"I know," Noah said.
Frank almost smiled. "Good. Then you're learning the part that matters. The game doesn't owe you kindness. It owes you a fair look. You got one."
Noah nodded. "Mr. Callahan?"
"What."
"Thanks for the fair look. That first night too. Even when you thought I'd miss."
Frank stared at him for a long second. Then he clapped Noah's shoulder once, awkward and real. "Don't make me regret being wrong about you."
The emotional weather of those years was not continuous triumph. Noah struck out looking in championship at-bats. Denise lost the diner job and found another. Cameron dated someone who did not understand why he spent free evenings with a kid who was not his, and then he did not date her anymore, and he never made Noah feel like the reason. The apartment above the laundromat flooded once in a spring storm; they saved the bat and the note and the laminated clipping and most of the baseball cards. Wanting remained Noah's companion, but it had company now: skill, patience, a small community of adults who had decided his swing was worth protecting.