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CHAPTER SIX

Carter

This damn pedicure chair. I’m too tall for the back of my head to be on the headrest, and it’s massaging me so hard my balls are jiggling in my boxer briefs.

But when Olivia looks over at me hopefully, I force a smile and say, “Great idea. This is relaxing.”

When I got home this morning to pick her up after I went to practice, she was surprised. And happy. After what Suki told me last night, I would have done anything she asked for to celebrate her birthday. I guess I should be grateful I’m only getting my feet washed and massaged. I could be getting a perm or something.

The pedicure technician picks up one of my feet and gestures with her chin. I just look at her, unsure what she wants. She does it again.

“I don’t know--”

She puts her hand on a stirrup-looking thing and frowns at me.

“You’re supposed to put your foot in there,” Olivia says, saving me.

She said her mom took her to get a pedicure a couple of times for special occasions, so at least one of us knows what the hell is going on here.

I put my foot up in the thing and then the technician pats the other one, so I follow it with my other foot. She looks at the bottoms of my feet and says something in Vietnamese to the technician doing Olivia’s pedicure.

The other woman looks at my feet, shakes her head and says something back. I can tell from their tone that they aren’t complimenting me. But whatever. This is for Olivia. I pick up my phone and open my email, trying to ignore the way my balls are vibrating.

I’m sorting out messages that need to be read from ones I can delete when a weird tingle on the bottom of my foot makes me reflexively jerk it upward.

The technician frowns and says something I don’t understand, then pushes my foot back into the stirrup thing.

She runs a flat metal grater over the bottom of my foot and I groan, my foot jerking in reaction again.

Now she’s glaring at me. I glare back.

“You have to hold still, Uncle Carter,” Olivia says.

“I can’t help it.”

The customer in the chair on the other side of me is looking at me, and Olivia gives me a please don’t embarrass me look.

I drop the scowl and say, “Sorry. I’ll hold still.”

The technician shit-talks me in Vietnamese again, her coworker laughing this time. This is fucking ridiculous. I want to get up and leave.

But it’s for Olivia’s birthday. So when the technician grates my foot, lighter this time, I force my foot to remain in place. She keeps going, and when she hits a certain spot, it’s all I can do not to kick her in the face as I jerk away because it tickles.

“Sorry. It tickles,” I explain.

I think both of us are relieved when she puts the grater down. She moves on to clipping my toenails and digging into my nail beds. But pain, I can handle.

When she clips out a big piece of toenail from the side of one of my big toes, she holds the nail up in front of me in the clippers, accusing me of something I don’t understand. I just shrug.

“We need to come here more often,” Olivia says. “Your feet need a lot of work.”

I’d rather chomp on rusty scraps of metal, but instead, I smile like it’s the best idea I’ve ever heard.

The technician massages my feet, her hands working the kind of magic I’m used to on the rest of my body from our team’s athletic trainer. This part’s definitely not so bad.

Olivia’s getting her toenails painted bright pink as my technician massages lotion into my feet. I’m so damn happy when I get to put my shoes back on and pay the bill.

“What did you think?” Olivia asks me as we’re walking back to the car.

“Not bad at all. Minus the grater and the jackhammer massage chair, I mean.”

“You should have asked her to turn the chair off.”

“Yeah.”

I check my phone, hoping Leo sent me the text I’ve been expecting. It’s there, and I breathe a sigh of relief. Olivia’s surprise gift is taken care of.

“What do you want to do next?” I ask her once we’re back in the car.

She shrugs. “That was fun. We can just go back home.”

“No way. How about some shopping? And some Starbucks?”

Rachel told me Olivia wanted a Starbucks gift card for her last birthday, so I assume she still likes it. Based on the way she lights up when I mention it, I’m right.

When we get to Starbucks, I get a black coffee and Olivia orders a pink drink.

“This was my mom’s favorite here,” she says as we sit down at a small table.

Her gaze turns wistful and falls to the cup.

“Rach always liked strawberry shakes when we were kids,” I say. “With lots of whipped cream. Our mom used to get mad at us because we’d spray whipped cream right into each other’s mouths.”

“Really?” Olivia smiles broadly, drinking up the new information about her mom.

“Believe it or not, your mom was usually the mastermind when we’d get in trouble. It was her idea to make our mom’s bedroom into a trampoline park for the neighbor kids the first summer our mom let us stay home alone while she was at work. We charged two dollars per kid to come jump on Mom’s bed and we sold snacks from our kitchen.”

“Did you get in trouble?”

I smile at the memory. “Big time. One of the other kid’s parents told our mom and she came home one day when we had about ten kids jumping on her bed. She took us to work with her at the library every day for the rest of the summer and all we could do was sit at a desk and read.”

“I don’t have any memories of Grandma from before she died, but Mom used to talk about her.”

“Rachel was a lot like her.” I take a sip of my coffee, remembering my sister’s contagious laugh. “I miss them both.”

“Me too.”

“You remind me of your mom.”

Olivia’s eyes brighten. “I do? How?”

“The way you like to take care of people, like your sisters.”

Her expression turns annoyed. “They don’t listen to me.”

“Do you feel like you need to help them do things the way your mom would want?”

“Yeah, but Charlotte just gives me attitude. Hallie listens sometimes, I guess.”

I shift in my seat, unable to get comfortable. It’s new for me, trying to say things to the girls in a soft, sensitive way. You have to be pretty unsoft and insensitive to make it in hockey, where I spend most of my time.

“You know, I’m the one who needs to keep your sisters in line. I like that you’ve tried to help me with it because I know I’m not the best at some things. I want you to just be a kid. Just focus on you and don’t worry about your sisters. Let me do that.”

“And Suki.”

There’s a catch in my chest as I picture the concern on Suki’s face last night when I told her about my predicament. She hasn’t even been working for me for two months, and already the girls have a strong bond with her. I was still in such a daze from Rachel’s death that I mostly ignored her until very recently.

I probably owe her an apology. She was right to rattle my cage a couple of times. I figured she’d laugh and quit when I asked her to marry me last night.

Damn, it sounds so weird to even think the words. I never thought I’d propose to anyone. Even if it wasn’t really a proposal as much as a proposition. It took my attorney telling me Chad has an actual chance at taking the girls from me to make me wake the hell up and see things clearly.

“You guys like Suki, don’t you?”

Olivia smiles. “Yeah, Suki’s awesome. She’s always happy and she takes us to do fun things.”

I check my watch, remembering Leo’s text. “We need to get going. How about a jewelry store? You want to pick out a necklace or something?”

She grins. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah, absolutely.”

I look for jewelry stores on my phone and find a locally owned one right off downtown with good online reviews. We’ve only been talking to our salesperson, Julia, for about a minute when an older man in a shirt and tie approaches us.

“Mr. Stanton, thank you for coming in. I’m Bill McKay, the owner. If there’s anything at all I can do to help, don’t hesitate to ask.”

I feel a flicker of annoyance, though it’s irrational. Being recognized in my team’s town happens often. Today, though, it feels like someone intruding on my time with my niece.

“Thanks, man.” I shake his extended hand. “I appreciate it.”

“I’ve had Crush season tickets for the past twelve years. My wife and I are big fans.”

“We appreciate that. I brought my niece in to pick out a gift.”

Bill looks at Olivia and smiles. “If there’s anything we can do to help, just let us know. We’ll let you look.”

My irritation fades with his acknowledgment of her. Rachel would balk over me bringing her eleven-year-old here to choose her own gift, but I’m going with my gut on this one. This birthday is special.

Olivia is wide-eyed as she scans the jewelry in every single case before making her choice. When Julia asked her if she wanted something with a topaz, the birthstone for November, she asked about the February birthstone, Rachel’s birth month.

When Julia fastens Olivia’s new amethyst necklace around her neck, I have to swallow against the lump in my throat. The girls have told me Suki asks them about their mom all the time, and at first it annoyed me because I thought she was just pouring salt in their wounds.

I see it now, though. Olivia is beaming as we leave the store. Remembering Rachel today has made it easier for her, not harder.

Suki is a lot more than just a beautiful face. She’s amazing with the girls. I hope like hell she accepts my offer.

“Now I’ve got a surprise for you,” I tell Olivia when we’re back in the car.

“Uncle Carter, no. This is already so much.” She gently touches her new necklace. “I love this. You don’t need to get me anything else.”

“I already did. We’re going to pick it up. It’s going to be a long drive, though. Like an hour and a half.”

“That’s okay.” She gets her phone out of her tiny purse. “I have a playlist we can listen to.”

“That sounds great.”

Eighty-eight minutes and a shitload of Taylor Swift songs later, we pull into the driveway of a house in the country.

Olivia gives me a confused look. “We’re at someone’s house.”

“Yep.”

I put my Range Rover in park and text the man Leo sent contact information for.

“You’ll need your coat. We’re meeting him in a building out back.”

When I see a guy in a heavy flannel and a baseball hat walking toward us, I get out of the car. Olivia follows, coming around to stand next to me.

“Carter?” the man asks me.

“That’s me.” I shake his hand.

“I’m John. You guys ready to pick out a pig?”

Olivia is still confused, but when we walk into an outbuilding and she sees around a half dozen tiny pink pigs curled up around each other in the hay, her jaw drops.

“A pet pig? Uncle Carter! Really?”

I nod. “Pick one out.”

Her expression is so thrilled that I grab my phone and take a picture of it. When she sits down in the hay on the ground of the pen, two of the pigs go right to her, snuffing and snorting.

She laughs and picks one up, cradling it. It squeals like she’s stabbing it.

“They’re dramatic,” John says. “She’s fine.”

It doesn’t take Olivia long to choose one. It’s a pink male with no spots, and I swear he looks like he’s smiling at her.

I owe Leo for this. At practice this morning, I asked him to find me a tiny pet piglet as quickly as possible. He came through.

I send John his payment over Venmo and he sends us with some hay and pellet food to get us started. Olivia’s happiness on the ride home makes me feel, for the first time since Rachel died, like we’re going to do more than just survive.

If we can stay together, that is. Suki will have a lot to do with that. All I can do now is hope she makes the right choice.