“I promise I’ll let you know if I’m having a problem at work or if there’s a change in my condition that is going to affect my job.”

“Thanks.” Glenn didn’t miss the careful wording and the neat way Mari had sidestepped saying she’d let her know if her transplant failed, but she couldn’t ask for more, couldn’t ask for any confidence that went beyond their professional relationship. Mari had made herself very clear on the limits of anything personal between them. Nothing would stop her from being on guard. She couldn’t change the way she was made any more than she could change Mari’s desire to be independent, to avoid ties. But she could honor Mari’s request, could keep the distance Mari wanted. She’d already put up the walls. She was only surprised at how much she had wanted to breach them for Mari.

*

Carrie jogged over to the Jeep when Glenn pulled into a place in the second row of a line of pickup trucks and SUVs. Usually she parked right behind the backstop to unload the gear, but she was later than usual after their quick stop for a burger. Dinner had been quick and mostly quiet—they hadn’t mentioned their previous conversation, but she kept thinking there was more she should have said, wanted to say. She just wasn’t sure what, or why.

“I was wondering where you were,” Carrie called, opening the rear compartment as Glenn climbed out of the driver’s side. “Let me give you a hand with everything.”

“Sure,” Glenn said abruptly and caught Carrie giving her a look.

Carrie grinned as Mari joined them. “Hi. How’s it going?”

“Great,” Mari said, wondering if it counted as a lie to keep one’s personal business private. She hated feeling as if she’d lied to Glenn, even though she had every right to keep her medical condition to herself unless there was some reason other people needed to know. All the same, she’d shared some pretty important personal things with Glenn while deliberately hiding the biggest one of all. Glenn must be angry or at least feel a little manipulated somehow, but Mari couldn’t read anything beneath her usual calm, cool exterior. They’d shared a meal and made casual conversation, but the distance across the table had seemed enormous. She hadn’t known how to close that distance, and maybe she didn’t deserve to. She’d put the walls there, and as hard as they were to accept, she needed them. She preferred anger to pity, reserve to suffocating kindness. And she would not be selfish enough to take more than she could give, and she might not have anything at all to offer. She jumped when fingers closed around her wrist.

“Come on,” Carrie said. “I’ll take you over to the bleachers. Abby and Presley are there. You can sit with them, and they can fill you in on all the players.”

“Oh, I don’t want to intrude. I can find a seat somewhere.”

“Hey, no way. You’re my cuz, remember? I want you to meet my friends. You’ll love them.”

“Well, I know Abby a little,” Mari said a bit helplessly. She glanced over her shoulder as Carrie resolutely tugged her away from the Jeep. Glenn looked after them, her eyes shadowed. Mari called, “Good luck tonight.”

“Thanks.” Glenn hefted a duffel with bats sticking out one end and turned toward the field.

Looking after her, Mari hesitated.

“Something wrong?” Carrie asked.

“What? No,” Mari said quickly. “No, everything is fine.”

“Super. Should be a great game.”

Surrendering to Carrie’s enthusiastic tug on her arm, Mari followed her through the scattering of people who mingled around a double set of bleachers off to the left of the big tall fence—what did they call that, the batter’s cage? Players were already on the field, tossing the ball back and forth, and someone was hitting another one into the outfield. She’d seen baseball games fleetingly on television and in the lounge at the hospital, but never paid any attention to them beyond the basics that every American grew up knowing. The sports channel wasn’t on her list of favorites, and when the ER staff was glued to the TV in the break room during the World Series, she was discreetly reading a book on her phone.

“So how’s everything going in the ER?” Carrie asked when they reached the stands. She leaned against the railing, not seeming in any hurry to get out onto the field.

“Great,” Mari lied for the second time in less than half an hour. She gestured to the field. “Don’t you have to go?”

“In a minute or so.” Carrie grinned. “I’m the pitcher. I just need to warm up a little.”

“Ah, special privileges.”

“That’s it—think of me as the surgeon on the team. Nothing important happens without me.”

Mari couldn’t help herself, she laughed. Carrie had a way of lifting her spirits despite her lingering melancholy. “Do the rest of them know that?”

“Oh, they like to pretend otherwise but we all know the truth.” Carrie’s mischievous grin made it impossible to take her seriously. “So where are you living?”

Mari told her. “It’s a little apartment, but it’s nice. You?”

“I’m out in the country with Presley and Harper.”

“You’re living with them?”

Carrie tipped her head from side to side. “Well, technically Harper is living with me and Presley. We were there first. The hospital had actually rented the place for Presley, and I was going to stay in town, but it’s this big old rambling farmhouse with plenty of bedrooms, and it just made sense for us to live together. Plus, the house comes with a housekeeper whose cooking will make you cry. Wait till you taste Lila’s muffins.”

Carrie made swooning noises and Mari laughed again. She’d never met anyone who seemed to take such unconcealed pleasure in life. She envied her new cousin that ability.

“Anyhow,” Carrie went on, “when Harper and Prez got involved, well, you know how that goes. Pretty soon Harper was spending almost every night there.”

Mari didn’t know how that went, but she wasn’t going to say so. She’d never gone any further than kissing, and not very much of that. She’d shared a room with her sister and, until she’d gotten sick, they’d shared pretty much everything. Talk of sex wasn’t one of them. Selena had a serious boyfriend, but she lived at home and Juan lived with his parents too. Mari doubted they were having sex. Selena was even more religious than their parents and had declared from the time she was twelve that sex before marriage was a sin. “Is it weird, living with your boss?”

“Oh no. Prez and I have pretty good boundaries. The only real problem is that she wants to work all the time, and I refuse to talk about business before we get to the office.” Carrie laughed. “Well, I try not to, anyways, but it’s just natural for her. She’s always thinking about what she needs to do, and since she’s always twenty steps ahead of everyone, there’s always a lot of that.”

“Sounds like she’s lucky to have you.”

“Oh, she is. But she knows it. And I love my job.” Carrie laughed. “Anyhow, I’m going to be moving into Harper’s in a few weeks. At least I hope it will be that soon. Harper’s planning to have it renovated—add another bedroom and bathroom in case my family comes to visit or something.”

“Is it in town?”

“Oh no. It’s right smack-dab on the Rivers plantation. I call it a plantation, it isn’t really, although it looks a lot like Tara.”

Mari struggled to follow the quickly swinging conversation. “Tara? You mean like in Gone with the Wind?”

“Yeah, you know, the big white house with the columns and the gables and the sweeping porches and the acres and acres of green? That’s what the Rivers family’s homestead reminds me of. Harper’s place is like a quarter of a mile away—it used to be a caretaker’s house, a hundred years ago, I guess. It’s got its own little barn and a garden. Do you garden?”

“You mean flowers? Um, no.”

“Actually, I meant vegetables. You know, tomatoes and peppers and cucumbers. That kind of thing.”

Mari couldn’t keep from smiling, although she didn’t feel the slightest bit humorous. “Oh my God, no. I grew up right in the heart of the city. The only things coming out of the ground that weren’t parking meters were the occasional trees that the city planted, and they were so puny they hardly qualified as trees. My family lives in a row house, and my mother sometimes put a window box with flowers outside the front window, but she took care of keeping them alive.”

“You’ll have to come and see the place,” Carrie said. “I’ve pretty much talked Harper into letting me oversee the renovations, since I’m gonna be living there and she’s way busy at work.”

“Of course,” Mari said automatically.

“Great! We’re having a get-together at our place tomorrow. You’ll have to come and then I’ll take you on a tour.”

“Ah, I—”

“Oops—there’s my page,” Carrie said when a short, barrel-chested guy in a team shirt yelled and waved in their direction. “Come on.”

Carrie vaulted up a narrow aisle between the rows of benches toward the top of the bleachers and Mari hurried after. The stands were surprisingly crowded with men, women, and children talking, eating, and laughing. Sundown was at least two hours away and the air shimmered with heat.

“That’s Presley next to Abby,” Carrie said, pointing as she climbed, “and Harper’s sister Carson and her little boy next to her.” Carrie paused one row below Abby, next to Abby’s son and the Rivers girl, who Mari had first seen at the pizza place with Glenn. “Hey, move down, you two. This is my cousin Mari.”

Dutifully, the teens inched down and slid closer together to make room on the end.

“Thanks,” Mari said as she settled beside them.

“Hey—gotta go warm up,” Carrie announced to the world in general. “Everybody, meet Mari, my cousin!”

“Your cousin?” Presley said, obviously surprised, as she held out a hand to Mari. “Hi, I’m Carrie’s roomie, Presley.”