He trailed off. Or maybe I stopped hearing him. My father and I had been planning to catch another Cubs game together, but instead he’d died on the way to one by himself. The ache of that loss pressed on my chest. I breathed slowly.

Nick put his hands on my shoulders. “Nothing’s been done that can’t be undone,” he said softly. “If this is too hard for you, say so, and it’s off.” He tipped my chin up toward him. “This was your special thing with Earl, and I don’t want to intrude on that. But I don’t know how feasible it’ll be to do this again, and I want to know this one massive part of you that I’ve never experienced. And of your father.” He swallowed hard. “I miss him, too.”

Crack. My eyes clicked back into focus. Anthony Rizzo belted a beautiful ball deep into center field, and I stood up to cheer as he rounded first and made it safely to second.

“And a man on third, and no outs,” I gloated, sitting back down. “We are about to bust this game wide open.” I covered my mouth with my hand and whispered, “Suck it, Rangers.”

Nick laughed. “Afraid of a lip-reading expert?”

“Yes, obviously,” I said. “I don’t want to start an international feud with Texas.”

In the end, we hadn’t told the press pack; we’d simply let everyone return home—our arrival in England wasn’t covered anyway—and then gone the other direction. We knew they’d be unhappy if they heard, but it was worth the risk. Nick wanted this to be as mundane an experience as possible for us both. No royal treatment, no throwing out the first pitch, no tour of the locker rooms, no customized “Clarence” jersey handed to us by Kyle Hendricks before he took the mound. The point of this detour was to blend in, one last time, and if anyone got photos, more power to the industrious person who sold them. So the PPOs had made a security plan with the Chicago PD designed for maximum discretion, and we dressed down in sneakers and hats, my hair tucked up into mine, both of us wearing sunglasses that hid a good portion of our faces. Nick’s were hideous wraparounds that were distant cousins of ski goggles, and they were so aggressively ugly that I worried they’d attract attention, but so far no one in Chicago cared. We were just two yahoos sitting in the upper deck drinking light beer and shoveling Cracker Jack into their mouths.

“This is an insanely pleasant way to spend an afternoon,” Nick said. “Cricket needs more organ music.”

“Wow,” I said. “Between this and your scandalous preference for coffee, I’m beginning to think you were born in the wrong country.”