Angels Walking (13 page)

Sami remembered feeling helpless. The way she’d felt when her parents didn’t come back home after their accident. Everyone disagreed with Tyler’s decision to go with the draft. Her grandparents and his parents. His coaches. But she had wanted to believe in him. If anyone could make it through the minor leagues to the majors, it was Tyler.

But by the time he was ready to climb on the bus, he and his parents were on rocky terms. Also by then, her grandparents had unequivocally decided he wasn’t the guy for her. Even the local media thought Tyler was crazy to pass up a scholarship to UCLA.

“I’ll prove them all wrong,” he told her before climbing on the bus. “I’ll call you.”

And like that, Tyler had backed away from her. He waited until the last second to turn and jog up the steps onto the bus. He took a seat by the window so he could see her, and their
eyes held until the bus was too far down the road for them to see each other.

Sami could still remember how it felt, standing there in a cloud of exhaust, the summer sun beating on her shoulders and Tyler Ames moving farther away with every heartbeat. She had told him the truth. No one believed in him more than she did. He called her that night from Idaho and again when he reached Billings. He texted her all the time at first.

“Billings is great,” he told her. “Nothing to do but play ball.”

Tyler started out with a run of success. They worked him into the pitching rotation after a week of training and conditioning, and the wins piled up. No matter how busy, he called Sami every night. Like he said he would. Always the conversation was the same. Tyler missed her. She missed him. But life was moving faster than one of his famed pitches. Sami moved into her dorm at UCLA and suddenly they really did seem worlds away from each other. Something else happened.

For the first time since meeting a year earlier, they had nothing in common.

Sami turned the last page in the photo album. Tucked in the back was the article from the
Simi Valley Enterprise
. She opened it up, careful with the yellowed newsprint. The headline spanned the entire sports page:
Tyler Ames Makes Good on Promise
. The reporter quoted Tyler saying that only a few special people believed in him when he took the draft over the scholarship. “My game is showing them all. I’m out to prove everyone wrong,” he said. “And I’ll do it. I will.”

Sami scanned the text to the place where the Billings coach had shared a few words. “This kid is a winner. He’s unstoppable.
He’ll make it to the Big Leagues in record time at this rate.”

The more interest baseball executives took in Tyler’s pitching, the busier he became. Sami enrolled in eighteen units at UCLA and joined an intramural volleyball team. Pretty soon the calls from Tyler came only a few times a week and then only on the weekends. He had no vacation time, no time to visit her.

When the season ended, the Reds moved Tyler to Dayton, Ohio—the club’s single A team. In the media, most local sports reporters saw the move as a good thing. “If Tyler Ames keeps pitching this way, he’ll be in Pensacola in a hurry,” his newest coach said at a press conference.

Sami held onto every positive word. She would leave the articles out on the kitchen counter on the weekends when she visited her grandparents. Every chance she had she would tell them how Tyler was doing well and making a name for himself.

Her grandparents didn’t care. A man without a college education was not one she could consider marrying. Conversation closed. “Samantha, there are a thousand handsome, intelligent boys on the campus of UCLA,” her grandfather told her one weekend that spring. “Have an open mind at least.”

“My mind’s made up.” Sami smiled at him. “I love Tyler Ames.”

“Well.” Her grandfather nodded slowly. “We’ll see about that.”

Those were always his words:
We’ll see about that
. As if he could look into the future and somehow know things weren’t going to work out.

“People are watching,” Tyler told her when they talked at the end of spring training in Florida. “I keep thinking they might just send me over to the Blue Wahoos. Skip single A altogether.”

Sami hoped for him and believed in him and once in a while she even prayed for him. But instead of giving Tyler a promotion, the Dayton Dragons kept him in Ohio and, almost overnight, things began to unravel. It turned out Dayton had a lot more to do than Billings, and since the media had loved Tyler since he was a twelve-year-old national champion, they were always on hand to capture his victories.

And his mistakes.

“I’m bored,” he told Sami a few weeks after he arrived back in Dayton. “I need more of a challenge.” Almost as an afterthought he added, “I miss you. I can’t believe it’s almost been a year.”

No one in Sami’s life could believe it either. Her roommates were constantly asking her about the mystery boyfriend, the guy who was never around. Each of them had a UCLA guy they wanted her to meet, someone she could actually date and hang out with. Always she would politely tell them she wasn’t interested.

But all that changed one night when Sami typed his name in the Google search line and found a headline she would never forget:
Tyler Ames Arrested for Public Drunkenness—Underage Pitching Phenom Takes a Downturn.
She read the article top to bottom five times before the truth set in.

Tyler had gone to a bar with a group of fans—mostly girls. The picture told the story. He and one of the girls had been dancing on the table at a Dayton bar when someone snapped
a photo. The owner of the bar had asked Tyler to stop, but he refused. Police were called and Tyler was arrested. Minor in possession of alcohol. Public drunkenness. He was released on his own recognizance and fined a thousand dollars. The team fined him three times that.

That weekend when Sami went home the article was waiting for her on the kitchen counter. Her grandfather walked in as she spotted it, but he never said a word. Nothing about the story or the arrest or anything at all about Tyler. Instead he smiled and put his arm around her shoulder. “How are your new friends at school, Samantha?”

Like that, her grandparents clearly believed two things: that they were right about Tyler Ames and that she was over him.

She was, in some ways. She was furious with him for drinking and hanging out with the fans, and deeply disappointed that he would get himself arrested. She blocked his texts, and for the next three weeks, whenever he called she refused to answer. Finally a month after the article released, she picked up.

“Sami . . . what in the world!” Tyler sounded genuinely upset. “I’ve been trying to reach you!”

“Really?” She kept her tone cool. “I thought you’d be busy with lawyers and police officers.”

He exhaled long and slow. “News travels fast.”

“What’d you expect?” Her voice rose with the intensity of her hurt. “You’re Tyler Ames. Anything you do—good or bad—will be online in an hour. Did you really think I wouldn’t see?”

“No. I just . . . I wanted to tell you first.” The sound of voices in the background came over the line. Someone called
his name. “Look, I have to go. We’re getting on the bus. Road games all week.”

She stayed quiet. What could she say?

“You’re mad?”

“Yes. At myself.” It was the first time Sami had voiced her feelings on the matter. She hadn’t told her roommates at school, and her grandparents had no interest talking about Tyler. “I thought I knew you.” She paused. “I was wrong.”

By then she’d convinced herself her grandparents were right. She was just a kid when she fell for Tyler Ames. Who wouldn’t have been swept away by the magic of a summer fling? “Sami, please.” Her tone probably scared him, because he sounded desperate. “I’ll call you later. We have to talk.”

“Don’t call.” The answers came to her as she spoke. “We need a break, Tyler. I need time.”

A month later, when he tried again, Sami ignored his calls. Both of them. After that he stopped calling.

Even then she couldn’t shake him. Whenever she had the chance she Googled his name. There were a handful of minor-in-possession charges in Dayton and another in a small Kentucky baseball town. Those were followed with a harassment claim by a female bartender in Des Moines.

Sami was sure her grandfather had seen the stories, too. But he never left articles on the kitchen counter. His way of saying the Tyler Ames chapter was closed.

Which it was.

Tyler spent that season and three more in Dayton, never reaching the success he’d found in Billings. Sami checked up on him a couple times a year but the news was never good. In
his third season he crashed a moped into a tree. Alcohol was suspected to have played a role in the crash.

After that the media took off its collective gloves. Editorials ran in sports pages around the country remembering who Tyler Ames had been and bemoaning the sad waste of talent and opportunity.
What was he doing on a moped, anyway?
one of them wrote.
He should be on the pitcher’s mound and only the pitcher’s mound.
Another reporter commented that at this rate Tyler Ames would simply be one more statistic. A story of what could’ve been.

Sami hated what people said about Tyler, but she could only agree. His slide to public shame and broken dreams convinced her time and again that she had been wrong. She never knew him. No matter how she felt that day when he climbed on the bus for Billings.

His final words lingered in her heart still.
I’ll prove them all wrong
. His litany of bad decisions since then lined up like so many soldiers taking aim at all Sami had once believed about him.

She was putting the photo album back in the box in the closet when her cell phone rang. A quick glance told her it was Arnie—probably calling to see if the flowers had been delivered. Sami felt herself change gears. Arnie would want her full attention—he deserved it. She answered the call. She’d spent enough hours in the past.

It was time to think about her future.

11

E
MBER WAS BACK IN
Pensacola now. Beck, too.

The mission wasn’t going well. Tyler was homeless and discouraged, relying on pain medication more every day. Yes, Ember’s meeting with Tyler’s parents had been helpful. Since then, the couple prayed several times a day for their son.

Prayer had the power to hold back all the forces of darkness.

But they needed more of it, more people praying, more sons and daughters of Adam calling out to the Father on behalf of Tyler Ames. Beck agreed with her.

For now, they had Tyler in their sights. Ember kept up with Beck as the two of them moved invisibly along, some ten feet above the roof of Tyler’s car. They stayed with him as he drove through town and pulled into the YMCA parking lot.

“Why is he here?” Ember eased herself down a few feet from the Charger.

Beck settled in beside her. They were still invisible. “He
needs a shower.” He stared at their subject, the one upon whom so much depended.

Ember felt suffocated by her frustration. “He doesn’t need a shower as badly as he needs to get to California.” She shot Beck a desperate look. “The doctor there would do his surgery at cost.”

“Yes.” Beck frowned. “Timing is critical. We have only a small window.”

“I have an idea.” She had thought of it that morning. “There’s a man looking for help at a retirement home.”

“I agree. The woman there—Virginia.” Beck narrowed his eyes. “She’s our best hope.”

“Exactly.” Ember wanted to will Tyler to turn around, forget this diversion. But that wasn’t how angels worked. Instead she studied Tyler, his pained look and unsteady steps as he walked toward the front door. “Poor man.” A terrible thought came over her. “What if he doesn’t want to work there? What if—”

“Ember.” Beck looked at her, his eyes blazing. “Don’t. We were chosen for this mission. You must believe.”

She wouldn’t say it, but the thought crossed her mind all the same. What if they were the wrong Angels Walking team? What if two other angels might’ve had better insight, better ways of intervening?

“You will, right?” Beck put his hand on her shoulder. “You will believe?”

“Yes.” She forced the fears from her mind. “I will. I do.”

“Let’s go.” Beck led the way and they slid easily through the glass wall at the front of the building. Ember knew much about Tyler Ames. She was a master in studying character. One of the reasons she was chosen for this mission.

Ember and Beck watched Tyler catch a whiff of his own stink as he approached the front desk. He hesitated, clearly hoping no one else would notice. The angels could smell him from five feet away. Smells like this were one of the strangest aspects of being here on earth. His clothes could’ve walked into the Y by themselves.

“Morning.” The girl at the front desk was ten years older than Tyler, but that didn’t stop her from flirting. She looked him up and down. “Rough night?”

“The rehab’s insane.” He grinned and stopped only long enough to sign in. “See ya.” He headed to the large workout room.

“He can’t rehab.” Ember felt another ripple of concern. “Not until after the surgery.”