Four twenty-seven in the morning on Thanksgiving, or technically the day after, and Cole had yet to get a wink of sleep.

After Mason had left Sunshine’s, the crowd noise had become annoying instead of reassuring, and Cole had headed up to his apartment and his grumpy feline, who’d stalked Cole until he’d lain down in bed. The night was cold, with snow in the forecast, and Tito seemed to believe he was entitled to a share of Cole’s body heat.

The conversation with Mason had Cole drowning in thoughts, his mind spinning on topics he usually blocked out, hard topics. His dad, Sierra, his past, his fuckups, his future…

Four o’clock had been his tipping point. He’d been thinking about what Mason had said about their dad, about remembering the good stuff. Because Cole hadn’t ever done that, in the fifteen years since Harry North had died. And there was definitely good stuff. He’d felt compelled to crawl out of bed and throw on jeans, a sweatshirt, boots, and a coat, leave Tito snoozing on his pillow, and walk out of his apartment.

That had led him here, to an unassuming city park called Robins Park that was less than a mile from the house he’d grown up in. The park was surrounded on three and a half sides by houses, with a small parking lot on the fourth side that would hold half a dozen cars.

He climbed out of his truck, which he’d parked in the end spot, and looked out over the expanse of the park. There was the playground, the wading pool, the picnic shelter, the open field that was often used for soccer games, and the baseball diamond, none of which had changed much since he was a kid, with the exception of the playground. The baseball diamond was what had lured Cole out in the middle of this frigid night.

With a glance around at the surrounding houses to verify the entire world was asleep, he set off across the frozen grass. There wasn’t much to the diamond, and in fact, from the parking lot, it was easy to miss it altogether if you didn’t know it was there. There were no bleachers, no bases, no fences behind the plate or in the outfield. Just dirt patches in the appropriate places plus a bit of a pitcher’s mound. Rudimentary and not suitable for an official game, but good enough for a neighborhood pickup game.