2. Prologue - Chase
Prologue - Chase
April - 13 months later
I’ve been preparing for this moment for months.
Months of knowing Mom was going to die and there was nothing I could do about it. Nothing anyone could do.
It still doesn’t seem real.
But here I am, standing in the same place I did less than two weeks ago with a thirteen-year-old clinging to each hand and a four-week-old strapped to my chest.
Thankfully, Candace is asleep and, if I’m lucky, she’ll stay that way for the rest of the service.
Cass and Stell are wide awake though. Well aware of what’s happening. Both standing with matching poses of stiff spine, chin up, lips pressed tight in a thin line, and tear-filled eyes that refuse to leak.
I knew we were going to be burying Mom—my gaze darts to the fresh grave beside hers—but I never expected to bury both my parents before I turned twenty-one.
Didn’t expect to become guardian to my three younger sisters either.
Especially with Candace only a few weeks old.
I still don’t know how I got here. Standing beside Dad’s ten-day old grave while they lower Mom into the one next to him.
Two weeks.
That’s all it’s taken to turn my life upside down, inside out, and sideways.
A few months ago, I was a carefree twenty-year-old, living my best college life, being scouted by top NHL teams.
Now I’m a single parent of three.
Over the last few weeks, a few well-meaning people have suggested I let my sisters go into the system so I can get back to my life.
Fuck, in the days after Dad was killed, even Mom tried to convince me letting Candace be adopted was the best option for all of us.
What kind of option is destroying our whole family in a matter of weeks?
Not. Happening.
We’re a family and we’ll stay a family. I refuse to give up any of them.
I might be scared right down to my fucking bones, freaking out more times than not every single day, but the only way I’m letting go of any of my sisters is if I’m in the ground next to Mom and Dad.
I’m the only family they have left—the three of them all I have left.
We belong together.
Whatever it takes, I’m keeping them with me. Raising them the best I can.
And it’s not like I’m some college dropout and we’re hurting for money.
Dad had several life insurance policies in place, and the family’s successful chain of sporting and outdoor equipment stores is thriving. Bringing in a good profit as well as a wage if I want to manage the store closest to our mortgage-free family home.
I haven’t decided what to do there.
If I don’t work, I can concentrate on raising the girls. Take my time getting used to this new role in their lives—in mine.
What I can’t do is go back to college.
Play professional hockey.
Those dreams may as well be in the ground with my parents.
Cass and Stell squeeze my hands simultaneously, pulling me from my thoughts.
The priest, or whatever he is—I can’t even remember the guy’s name at this point, never mind his title—moves toward us, a sympathetic, pity-tinged look on his face that tightens every cell in my body.
It takes everything in me to stand still, let him come.
I want to run.
Run fast and far and not look back.
Pretend the reality in front of me—both my parents in the ground—isn’t happening.
Except I can’t do that.
I’ve got three little girls relying on me.
I can’t let them down.
I won’t let them down.
Whatever it takes, I’ll make sure my sisters have the lives my parents would have given them if they were still alive.