Chapter 1 #2
He slid another piece of paper across the table, and I forced myself to look away from Soren's face long enough to read it. It was a flyer for an upcoming show. Neon Veins was playing at a club called The Voltage in Toronto in three days.
“He's here,” I said, and it didn't feel real. “He's in Toronto.”
“Has been for at least five years, based on when the band formed,” Leroy confirmed. “I don't know where he was before that, and I don't know why he left or why he stayed gone. But if you want answers, this is your chance.”
I looked back at the photograph, at the tattoos and the longer hair and the way Soren was standing like he'd learned how to take up space without apology. He looked good. Like he'd survived whatever had driven him away and built a life that didn't need me in it.
“Do you want me to keep digging?” Leroy asked, pulling me back to the present. “I can try to find more about his personal life, where he's living, whether he's—”
“No.” I cut him off before he could finish. “This is enough. Thank you.”
I pulled out my wallet, but Leroy waved me off. “You're paid up through next month. If you need anything else, just call.”
I nodded, grabbed the photograph and the flyer, and stood up before I could do anything stupid.
By the time I pulled into my driveway, my hands were numb from gripping the steering wheel too hard, and my chest felt like it was caving in on itself.
I walked inside, dropped my keys on the counter, and stood in the middle of my kitchen staring at nothing. The house was still too quiet.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I pulled it out to see my mom's name lighting up the screen with an incoming FaceTime call.
I almost didn't answer. I wasn't in the right headspace to talk to anyone, let alone my mother, who had a sixth sense for when I was spiraling and an irritating habit of not letting me get away with lying about it.
But I answered anyway, because ignoring her would just make her worry more, and the last thing I needed was my parents showing up at my door unannounced to check on me.
Her face filled the screen, bright and warm and worried in that way only mothers could pull off. “Rowan, sweetheart, are you okay? You look exhausted.”
“I'm fine, Mom.” I leaned against the counter and tried to arrange my face into an expression that wouldn't make her panic. “Just tired. Playoff delay's got everyone on edge.”
“Mm-hmm.” She didn't look convinced, but before she could press further, my dad's face appeared next to hers, grinning like he'd just heard the best joke of his life.
“Rook! My boy!” He was wearing a sweater that was two sizes too big and holding what looked like a martini even though it was barely noon. “How's my favorite captain? You keeping those boys in line?”
I couldn't help the smile that tugged at my mouth despite everything.
My dad was ridiculous. A six-foot-three former college hockey player who'd gone into finance and somehow turned into the most aggressively wholesome human being I'd ever met.
He threw charity galas, hosted dinner parties, and had never met a stranger he couldn't befriend within five minutes.
My mom called him a golden retriever in human form, and she wasn't wrong.
“Yeah, Dad, I'm keeping them in line.”
“That's my boy! You know, your mother and I were just talking about coming up to visit once the playoffs start. We want to be there to cheer you on. Maybe we'll bring the Hendersons, they've been dying to see you play again.”
“Martin, don't overwhelm him,” my mom said, swatting at my dad's arm. “We just wanted to check in and see how you're doing. You've been quiet this week.”
“I've been busy,” I said, which wasn't a lie, but it also wasn't the truth she was looking for.
“Busy,” my dad repeated, in the tone of a man who found the word deeply suspicious. “Busy doing what? The playoffs got pushed. You told me yourself you're just waiting around. That's not busy, Ro, that's marinating.”
“Martin.”
“I'm just saying. There's a difference between busy and marinating, and our son is marinating.” He leaned closer to the camera, which meant I got a detailed view of his left ear and part of his collar. “Are you eating? You look like you haven't eaten.”
“I ate today.”
“What did you eat?”
“Martin, he's thirty-one years old—”
“Coffee is not a food group, Rowan.”
“I ate actual food,” I said, which was mostly true. I'd had toast at some point. “Back up, I can only see your ear.”
He adjusted, overcorrected, and for a moment the camera was aimed at the ceiling. My mom made a sound of profound exasperation that she'd clearly been refining for thirty-five years of marriage. “Give me the phone. Give me — Martin, just hand it over—”
“I have it, I have it.” His face reappeared, slightly flushed, grinning like a man who'd never once in his life successfully operated a camera angle. “There. See? I'm a natural.”
“You were pointing it at the ceiling fan.”
“I was showing Rowan our new ceiling fan. It's Italian.”
“It's from Home Depot.”
“The design is Italian.”
My mom appeared at his shoulder, leaning in to get into frame, and I felt the tension in my jaw ease in a way I hadn't been expecting.
“Ignore the fan,” my mom said. “Tell me how you really are.”
“I'm fine, Mom.”
“See, that's what concerns me. You say fine and you make that face.”
“What face?”
“The face,” my dad said sagely, as if this explained everything.
“What face? I'm not making a face, this is my face.”
“Ro, I have known your face since before you had teeth.
That is the face you make when something's wrong and you don't want to talk about it.” My dad settled back in his chair, arms crossed, looking profoundly comfortable with his own assessment.
“It's the same face you made at fourteen when you broke the garage window and tried to blame the wind.”
“The wind was involved.”
“You hit a puck through it.”
“Wind-assisted.”
My mom covered her mouth, but it didn't fully hide the laugh. My dad pointed at me with the air of a man who had been right about many things and planned to be right about many more. “That's the face. He's doing it right now.”
“I'm not—” I stopped, because I could feel the corner of my mouth doing something against my will. “The wind thing was one time.”
“The wind thing was also the story you tried to tell your coach when you missed practice for three days and told him you'd been sick. Wind-related illness.”
“I was sick.”
“You were at Marcus Bellamy's cabin.”
“I was sick at Marcus Bellamy's cabin.”
“Martin.” My mom was fully laughing now, trying to rein it back in and failing. “Don't relitigate the cabin.”
“I'm not relitigating, I'm providing context.” He turned to look at her and then back at me with great seriousness. “The cabin had no wind, Rowan. I drove up there to collect you. It was a dead calm day. I checked.”
“You drove up there?”
“Of course I drove up there. You were sixteen and your mother was worried.”
“You told me you were at a conference,” I said.
“I was at a conference. I left the conference early.”
My mom patted his arm in a way that somehow communicated both fondness and long-suffering simultaneously. “He drove four hours and then turned around and drove back because you were fine and he didn't want you to know he'd come.”
“I knew if he saw me he'd think I was checking up on him,” my dad said, wholly unembarrassed. “Which I was. But a man has his dignity.”
“You have never had dignity, Martin.”
“I have tremendous dignity. Rowan, tell her I have dignity.”
“You drove four hours to check on me and then left without saying anything,” I said.
“Dignified surveillance.”
I laughed for the first time in days, and it surprised me enough that I had to turn away from the camera for a second and collect myself. From the phone I heard my dad say, quietly and to my mom, “There he is.”
“Don't make it weird,” she murmured back.
“I'm not making it weird, I'm observing—”
“You're going to make him self-conscious.”
“I'm not self-conscious,” I said, turning back.
“Good,” my mom said smoothly, like she hadn't just been stage-whispering about me eighteen inches from the microphone. “Now. Your father was going to tell you about the dinner party.”
“The dinner party.” My dad's entire face lit up. “Ro, I need you to understand something. We have hosted many dinner parties. Forty years of dinner parties, more or less.”
“We've been married thirty-five years, Martin.”
“I was entertaining before we were married. The point is — this was the worst dinner party in recorded history, and I say that having once attended a function where the caterer showed up drunk and served the soup cold.”
“The soup story is a separate story,” my mom said.
“The soup story is important context.”
“Tell me about the peacock,” I said, because I could see where this was going and I wanted to get there.
My dad sat forward. “Gary Hendricks — you remember Gary, he's got the boat he never uses and the laugh that sounds like a screen door — Gary shows up at the front door with a bird.”
“An emotional support peacock,” I said.
“I didn't know it was an emotional support peacock at the time. At the time it was just a bird Gary had brought to my dinner party. I assumed there was an explanation. I let them in.”
“You let a peacock into the house,” my mom said, in the tone of a woman still processing this.
“I let Gary in. The peacock made its own decision to enter.”
“It walked in under your arm, Martin.”
“It was a confident bird. I respected that.” My dad held up one hand. “Now. Your mother had spent the better part of two days on the table centerpiece. Flowers, candles, the whole production. It was very nice.”
“It was beautiful,” my mom said flatly.
“It was beautiful,” he agreed. “The peacock disagreed.”
“Oh no,” I said.
“Within four minutes of entry, the bird had identified the centerpiece as a personal insult and took action accordingly.” My dad made a sweeping gesture with both hands.
“Flowers everywhere. One candle went sideways. Judith Mercer from next door stood up so fast she knocked her chair back into the server.”
“We don't have a server,” my mom said. “That was Patrick from next door who came early to help with the wine.”
“Patrick was operating in a server-adjacent capacity. The point is he went down. Bird's still going. The peacock had a look in its eye, Rowan. Personal. Like the centerpiece had said something to it.”
“It was attracted to the—”
“I know what it was attracted to, Martha, I was there.”
“Then say the right thing.”
“I'm telling the story.”
“You're telling a version of the story that makes the peacock seem like it had a grudge.”
“It absolutely had a grudge.” My dad looked back at the camera with total conviction. “Some animals just decide. That bird decided. It saw that centerpiece and it said not today and it meant it.”
I was leaning against my kitchen counter with my arms crossed and my chest fully loose for the first time in days, watching the two of them argue over the structural accuracy of a peacock incident, and I couldn't have explained why it helped as much as it did.
They bickered like it was a sport they'd been playing so long they'd forgotten they were playing it.
Every correction my mom made, every embellishment my dad doubled down on, every sighing Martin and every unapologetic I'm just saying — it was the most familiar noise in the world, and it filled the kitchen up in a way that pushed the quiet back to the edges where it belonged.
“Did it ever leave?” I asked.
“Gary took it home eventually. Eventually.” My dad settled back with the satisfaction of a man who'd delivered his material well. “Two days later I found a tail feather behind the credenza. No explanation. Just evidence.”
“We kept the feather,” my mom said. “It's actually quite lovely.”
“It is,” he agreed. “The bird had style, I'll give it that.”
My mom looked at me through the screen, and her eyes were soft in the way they got when she was done being funny and wanted to check if I was okay without making a production of it.
“We love you, sweetheart,” she said. “Call us if you need anything, okay?
And try to get some rest. You look like you haven't slept in days.”
“I will,” I said. “Love you guys.”
“Love you more!” my dad shouted, already half off camera, and then the screen went dark and the kitchen was quiet again.