Between These Walls by John Herrick Read Free Book Online Page B

he’d had a chance to walk into the house.
    Donned in baseball gloves, father and son tossed the baseball to each other, back and forth. A rare sight, given Dad’s constant travel.
    Bryce’s face beamed. He shouted something at their father, then planted his feet on the ground to ready another pitch. A sophomore in high school and a gifted pitcher, Bryce had qualified for the varsity team since his freshman year. He was that good. And Dad mentioned it often.
    When he’d wound up for the pitch, he released the ball. A breaking ball! But Bryce hadn’t given Dad advance warning. By the time it reached their father on the other side of the lawn, it had caught Dad by surprise. He reached to grab the ball—and took hold of it at the last possible second.
    “Ooh!” Bryce’s voice boomed. “You got it, old man!”
    Dad laughed. “Almost threw my back out doing it! Great pitch. I used to pitch those back in school. Seems like a lifetime ago ...”
    Looking down from the window, Hunter wished he could be his big brother.
    With a surge of energy coursing through him, Hunter raced to reassemble his baseball cards and return them to the shoebox he kept under his bed. If he hurried, he might get downstairs in time to get some tosses in. The sun would set before they’d finished with—
    “Dinner time!” He heard his mother’s voice bellow from the open window in the kitchen. A moment later, he heard her voice from the stairwell. “Hunter! Time for dinner!”
    His heart sank.
    He couldn’t believe he’d missed the rare chance to play catch.
    Hunter had never shared that memory with another soul. It struck him as random. Meaningless.
    So why did he ache each time he recalled it?
    Staring at his computer monitor, Hunter shook himself out of his stream of consciousness.
    Doesn’t matter, Hunter thought to himself. If he didn’t focus on finding new clients, he might end up with a lot of time to play catch. And that would make the bills difficult to pay.
    As he browsed through a list of results on a search engine, he dug the knuckles of one hand into his back, just above his waist, and moved them around in tiny circles. When he’d awakened that morning, his back had already felt sore. Now it really hurt. The discomfort ran from his lower back to his below his waistline. It would feel better if he got out of his chair and walked around the office, giving his muscles a chance to stretch, but he couldn’t spend his whole day doing that.
    Hunter thought back to Ellen’s suggestion at the restaurant on Saturday night.
    Maybe a massage was worth a try. It couldn’t make matters worse.
    Embarrassed at the notion, he started to think it through anyway. He could keep it discreet. He didn’t need to tell anyone, did he? It wouldn’t be the first secret he had kept in his life.
    Did he still have the phone number Ellen had given him? He forgot where he had placed it, but his best guess would be his wallet.
    Retrieving his wallet from his back pocket, he rifled through it, checking behind his credit cards, frequent-customer reward cards, business cards. He didn’t find it. Then he remembered: Ellen hadn’t given him a business card. She had written it on a cocktail napkin.
    He fingered through the section in the back of his wallet, where he kept his cash, and—there! Stuck between a twenty-dollar bill and a five, he found a thin napkin folded in quarters. With one final glance around him, as if an informant had sneaked into his cubicle, he picked up his phone and dialed the number. A receptionist answered and asked if she could help him.
    Hunter kept his voice low. He hoped the person in the next cubicle wouldn’t hear him. He’d never hear the end of it.
    “Hi, I’d like to, uh, make an appointment, please.”
    “I’m sorry, sir, could you please repeat that? I couldn’t quite hear you.”
    Oh brother. Hunter sealed his lips tight. No, I don’t want to say it louder!
    “I’d like to make an appointment, please,” he