Cole folds his hands on the counter. “That’s a very natural thing. It’s how I feel about baseball. How I feel about . . .” He shakes his head and stops himself. “It’s how people feel about being with their families, in their communities.”

That’s not what he was going to say. I want to ask him about it but choose not to at the last second. Instead, I keep talking so it doesn’t get weird.

“That’s it,” I say. “As much as I get annoyed with Burt and the guys in the shop, they feel like a family to me. And Kirk has been so good to me and believed in me and helped me when I was just a single mom begging for a job. I respect him more than anyone in my life, to be honest.”

“Sounds like a great guy.”

I nod. “I’m sure he’d give you a job, now that you’re retired.”

Cole laughs. “Hell, I might go see him about it. It would beat dealing with Scott.”

“Who is Scott?”

“My agent.” He sighs. “He’s pressuring me to make a choice, but I don’t want to choose anything on the table, if I’m being honest.”

“So what do you want to do?”

It’s a simple question, and I meant it as such. What do you want to do with your life, Cole? We’ve had this discussion to some extent too. But his reaction—the stillness of his body, the intensity of his gaze—makes me think he’s internalized it in a much different, much deeper way.

“What do you want to do with yours?” he asks instead of answering the question himself.

Ah, deflection. He knows he tripped me up the last time, when he asked what I would change in my life if I could. So he knows my basic answer: a family. But I’m asking him to dig deeper, so I’ll play fair and offer him my truth.

“I don’t know.” I shimmy around in my chair. “I mean, I’d like to find a rhythm to my life. I’d like to get married, have another child.”

He nods.

“I want . . .” I try to find the right words. “I want a Christmas-movie life. Do you know what I mean? Like, I want traditions and routines. I want Ethan to be able to say, ‘Oh, we have soup on Christmas Eve and open our matching pajamas, and we have dinner at six every night.’ We do those things now, but it feels incomplete, in a way. Like there’s a missing part of us, and I can’t find it.”

Cole sighs. “I know what you mean.”

“You do?”