Chapter 7 - Her Hand Went For the Bat First
I didn't notice her move at first because Dad's arms were still around us and Maya's face was pressed so hard into my shirt I could feel her breath through it.
The marble was cold under my knees. My ears were ringing from the chandeliers buzzing and people whispering and somebody's heels clicking too fast. Then I saw her hand.
She was still on her side on the floor, hair stuck to her cheek. Her fingers stretched out toward the bat. It hadn't rolled far. The dark wood was right there by her knee, close enough that if she got her palm around it she could drag it under her dress and nobody would see it right away.
She didn't look at Dad when she reached. She looked at the doors.
Maya saw it too. Her fingers dug into my arm. I don't think she meant to, but it hurt.
"Don't," I said, before I even realized I was talking. My voice came out thin and cracked.
Dad turned his head. He saw what we saw. He moved fast but he didn't lunge at her. He just shifted his weight and put his boot down on the marble, right past the top of the bat, between her hand and the handle. Not on it. Just blocking it. His sole squeaked a little.
"Leave it," he said.
It wasn't loud. It wasn't like when he'd yelled coming through the doorway. It was low and flat and tired, the way he talked when he meant it and wasn't going to say it twice.
She froze with her fingers in the air. For a second her face changed. The angry part slipped and something else came up, something panicked.
"I just —" she started. "People are taking pictures. This looks —"
"Leave it," he said again.
A man in a black vest from the catering staff had come closer with a tray still in his hand. He'd set it down on a table and now he just stood there, staring at the bat like he didn't want to be the one to touch it. Dad looked up at him.
"Don't pick it up," Dad said. "Nobody picks it up. Got it?"
The staffer nodded fast. "Yes, sir."
She pushed herself up a little on her elbow. Her sandal had slipped half off her foot. "You're making this worse," she whispered to Dad. "Do you understand what this looks like? Let me move it."
Dad didn't move his foot. "No."
I couldn't stop looking at the bat. Up close on the white floor it looked darker, almost black. The wood was scratched near the thick end where it must have hit the marble when she dropped it. There was a fresh white scuff on the floor right beside it, a short curved line where it had bounced. I kept staring at that line. It proved it had fallen. It proved she hadn't just been holding it.
I wondered if she was thinking the same thing I was. If that mark disappeared, she could say it never happened.
"Please," she said, and this time she wasn't talking to Dad. She was looking past him at an older woman in a long green dress. "Can you—"
The older woman shook her head and stepped back.
That was when the staffer pulled out his phone. His hands were shaking. He held it sideways over the bat, trying to get the whole thing and her hand and Dad's boot all in one picture.
"Hey," she snapped. "Don't you point that at me."
He stopped, phone half up. He looked at Dad.
Dad nodded once. "Take it," he said. "Take a picture of where it is. Don't move anything."
The click sound was loud in the quiet. A little flash bounced off the marble. He took two more, from different angles. One got the scuff mark. I saw it on his screen when he checked — the dark shape of the bat against all that white, and that pale scrape right next to it.
She dropped her hand back to the floor. Her nails clicked against the marble. She stared at the phone like she wanted to grab that too.
"You done?" Dad asked the staffer.
"Yes, sir."
May you like
"Good. Stay here. Make sure nobody kicks it."
Maya let out a breath she'd been holding. She leaned harder against me. I put my arm back around her without thinking. The bat was still there. Nobody had taken it away. That felt important, even if I didn't have the word for why.
