup, the pink sunset catching the small silver hoop in her left ear, and tucks the crumpled empanada wrapper into his scout notebook instead of the trash.
