Frank pretended to adjust his shin guard. Noah, later, would remember that exchange as the first time he understood that adults also needed witnesses for their better instincts.
In August of that second full summer, a storm cancelled a game and left the stadium hollow and dripping. Cameron and Noah sat in the dugout with their feet up on the railing, watching rain stitch the infield into dark silk. Cameron talked about the call-up that had almost happened — the phone call from a director of player development, the overnight bag packed, the roster freeze that arrived like a door closing softly instead of slamming.
"I sat on that hotel bed and cried," Cameron admitted. "Not because I was weak. Because I had let myself believe for twelve hours, and belief has a hangover."
Noah was quiet. Then: "Did you almost quit?"
"I thought about it for as long as it took to finish a bad sandwich," Cameron said. "Then I went to the field early and took extra grounders until my hands hurt. Quitting is a thought. Showing up is a practice."
Rain ticked on the dugout roof. Somewhere a groundskeeper's radio played a country song about highways. Noah filed the sentence away beside Watch the ball, in the private ledger where he kept the rules that were not written in any manual.
Denise began dating Paul that autumn with a caution that looked, from Noah's perspective, like someone testing ice after a long thaw. Paul came to a winter indoor practice and stood awkwardly with his hands in his coat pockets until Noah, taking pity, asked him to feed balls into the pitching machine. Paul fed them too high, then too soft, then approximately correct. Afterward he said, "I don't know the game, but I can learn the boy." Denise heard it and something in her face loosened for the first time in years.