Page 6

“There you are, sweetheart.” My mother wraps her arms around me as the front door swings closed. I wait to hear the telltale click of the lock catching. One time when I was around seven, I didn’t wait, and the wind blew the door back open.

“What if the dog had gotten out? Or someone had gotten in? You need to be more careful. Pay better attention to what’s going on around you. See things through to the end.”

We never had a dog.

I hug her back, breathing in the scent of her perfume.

It’s the same one she’s worn for as long as I can remember, sandalwood and vanilla and mom, kept in the ornate glass bottle on her vanity.

That bottle had come from her mom and her mom’s mom, pink crystal with a little velvet bulb to squeeze.

At one point there had been a tassel, gold, hanging from the end. I probably ruined it as a kid.

“How was work?” I ask.

My dad is already in the kitchen, reading the financial times.

“Saved you the crossword, kiddo.” He smiles at me over the top of the Quarry Creek paper, before dropping his eyes again. I buss his cheek in greeting and he pats the top of my head. “Did you finish the one from this morning? It was a doozy.”

I reach around him, opening the silverware drawer and grabbing forks for the table.

“I did.” I grin, thinking of Ragnar’s pink ears as he answered each question for me. “But I admit I had some help.”

“Sadie,” Dad shakes his head, giving me his best fake-stern expression. “Google is cheating.”

I press my hand against my sternum, my mouth dropping open in manufactured outrage.

“Moi? Google? I would never.” Technically, I used Ragnar. Not the same at all.

“It was a tough one,” Dad says as we grin at each other. “I had to ask Birta about several answers. She was not amused.”

Yeah, I’m not surprised. The scrub nurse is terrifying. Not in a mean way, in a I-do-not-have-time-for-your-shenanigans-and-I-do-not-have-a-problem-expressing-my-disappointment kind of way.

“I asked Rags.” When Dad furrows his brow I add, “ólaffson. He’s from there.”

“Right, the goalie. Right.” He folds the newspaper and lays it flat on the counter behind him. “Bill said he’s looking good”

I wasn’t aware the team owner had seen Rags skate recently.

Not that he’s not involved in the day-to-day operations, but he has staff that handle everything.

Bill doesn’t even show for every game.Then again, Bill and my dad were once college roommates.

If he had anything to say about Ragnar’s rehab, it would make sense he’d say something to Dad.

“I let him know that was all my little girl.” Dad claps a hand on my shoulder, and I resist the urge to shrug it off.

“It was a team effort,” I say. “I haven’t done anything without Greg’s guidance, and ultimately, it’s ólaffson putting in the work.”

A lot of work. If I hadn’t seen his scans my self, mapped the shape of his muscles, examined the curve of his bones, I’d wonder if he was a machine.

“He’s a decent kid,” Dad says, like Rags isn’t over half a decade older than me. Although sometimes I’m sure my parents still see me as a kid. I still live with them, after all. I imagine we all look like tiny babies to the people who raised us.

“Sadie,” Mom steps into the kitchen, hands outstretched. “The silverware?”

I look down at the forks and spoons clutched in my hand. I forgot I was holding them. I shouldn’t have. It’s been my job to set the table since I could walk.

I bump my shoulder against my dad’s and duck around the counter to go set up for dinner.

The reprieve is a good thing. I don’t enjoy talking about work with my parents.

I know they both wish I went to medical school instead of pursuing sports training.

Honestly, sometimes I wish I’d studied anthropology or German or anything else in college, too.

The sciences involve… a lot. Memorizing, math, critical thinking, problem solving.

If my performance in stats and physiology is any sign, I chose the wrong career path all together.

But I’m already a bachelor’s degree deep and at the tail end of a Masters. It’s too late to walk away now.

“I heard Dad mention…” she pauses like his name is escaping her. It probably is. My mother does not watch hockey. She has dinner once a week with Bill’s second wife, but she doesn’t enjoy the sport.

“Ragnar?” I supply, watching her straighten the edges of the linen napkin I set next to Dad’s plate.

“Is he the bearded one?”

I lot of them grow beards during the season.

Especially during playoffs. It’s a league superstition.

No one shaves until the team is out of contention.

I think it’s a bizarre ritual. Every team seems to take part in the trend, and yet all but one will lose.

Seems like it’s worse luck than they think, but what do I know? I’m not the one playing.

“Yes,” I tell her instead, “The redhead. The goalie.”

“Oh yes, the one with the shoulder? Neck?”

“Hip.”

“He’s cute.” She bats her eyelashes and puckers her mouth at me from across the table.

My mother and I look nothing alike. It’s not surprising, given that she didn’t birth me, but I struggled with it a lot growing up.

I stood out, even if no one guessed I was adopted.

Where Mom was all pale skin and hair and light-colored eyes.

I was the opposite. Tan skin, dark brown—almost black—hair.

The consensus was my mother had had an affair.

My eyes were the dead giveaway.Blue and blue are supposed to make more blue. Not brown.

She didn’t, though, and it was important to her that everyone knew it.

“We adopted Sadie,” she’d say, placing her hand on my shoulder. It started at the top of my head, but I grew too tall for her to do that comfortably. Probably in kindergarten.

“Be careful around that one, sweetheart.” Mom brushes a wrinkle out of the pristine ivory tablecloth. “Don’t let him distract you from your goals.”

“Mom.” I frown. “There’s nothing going on between me and…” okay, well it’s not nothing, nothing. We are training together. “Nothing romantic….”

Mom waves me off. “I know. I know you’re too smart to let a boy derail your education and your career.”

That “boy” is hardly a boy, and it just so happens that he is my career.

“I also don’t have time for a relationship.” I tell her.

Mom cups my cheeks, looking deep into my eyes.

She presses a kiss to my forehead and sweeps some hair off my cheek as Dad ambles into the dining room.

He’s still dressed from the office, khaki pants, button-up shirt, sweater vest he’s probably had since the nineties.

The same outfit he wears to his practice every single day, even if he’s going to swap it out for scrubs and a lab coat.

My mom is in a pencil skirt and crisp button up.

It’s the end of the day and she still looks neatly pressed, as if she never once had to sit down, or eat a meal, or break a sweat.

I don’t think I’d make it out the front door that put together. Definitely not to the end of the day.

I’m still in my faded black leggings and my team hoodie.

My braid has mostly given up the good fight, the single elastic holding on for dear life as my dark hair falls around my shoulders.

It makes sense. I spend most of my day in the weight room, on the team bench, or in Greg’s office.

It doesn’t bother me, being comfortable, especially when surrounded by athletes also in athletic gear.

But now I fidget with the hem of my sweatshirt, and tuck some loose hair behind my ears.

“You could make time, if you want to,” my mom says as we all take a seat, and she passes the ceramic bowl of perfectly steamed green beans to my father.

“To what?” Dad asks, passing the bowl over to me.

“Date.” She turns to me, eyes twinkling, “I saw Marcia the other day. She said Christian was asking about you.”

I force a smile.

“He’s done so well for himself. A real good head on his shoulders.” She nods at me and dad, looking for agreement.

“What’s he up to now?” Dad asks. “It’s been a while.”

Years. It’s been two years since I broke things off with Christian Johnathon Taylor.

Two years since I pulled on my big-girl panties and showed him the door.

Even knowing there went my beautiful, light-filled apartment with the oversized windows and the living room fireplace—no, it didn’t work, but it was still gorgeous—because I couldn’t afford rent on my own.

Not with school. Now I probably could, but that apartment, the one I made my own, it's long gone.

It was my parents who helped me with first and last for that place.

When everything fell apart, they didn’t ask questions, just showed up with cardboard boxes and masking tape.

To this day, they still think we just drifted apart.

And I wasn’t volunteering any background information.

Not when I was focused on getting out of that building.

Seriously. I dropped Christian off at the airport for a week-long conference in Toronto, and I bailed.

Probably before his plane even taxied to the runway.

At the time, I was grateful for my parents’ silence, for not having to explain why I’d run from a man who looked picture-perfect on paper.

Now… now sometimes I wish they’d wanted to know, or that I’d felt brave enough to tell them the real reason I bolted.

The real reason my blood runs cold when I hear his name.

It’s one thing to know, in theory, that I don’t owe anyone an explanation.

It’s quite another to have to tell my mother that the son of her oldest friend, the boy who grew up and followed in my dad’s footsteps to medical school.

Who works at the same hospital, broke me.

In more ways than one. The internal shame—no matter how unwarranted—is hard to shake. Easier to pretend he no longer exists.