**Part 4**
The first meeting happened at a public baseball field.
Lucas chose it.
“You never asked why I was scared.”
His father was already there.
He held an old leather glove.
Lucas stopped.
“That’s the one from the picture.”
The man looked down.
“Yeah.”
Lucas stopped.
“You kept it all this time?”
“I kept more things than I had a right to.”
Lucas stepped closer.
“I’m Lucas.”
Lucas pointed toward the field.
“Are you any good?”
“You kept it all this time?”
“Not really.”
“You had a glove.”
“Owning one and being good are different things.”
Lucas smiled.
They started throwing the ball, awkwardly at first.
One throw sailed too high.
“You had a glove.”
Lucas missed it and kicked the dirt.
“Sorry,” the man said. “That one was mine.”
“I should’ve caught it.”
“No. I threw it badly.”
I stood several yards away.
After a while, Lucas asked him something I couldn’t hear.
“I should’ve caught it.”
The man crouched beside him.
My body moved before I thought: one step forward.
Then I stopped.
Lucas looked at him.
The man answered.
I stayed where I was.
Lucas looked at him.
He didn’t suddenly become part of our lives because of one afternoon.
The first week, he called once.
The next week, twice.
He never appeared without asking.
He never tried to make Lucas call him anything.
He called once.
And when Lucas didn’t want to talk one evening, he accepted it.
I watched all of that.
Not because I trusted him yet.
Because trust wasn’t something I planned to hand over just because he’d finally decided to show up.
He was going to have to build it.
So was I.
I watched all of that.
Three weeks later, Lucas sat at the kitchen table eating Sunday pancakes.
Too thick, as always.
“He wants to come to my game Saturday.”
I set down the syrup.
“Do you want him there?”
Lucas nodded.
“Do you want him there?”
“Yeah.”
“Then he should come.”
He studied me.
“You won’t be mad?”
“No.”
“He’s still not my dad-dad.”
“You don’t have to decide what to call him.”
“You won’t be mad?”
Lucas went back to his pancakes.
I reached across the table and straightened his napkin: old habits.
Then I looked at the syrup bottle, the crumbs, and the plate he’d left crooked beside his elbow.
I left them exactly where they were.
THE END
