Page 4

He looked up from whatever he was writing. "Sorry, I hope you don't mind. The light's better out here than in the guest room."

I ignored the comment and headed for the kitchen but stopped short when I saw movement in my peripheral vision. Eric had gotten up from his spot on the floor and was wandering toward the wood stove, drawn by something I couldn't see from where I stood.

Then, I realized what had caught his attention, and my blood turned to ice.

The skates.

For sixteen years, I'd avoided looking directly at that corner. Sixteen years of banking the fire, stacking kindling, and reaching for the wool blanket without letting my eyes drift to the shadows underneath the bench.

Eric saw them immediately, the way a lighthouse beam cuts through the fog. He crouched down and reached for them.

"Don't—" I was too late. He'd already lifted one of them, turning it over in his hands like he was examining a fossil.

The smell hit me immediately. It was the scent of old leather. For a heartbeat, I was nineteen again, sitting in Derek's truck behind the Whistleport Ice Arena, my hands shaking as I worked the laces tight. The memories flooded into my mind.

Derek's truck. Graduation night. The bottle in his hand catching light from a streetlamp as we hit the coast road too fast.

The curve came out of nowhere.

I woke up in Eastern Maine Medical Center three days later with a shattered kneecap, two broken ribs, and parents who looked like they'd aged a decade in seventy-two hours.

Derek was in the room next door, unconscious, his left arm in a cast that went from his fingertips to his shoulder. He never went home.

The scholarship was gone before I was even discharged. The university sent a polite letter explaining that they couldn't risk their investment on someone who'd already demonstrated poor judgment.

Two local boys. Underage drinking. Reckless driving. One lucky to be alive.

My parents didn't say much during those first few weeks.

I saw it in their faces—the disappointment, the fear, the sudden understanding that their son wasn't the golden child they'd thought he was.

The boy who'd gotten a full ride to college had become the boy who'd thrown it all away for a joyride and a bottle of beer.

The knee healed wrong, leaving me with a permanent limp and chronic pain that flared up every time the weather changed. Soon after that, my parents left, and my aunt blamed me—for Derek.

I was eighteen when the accident happened. Shortly after my nineteenth birthday, Margaret Sinclair helped me escape to Ironhook, a refuge from the cruel, judgmental reality of the mainland

And the skates—the last pair I'd ever owned, the ones I'd been planning to take to college—sat under that bench like evidence of a crime I couldn't quite remember committing.

Eric's voice cut through my memories. "You were good, weren't you?"

I blinked and was back in my cottage on Ironhook Island, watching a college kid examine the remnants of a life I'd left behind when he was in first grade.

"Put those down."

Eric looked up, startled by the edge in my tone, but he didn't drop the skates. Instead, he cradled them, understanding they were somehow fragile.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to—"

"I said put those down."

This time, he did, pushing the skates back under the bench with gentle pressure. He didn't move away and didn't pretend he hadn't seen what he'd seen.

He spoke softly. "People don't keep broken things unless they matter."

I stared at him, the bright-eyed kid who'd been in my house for less than twenty-four hours and already thought he understood something about my life. The urge to explain—to tell him about the scholarship and the accident—rose in my throat like bile.

Instead, I turned and walked out of the cottage, letting the screen door slam behind me hard enough to rattle the frame.

Outside, the fog was rolling back in from the east, gray and thick and familiar.

I walked the perimeter of the cottage without any particular destination in mind, checking fence posts that didn't need checking and examining foundation stones that had been solid for a century and would be solid for another.

The sea stretched out before me, endless and disinterested, as it had done for sixteen years. It didn't care about hockey scholarships or car accidents or how a man could disappear so completely that even he forgot who he used to be.

I made three circuits around the cottage before the screen door opened behind me.

"Wes?"

Eric's voice was tentative as if he were tiptoeing through a minefield. I kept walking, focusing on the rhythm of my boots against the worn path.

"Wes, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have—"

I stopped abruptly. "No, you shouldn't have."

He stood there with his hands shoved deep in his jacket pockets, looking like a kid caught rifling through someone's diary.

"I didn't know."

"Didn't know what? Have you ever heard of privacy? Some things aren't part of your research project."

"That's not—" He stopped, took a breath, and tried again. "I wasn't researching anything. I was only looking around and saw them, and I..." His voice trailed off.

I turned to face him fully, and something in my expression made him take a half-step back. Maybe now he'd understand that this wasn't some friendly bed-and-breakfast where the host was happy to share his life story over coffee and blueberry muffins.

"Let me make something clear. I don't care about your research or its importance to the university. This is my home." I stepped closer. "Touch my things again without asking, and you can find somewhere else to sleep."

Eric nodded, his face pale. "I understand. I won't—"

"Good." I started walking again, aiming for the shed where I could lose myself in the mindless work of sorting tackle that didn't need sorting.

Eric was persistent. He followed me. "You were good, weren't you?"

I stopped walking but didn't turn around. "What?"

"Hockey. You were really good."

I turned and studied his face in the gray gloom. His expression had changed. It was more serious.

"Why do you care?"

He waited, composing his thoughts. His voice was so low I had to strain to hear it when he spoke.

"My best friend Ziggy—he plays college hockey now. University of Maine." Eric glanced at me, then away again. "He's excellent, but sometimes he gets this expression when he talks about it like he's carrying something heavy that he can't put down."

I said nothing, but a lump formed in my throat.

"And my dad, he was a football player in high school.

He could have played in college, but he chose the fire department instead.

He never talks about it, but sometimes I catch him watching games on TV with this expression.

.." He shrugged. "I don't know. It's like he's watching a life he might have had. "

The fog thickened. Eric was becoming less solid, like a voice speaking from the mist.

"I'm not them."

"I know, but you kept the skates."

I wanted to tell him he was wrong, that the skates didn't mean anything, and I'd just never gotten around to throwing them away. The words wouldn't come.

"They're only skates." I knew how unconvincing that sounded.

Eric tilted his head. "Are they?"

"I don't owe you my history." This time, I did turn away, and I headed for the shed with deliberate steps that dared him to follow.

He didn't. When I reached for the door handle, his voice drifted through the fog one more time, soft and certain.

"No. You don't owe me anything, but maybe you owe yourself something."

The shed door closed behind me with a soft click, muffling the sound of the sea, the fog, and Eric's voice. The familiar smells of rope, oil, and tools didn't make me feel safe like usual.

A faded Ironhook Rink poster curled on the shed wall. I'd looked past it for years, and now it stood out like the letters were in flashing neon.

I'd been exposed. It was like someone had opened a window I'd thought was sealed shut. I turned back to the netting, hands suddenly clumsy on the rope.

People don't keep broken things unless they matter.

Maybe you owe yourself something.

Eric's words echoed around me, refusing to be ignored. For the first time in sixteen years, I wondered whether the life I'd built on Ironhook Island protected me or merely locked me in another kind of prison.