Moe Pritchard, 59, has scouted high school and independent league baseball for the Cincinnati Reds farm system for 31 years. He’s got a scar across his left jaw from a line drive that got away in college, calluses on his right hand from squeezing a radar gun through 12-hour showcase days, and a hard rule against lingering at post-tournament cookouts. He broke that rule on a humid July Tuesday in small-town Ohio, mostly because the Pabst on draft was ice cold, the brats had been smoked over hickory for four hours, and he didn’t feel like making the three-hour drive back to his empty rental house in Dayton yet.
He was flipping through his scouting binder, making notes on the 16-year-old shortstop with a 92 mph fastball and a habit of swinging at every pitch high and outside, when a knee collided hard with his under the picnic table. He looked up, ready to snap, and froze. Lena Hale, Greg Hale’s ex-wife, was fumbling a half-spilled hard seltzer and a tray of pulled pork, her cheeks flushed pink from the heat and the near-fall. She’d spilled a few drops of seltzer on the page marked with the shortstop’s name, and she leaned in to dab at it with a napkin before he could react, her forearm brushing his bicep when she reached across the table. She smelled like lavender cut with charcoal from the grill, her dark hair streaked with honey from the sun, nails chipped at the edges from the landscape design side gig she’d had when they’d crossed paths 18 years prior, right after Karen left Moe for Greg.
He tensed up immediately, half of him itching to grab his binder and bolt, the other half stuck on the way she was grinning like she knew exactly how thrown off he was. She sat down across from him without asking, wiping a smudge of barbecue sauce off her chin with the back of her hand, and said she’d seen his name on the showcase roster that morning, had been half-hoping he’d stick around. Moe’s first thought was that this was a trick, some leftover mess from the divorce that he didn’t want any part of, that talking to the ex-wife of the man who’d blown up his marriage was the stupidest call he could make. But then she laughed at his dry joke about the shortstop who swung like he was trying to hit a gnat six feet over his head, and the sound was warm, no edge, no agenda.
They talked for an hour, the noise of the cookout fading into background static as the sun dipped below the cornfields lining the beer garden. She told him she’d left Greg two years prior, caught him cheating with a college intern who worked for the team, had moved back to this tiny town to take over her grandma’s plant nursery. She asked about his scouting trips, listened when he ranted about the new league rules that made him sit through 30 minutes of pre-game speeches every time he showed up to a high school field, didn’t flinch when he mentioned Karen in passing, didn’t try to defend Greg’s choices. When a group of rowdy teen players ran past the table, she leaned in closer to be heard, her knee brushing his again under the table, intentional this time, and he didn’t pull away.
He almost made an excuse to leave when she suggested they walk over to the edge of the property to get away from the noise. He’d spent 18 years avoiding any connection that wasn’t related to pitch speeds or batting averages, had convinced himself he was better off alone, that anything tied to Greg was a mistake he couldn’t afford to make. But then she stood up, held out her hand, and he took it, his calloused palm wrapping around hers, the rough edges of her garden calluses catching on his. They walked slow, the grass crunching under their boots, fireflies starting to blink on around the edges of the cornfield.
She stopped when they were out of earshot of the crowd, turned to face him, and lifted a hand to brush a piece of grass off his shirt collar, her thumb brushing the scar on his jaw for half a second. She said Greg had mentioned that scar once, had told her Moe got it saving a teammate from a line drive in college, that she’d always thought Moe got a raw deal from the whole mess, that she’d wanted to say so for years. The last of the resistance left him then, the quiet disgust he’d carried for anything tied to his ex-wife and Greg melting away faster than the ice in his empty beer cup.
He told her he was driving back to Dayton the next afternoon, and she said she made the best blueberry pancakes west of the Appalachians, if he wanted to stop by her nursery before he left. He said yes, no hesitation, no overthinking, no worrying about what it meant. The crickets were chirping loud now, the sky dark purple above the cornstalks, and when she laced her fingers through his again, he squeezed back, no awkwardness, no second guesses.
