Page 52 of Curveball
“What the ever loving fuck?”
Chapter 17
Max
What did I just read?
Palmer jackknifes to a straight-backed position, her words nearly frantic with concern. “Max! What is it? Is everything okay?”
Everything is so far from okay I can’t even speak. I shove my phone in her face and wait for her reaction.
Mighty Max Murphy Cozy With Wife and Son of Convicted Swindler. Is She Out For His Money…Again?
Below the bold headline is a photo of the two of us, obviously taken after last night’s game, when we were hunched together at the side of the dugout, foreheads together, fingertips nearly touching, and the effect isdamning.
But it’s the smaller picture inset in the bottom right that explodes my world and threatens my sense of security.
It’s Dylan standing on a pitching mound with a ball in his hand, wearing shorts and a Terrors tee, hat turned backward . . . and me standing beside him, giving him tips.
In my own back yard.
“The fuck are you playing at?” I roar.
My eyes haven’t left Palmer, waiting for an honest reaction from her, yet knowing she’ll deny whatever she’s being accused of. The waterworks will commence. The sobbing. The begging. The lying.
But then her eyes gohot, and obsidian, and her face contorts with obvious fury.
She snatches the phone from my hand and springs forward from her chair.
“Why won’t heeverleave us alone?”
Her words seep through my red-hot wrath and her message registers.Girl ispissed, maybe as much as I am. It’s the one single reaction I don’t expect from her. If this is an act, she deserves an Oscar. I wrench my phone from her fist.
“You’re going to want to explain this”—I shake the screen and the damning words in her face—“All of this! And I need you to start, right fucking now!”
She jerks her face upward to look at me, then bolts from her chair.
“Dammit, Max. I don’t even . . . I can’t believe . . . God damn fucking shit!”
She whips off her sunglasses and launches them into the water.
It hits me like a freight train that I’ve witnessed sunshiny Palmer Sloan this angry only once before. It was the time she unleashed on me when she thought my call was coming from someone else. Not from her husband—er, herex-husband—but his family.
I toss my phone aside because the story’s obviously libelous bullshit. Fake news. Clickbait. I’ll send it off to Flynn and he’ll have my lawyer handle that shit ASAP. But the rest of it—this assault on my family’s privacy?This, I’ll deal with right the fuck now.
“The hell are they doing, Palmer? And why involve me?”
She’s striding back and forth as if she can’t stand still, almost in a trance, yet muttering to herself, tugging on her hair till the blonde strands are loose of its casual braid and wild around her face. She looks up at me, her expression pleading. “Look, I can?—”
“Bullshit! The fuck are they doing? And who the hell arethey?”
“Max, leave it! This is my problem. I’ll?—”
“The fuck it is! They just made it my problem when they invaded my home—my family—and youwilllet me help you! Now, who is this? Is ithim? His brother? I’ll have someone?—”
I’m pacing with her, so it’s both of us now, back and forth and around in circles—too much raw energy and emotion to sit in one place or walk a straight line. Palmer halts, drops her chin to her chest as if she’s battled so long and so hard and is finally defeated.
“His dad. It’s his father.”
