Chapter 28
Devin and Vanessa’s Thanksgiving dinner was set to be served at one PM. At twelve thirty Nick loaded his car and drove carefully over. It got him there ten minutes early—long enough to greet everyone, not long enough to get caught in a conversation. They’d sit down, he’d stuff his face, and then he’d leave. He would see people, but not really interact—it would make him and his therapist both happy. He pulled up in front of the house—the driveway was roomy but it was parked up. He was a one-trip guy, so he loaded up and strode to the front door. When he came here to lose money at poker, he came in through the garage, but that didn’t seem right for today. He would make a respectable appearance—Devin had told him that Vanessa’s parents would be there.
He didn’t have a finger free to ring the bell, so he kicked gently at the door. So much for respectability. Vanessa shouted, “Come in!” at the same time that a man in his early sixties swung the door wide.
“Let me help you with that,” he said, standing back and trying to figure out what he could take without making Nick drop something else.
“I got it,” Nick said. “If you could just clear a path for me.” The man swept ahead of him, scooping up two preschoolers and shouting, “Food-laden stranger coming through!”
“That’s Nick,” Devin called. “Nick, this is my father-in-law, Mike Cowling.”
Nick grunted a hello and set a short, wide vase of mums, cream roses, and cattails on the counter, then let a pumpkin pie and a pecan pie slide down his arm.
“This guy’s got skills,” Mike said.
“You should see him on the ice,” Devin said.
Nick fished a bottle of wine from under his arm and then smacked a lump wrapped in thick deli foil onto the counter. Devin gave it a poke. “What’s this?”
“Ham. In case you’d been counting on having leftovers for supper.”
Devin laughed. “You’re eating the whole turkey, eh?” He took Nick around, introducing him to Vanessa’s mother, Vickie, her sisters, brothers-in-law, and their kids.
Vanessa waved from the kitchen. She was flushed and several strands had come loose from her messy bun. She looked cheerful and stressed and like she meant business. Nick felt a stab of envy. Devin got this every day—someone making his place a home, filling the space with smells of meat and rolls and gently bossing everyone as the table got set and the glasses filled. It was what Dragan and Mia had wanted to make together—a home. A family.
“Nick, you afraid to sit next to a five-year-old?” Devin called.
“I fear no mortal,” Nick said.
“Bad call,” Vanessa’s sister said cheerfully, scooping up a squirming boy with a cowlick and a red stain down his shirt. It was a Red Wheels jersey—he was wearing his Uncle Devin’s number.
“I’m a superhero,” the kid said as his mother lowered him onto a chair at the big dining table, where Devin had added several leaves.
“What’s your superpower?” Nick asked. The kid frowned in concentration. “Burping?” Nick suggested.
The kid brightened. “Yes!”
Vanessa’s mother leveled a finger at him. “You’re a bad influence,” she said.
“Vickie’s a kindergarten teacher,” Devin said, pushing past the last stragglers at the table. “Don’t mess with her.”
“That’s right!” Vickie said, beaming.
“She’s threatening to put Rolf Bjornson in timeout,” Devin said.
“For the hit he laid on you in Vancouver?”
Devin nodded, then shouted over the hubbub, “I’m saying grace now. Listen or go to hell.”
“Wow,” one of Vanessa’s sisters said.
Nick lowered himself into the seat beside the superhero, thankful he didn’t still need the cane with this many people and chair legs around. Devin said the blessing and then carried a turkey on a platter to the table while Vanessa’s parents broke into song. “Here’s the taters! Here’s the meat! Thanks to God now eat eat eat!” They high-fived each other across the table and Vickie Cowling giggled.
“They have a song about turkey?” Nick stage-whispered to Vanessa’s older sister, seated across from him.
She rolled her eyes. “They have a great marriage. It’s a lot for the rest of us to handle.”
Mike, Vanessa’s father, took over the carving while everyone else passed heaping bowls of sweet potatoes with mini marshmallows and brown sugar, green beans with onions and bacon, a bowl of mashed potatoes for each end of the massive table, cranberry relish and cranberry salad, beets with pineapple, homemade yeast rolls with parmesan crumbles on top, and stuffing with and without giblets, which Vanessa’s sister referred to as “boy stuffing” and “man stuffing.” When she asked which he’d like, Nick hesitated, then said, “Boy stuffing.” This raucous crowd didn’t seem judgy, and he’d be damned if he was eating giblets if he could get out of it. She handed him the bowl over the head of her little girl, seated next to her. Or somebody’s little girl. Nick had kept the couples straight but had gotten confused when it came to the kids.
They all tucked into the food with determination, and the conversation died off. Nick managed to fork in some of everything except the giblet-laced stuffing. “This is wonderful,” he said several times, and Vanessa beamed. When the little superhero was done with his food, he ran his finger around in the leftover gravy. His mother opened her mouth, but Nick leaned over and said, “Hard to keep a grip on your stick if you have gravy on your fingers.”
The little boy processed that, then nodded soberly. “Thanks for the tip.”
“You bet,” Nick said, unable to suppress a smile. This clattering, laughing, butter-passing crowd all crammed around one giant table was exactly what he wanted life to be. What it should be but wasn’t really. This was the facade that covered a world where planes slammed out of the sky, and tables had an empty chair.
He didn’t realize his face had gone sober until Vickie Cowling said gently, “I’m glad you could join us today, Nick. I’m sorry your parents missed out on seeing you, though.”
“My mom’s sisters are coming over, and my dad’s brother will be there. I didn’t want to travel.”
“Well, it’s our gain,” she said warmly. “Refill his wineglass,” she ordered vaguely, and one of Vanessa’s sisters obeyed.
“Thought travel would tire you out too much?” Devin said. Nick nodded. Devin was great—terrific player, nice guy—but he kept an eye on things. Filing information away. Nick didn’t need him knowing how often he sat in his chair and stared out the balcony window until it was time to do the next hockey thing—practice or lift weights. How hours could go by. How hard it was just to get up and move.
It was getting easier. Alyssa had gotten rid of that chair, for one thing, and the new ones faced the sofa.
“A B C,” the little superhero burped.
“Greyson!” three people said at the same time.
“I don’t remember the rest of the alphabet.”
“Try to burp the NHL teams,” Nick helpfully suggested, sipping the wine Vickie Cowling had ordered up.
“There are more teams than letters,” Greyson’s father said, as if Nick’s idea was not, in fact, helpful.
Greyson belched out a couple of team names, and Vanessa shot Nick a dirty look that she couldn’t quite pull off because she was also laughing.
“Did Alyssa get your job done?” Vanessa said as people began to filter into the living room and the family room off the kitchen.
“Yeah. Looks real good.”
“I’m glad. I was afraid somebody else might have to finish it.”
“How come?” Nick said.
“Well, because she got fired.” She sounded surprised that he didn’t already know.
He stared at her.
“It was a few weeks ago,” she explained. “She called me because the agency owner accused her of unethical behavior, and she was afraid I’d hear about it through the grapevine. She wanted me to know it wasn’t some financial impropriety or something. She was really embarrassed.”
“She got fired?” His mind raced. Was that why she’d been standoffish at the end of the walk-through? Had she been afraid she was going to get fired? “Wait. It didn’t have anything to do with a commercial, did it?” What if she’d told Stacey he’d refused, that he said he was getting an attorney. Surely Stacey wouldn’t have been mad enough about that to fire her. It wasn’t Alyssa’s fault he didn’t want his place on TV.
“No, a client sent flowers with something inappropriate in the card. Stacey opened it.”
A chill settled over Nick. “When was this?”
“She called me around Halloween. I think she’d been seeing the client, and Stacey didn’t like it, which is ridiculous. I don’t see anything wrong with that.”
“She finished my apartment after that,” he mumbled, thinking through the timeline, wondering if anyone else could possibly have sent flowers to her office. No, it had to have been his flowers that caused the problem.
Vanessa put a pile of silverware in the sink. “It’s a shame. She really wanted to be a decorator—and she was good at it.”
Nick thought about the pile of papers and sketchbooks on Alyssa’s table when he’d gone over after the nurses’ Halloween party. She’d been designing a sign for her own agency, but when he’d asked, she’d said she wasn’t opening a shop right then. More thinking about it for the future. What had the card with his flowers said? Thanks for last night, but we shouldn’t do this again. Something like that.
The reason they shouldn’t have done it again was because of his own guilt about living—but he hadn’t said that. Anyone who would have read the card would have assumed he’d meant “We need to keep things professional.”
As if she’d done something wrong.
He’dgotten her fired.
But after that, she still finished his apartment. She still slept with him a second time. And she’d said nothing about being out of a job.
He reached back for his wineglass on the table and emptied it. “Did she say anything about what she’s going to do?”
Vanessa shrugged. “She’s back to party planning now. It’s what she used to do. Opening her own agency would be hard. Not enough people know her.”
“Huh.” He thought about the designs scattered on the table at her apartment—signs for an agency of her own. One that no one could take away from her.
“Nick!” one of Vanessa’s sisters called. “You’re needed at the air hockey table.”
“I should be going,” Nick said. “I’ve imposed on family time enough as it is.”
Someone clucked in the other room. Nick sighed, lowered his head, and strode toward the family room. He was not putting up with clucking. Five games and nine pony rides later, he went to the bathroom, and on the way back was waylaid by a preschooler with a trembling lip. “I can’t find You Nork,” she whispered.
“Is that a problem?” he asked. She nodded soberly, eyes brimming with tears. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s see what we’ve got.” And that’s how he came to crawl around on the floor of a guest bedroom, looking for a puzzle piece, and then he had to reposition Kentucky from its temporary spot on the West Coast. Once he’d reestablished the traditional state boundaries, he grabbed his jacket and made for the door.
Vickie Cowling called from the nook off the kitchen. “Come sit with me. I want to talk to you for a minute.”
“I really should go,” Nick said.
“That’s a bunch of hooey.” Vickie walked to the kitchen island, grabbed his arm, and shoved him gently toward the seating area. “You save our spots. I’ll just be a minute. Say, what do you drink?”
“The bitter tears of goalies.”
Devin snorted.
“I think you drank too much to drive yourself,” Vickie said. Nick opened his mouth and then shut it. Had he? “Just go sit on the sofa. Devin can drive you home in a few minutes.” In the kitchen Devin shrugged at him, so Nick went and sat on the sofa, unsure what else to do.
A moment later Vickie walked into the family room, holding a bottle of vodka and two shot glasses, and shooed everyone else to the front of the house.
“Join me?” she asked, setting the bottle down with a clunk.
“Um, sure,” Nick said. “I really didn’t drink too much.”
“I know it, sweetie.” They drank and Vickie poured them both a second shot. Nick raised an eyebrow but tossed the second drink back. Vickie coughed, her eyes streaming, and Nick jumped up and ran to the kitchen for a towel and a glass of water. Vickie wiped her mouth, then dabbed her eyes, and finally in a hoarse voice said, “Thank you.”
“You using your sexy voice on me?” Nick said. “I don’t want to get in trouble with your husband.” That made her laugh and she coughed again.
“It just went down the wrong way,” she said. “Let’s try again.” Nick was sitting beside her now, and she poured him a third shot and gave herself water.
“I don’t drink very much,” he said, and tossed it back. The burn was warm and good. “A guy who’s lost as much as I have should be careful.”
“That’s good advice,” Vickie said. “What have you lost?”
“My best friends. Five of them. They died in a plane crash last year.”
She nodded. Clearly she already knew. He’d gotten good at telling when someone didn’t know, but he seldom ran into anyone who didn’t. “You doing okay?” she asked.
He gave a small snort. “No. I am really messed up.”
She sat back in her seat. “Tell me about it.”
He shrugged. “Everything I do is something they don’t get to. But also, I have no choice but to eat and pee and score goals. So what am I supposed to do?” Vickie nodded sympathetically. “I mean, I had pirate sex with my decorator while the gerbil watched, and that seems like crossing a line.” He was vaguely aware that the vodka seemed to be talking on its own.
“I see.” Vickie refilled her shot glass with vodka this time.
“I did everything the other guys did—know we were going to die, fall out of the sky, crash, get hurt. I went through every damn thing they did except just for the heart stopping part. And I did rehab and they didn’t have to. And now I’m pretty sure I’m going to feel crushingly guilty every time I have swashbuckling sex. Or, you know, regular sex.”
Vickie tossed back her drink and coughed. “I hope you don’t,” she said, patting his leg.
“Actions have consequences, and you don’t know what they’ll be. You don’t get to choose. I changed into a blue shirt—Sammy died. I slept with a woman I really like, someone I feel like myself with, and I got her fired. And I didn’t even know it! I feel like a giant fucking bull in a tiny fucking china shop. I destroy something every time I move.” Through the vodka haze he was aware that that was a lot of swearing. “What do you do again?” he said thickly. “For a living?”
“I’m a kindergarten teacher,” Vickie said.
“Oh, fuck, I’m sorry about the swearing.”
“That’s okay, honey.” She patted his knee reassuringly.
“What am I supposed to do?” he said miserably.
“What would they do? If they’d been the ones to survive?”
“Eh.” He gestured dismissively. “Any one of them would have been better at this than me.”
“At surviving?”
“Yeah.” He stuck his glass out and Vickie poured. Nick knocked it back. How many was this? “I am really bad at this surviving business. Like fifth line bad.”
She patted his hand. “Seems to me you’re doing okay at it.”
“I have big seashells,” he said. Vickie tilted her head in confusion, and he realized vaguely that could sound dirty. He clarified, “I have shells on my bookcase again.” He wiped his nose on his knuckle and made a strangled choking sound. “I really, really miss Sammy.”
“There we go,” Vickie said softly.