Chapter 2 - The Sound of Dust
The gravel crunched under the tires of my battered Ford F-150 as we pulled out of Scott’s half-million-dollar cul-de-sac.
For the first five miles, neither of us said a word. The only sound was the rhythmic hum of the highway and the air conditioner blasting against the summer heat. Owen stared out the passenger window, his reflection ghostly against the tinted glass. His jaw was clenched so hard the muscles jumped under his skin.
I gripped the steering wheel at ten and two, my knuckles white. My chest felt like someone had wrapped a steel band around it and tightened the bolts.
Parents spend their entire lives trying to build armor around their children. You buy the helmets, you strap them into car seats, you hold their hands across busy streets, and you tell them that the world is a fair place if you just work hard and tell the truth. And then your own blood—the man who shared your bedroom growing up, the man who taught you how to turn a double play—stabs your kid in the chest just to preserve his own inflated ego.
"Owen," I said softly, easing off the gas as we hit the state route toward Westfield.
"I don't care about the glove, Dad," he said immediately. His voice was thin, pulled tight like an over-tuned guitar string. "I really don't. Caleb can have it. They can all have them."
"It’s not about the glove, bud. We both know that."
A single tear escaped his eye, tracking silently down his cheek before he wiped it away with the rough fabric of his sleeve, violently, as if he was angry at his own body for showing weakness.
"Grandpa looked at me like I was dirt," Owen whispered. "He looked at me like I wasn't even his grandson."
"Grandpa was wrong. He was lied to, and he was too proud to ask the truth."
"He didn't want the truth," Owen fired back, turning toward me now, the thirteen-year-old boy replaced by someone who was learning the ugly realities of the adult world far too quickly. "Uncle Scott tells him what he wants to hear. Uncle Scott’s got the trophies. He’s got the big truck. He’s got the banners hanging in the facility with the Miller name on them. That’s all Grandpa cares about."
The bitter truth of that statement hit me right in the gut.
Growing up, Scott had always been the golden boy. He threw ninety miles an hour in high school; I threw seventy-eight with a decent slider. He got the scholarship to Ball State; I went to trade school to become an electrician. When Scott blew out his shoulder in college, Dad had treated it like a national tragedy. When Scott started the Midwest Mavericks, Dad spent every weekend in the dugout, acting as the team's official scorekeeper and unofficial patriarch.
To Dad, Scott wasn't just a son; he was the continuation of an athletic legacy that Arthur Miller had never quite finished himself. And Owen... Owen was just a kid who loved the game, who loved the smell of the grass and the crack of the bat, but refused to treat it like a blood sacrifice.
My phone, resting in the center console, began to buzz violently. The screen lit up: *SCOTT.*
I tapped the red button, sending him straight to voicemail.
Two seconds later, it buzzed again: *DAD.*
I ignored it.
Then came the text message from Scott. I glanced down at a red light:
*You ruined Dad’s birthday over nothing. You need to teach your kid how the real world works. Call me.*
I felt a roar of pure, unadulterated rage rise up from my stomach. I pulled off the shoulder of the road, slammed the truck into park, and grabbed the phone. My fingers flew across the glass:
*Don't ever speak to my son again. Don't speak to me. If you have something to say about how the real world works, say it to the parents who pay you five grand to ruin their kids' arms. We’re done, Scott.*
I hit send, then immediately blocked his number. I looked at Dad’s contact info, my thumb hovering over the screen. My heart hammered against my ribs. Arthur Miller had been the center of my universe for thirty-six years. Even when he was hard, even when he was cold, he was my father. But the image of Owen sitting at that table, folding his hands over an empty place while his cousins waved three-hundred-dollar gloves in the air, flashed behind my eyes.
I blocked my father, too.
"Dad?" Owen asked, watching me. "What did you do?"
"I took out the trash," I said, putting the truck back into gear.
We drove the rest of the way in silence. When we got back to our small, two-story house on the south side of town, Owen immediately went up to his room. I heard the door click shut.
Downstairs, I walked into the kitchen, poured myself a glass of tap water, and stood at the sink, staring out at the backyard. There was the homemade batting cage I had built out of PVC pipes and discarded netting three years ago. There was the weathered strike-zone target painted onto an old piece of plywood leaning against the shed.
Every night after dinner, before the divorce, after the divorce, through the rain and the summer heat, Owen and I had spent hours out there. *Keep your hands back, bud. Drive through the ball. Don't worry about where it lands, just hit it square.*
He hadn't quit. He had never quit anything in his life.
I pulled out my phone, went to the call log, and dialed the one person who needed to know what had happened today.
The phone rang three times before she answered, her voice raspy and exhausted from a twelve-hour shift in the emergency department.
"Aaron? Is everything okay? Is Owen alright?"
May you like
"Nicole," I said, leaning my forehead against the cool kitchen cabinet. "We need to talk."
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