Chapter 3
ANNE
PRESENT DAY
"Mommy, I scored three goals at practice yesterday!"
Finn burst through my bedroom door before my alarm had a chance to go off — wearing his fire truck pajamas and carrying his mini hockey stick like a sword.
I cracked one eye open. "Three goals? That's amazing, buddy."
"Coach said I have a really good shot." He climbed onto my bed, all elbows and knees and boundless five-year-old energy. "He said if I keep practicing, I could be really really good."
"That's great, baby." I pulled him into a hug, breathing in his little-boy smell of sleep and the strawberry shampoo I had used on his hair last night. "How are you this awake already?"
"I'm excited! Today's show-and-tell and I get to bring my new hockey stick!" He wriggled out of my arms and held it up — the one his grandmother had bought him for his birthday last month. "I'm going to tell everyone I'm a Mite and I'm going to be a famous hockey player. Number seventeen."
"Number seventeen?"
"Like Marcus's dad." He said it with the complete authority of someone for whom this was obvious. "Marcus's dad plays hockey and his number is seventeen and it's the BEST number. So that's my number now."
I smiled despite myself. Two months ago Finn's entire life plan had been to become a fireman. He'd told everyone — his teachers, his friends, the cashier at the grocery store — that his daddy was a fireman and that he was going to be a fireman too when he grew up.
Then Marcus Chen had brought his dad to show-and-tell.
Marcus's dad played for the Chicago Storm's minor league affiliate. He'd shown up in full gear, let the kids hold his helmet, and demonstrated a slap shot in the school gymnasium that had apparently been the single greatest moment of Finn's kindergarten life.
Since then: hockey. Nothing but hockey. The fireman dream retired overnight without ceremony.
"Number seventeen is a great number," I said.
"I know." He nodded seriously. "Can we get a jersey with seventeen on it?"
"Maybe for your birthday."
"That's forever away."
"It's four months away."
"That's forever." He slid off the bed, already losing interest, hockey stick trailing behind him. "Is Grandma making breakfast?"
"Grandma's asleep. It's very early."
"Can I wake her up?"
"Absolutely not."
He considered this. "What if I'm really quiet?"
"Finn."
"Okay okay." He padded toward the door, then stopped and turned back with the particular solemnity of a child who has just remembered something important. "Mommy?"
"Yeah, buddy?"
"Do you think my daddy would like hockey?"
My chest tightened. There it was — the question that came in different forms but always landed in the same place.
"I think he would," I said carefully.
Finn thought about this. "Maybe when I meet him I can teach him. Even if he doesn't know how, I can show him stuff because Coach says I'm a natural."
"That sounds like a great plan."
He nodded, satisfied, and disappeared down the hall.
I lay there staring at the ceiling.
Do you think my daddy would like hockey?
God, if only he knew.
I had told Finn what you told a five-year-old when the truth was too complicated: that his daddy had to go far away before he was born, that it was grown-up stuff he'd understand when he was older, that his daddy loved him even though he'd never met him.
Finn had accepted this with the straightforward pragmatism of a child who had never known anything different — the same way he'd accepted that some kids had two parents at pickup and some kids had one, that some families looked one way and some families looked another.
He just knew he loved hockey. That it felt right in his hands and his feet. That number seventeen was the best number because Marcus's dad wore it.
And that someday he was going to meet his daddy and teach him things.
I got out of bed before I could cry about it.
By the time I got to the kitchen, my mom had materialized — apparently Finn had decided being quiet was a flexible concept — and was making coffee while Finn sat at the table drawing.
"Morning," I said, kissing her cheek.
"Morning, sweetheart." She handed me a cup. "He woke me up to tell me about number seventeen."
"I heard." I peered over Finn's shoulder at his drawing — a stick figure in a jersey with a large 17 on it, holding what appeared to be a hockey stick. "Who's that?"
"Me," Finn said. "When I'm a hockey player."
"Very handsome."
"I know." He added spiky hair to the stick figure with great concentration. "Can I put it on the fridge?"
"Of course."
He slid off his chair and carefully affixed the drawing to the fridge with a magnet, then stood back to examine it with an artist's critical eye.
"It needs something," he decided.
"What?"
"A crowd." He climbed back up and reached for his crayons. "Because when I play everyone will come watch."
My mom caught my eye across the kitchen and pressed her lips together against a smile.
I refilled my coffee and leaned against the counter beside her. "He's going to be devastated when he realizes professional hockey players don't all become famous."
"He's five," she said quietly. "Let him be famous for a while."
She was right. I knew she was right.
"Mommy, how do you spell 'crowd'?" Finn called from the table.
"C-R-O-W-D."
He repeated each letter aloud as he wrote, his tongue poking out in concentration — a habit he'd had since he first picked up a crayon. A habit that looked achingly familiar in a way I had spent five years not letting myself examine too closely.
"You're going to have to tell him eventually," my mom said, her voice low. "Not the full story. But something more than he has."
"I know."
"He's started asking his teacher questions. Mrs. Kowalski mentioned it at pickup last week — he asked her why some kids' dads come to school events and his doesn't."
That hit harder than I expected. I set down my coffee.
"What did she say?"
"She said she told him that families were all different and all of them were special." My mom paused. "He told her his daddy was far away but that he'd come when he could."
I closed my eyes for a second.
He'd constructed his own explanation. Filled in the gaps I'd left with something that made sense to him. Something that kept the door open.
*He'd come when he could.*
"Anne." My mom's hand on my arm, gentle. "I'm not criticizing. I never have. But that little boy?—"
"I know." My voice came out rougher than I intended. "I know, Mom."
Finn looked up from his drawing. "Know what?"
"That breakfast is ready," my mom said smoothly, and went to get the cereal.
Finn accepted this without question and went back to his crowd of stick figures, adding them one by one with careful deliberation, each one turned to face the player in the number seventeen jersey at the center of the page.
I watched him and thought about what I was walking into tomorrow.
Eight weeks in St. Louis.
Working with an NHL player whose name I didn't know yet.
Hockey.
The thing I had spent five years watching transform my son from the outside — something he'd arrived at completely on his own, through a friend, through coincidence, through whatever mysterious inheritance ran in his blood without either of them knowing.
I had avoided hockey clients for years. Too many memories. Too much of Cornell in every rink I walked into.
But this contract was too good to turn down.
And besides — what were the odds?
That afternoon, after three client sessions and a team meeting I barely heard, my boss Patricia slid a contract across the conference table.
St. Louis Blaze. Rotator cuff injury. Eight weeks, premium compensation, weekends free.
The number on the page was enough to cover Finn's hockey fees for a year, plus the car I desperately needed, plus a dent in the college fund I kept meaning to build.
I signed it before I could talk myself out of it.
"They're not releasing the player's name until you accept," Patricia said. "Standard privacy protocol. But I've reviewed the files. This is exactly your specialty."
"I'll be ready tomorrow," I said.
I walked back to my office in a daze.
Hockey.
The sport that had given me Liam and taken him away.
The sport Finn had fallen in love with two months ago because of a man named Marcus's dad.
The sport where some player wore number seventeen and didn't know that a five-year-old in Chicago had claimed that number as his own.
It was just eight weeks.
I was being ridiculous.
That night, after hockey practice and dinner and three stories and two glasses of water, after Finn was finally asleep with his stick propped against the wall and his drawing of the crowd on his nightstand, I called my mom.
"I signed the contract," I told her. "St. Louis. Eight weeks."
"That's wonderful, sweetheart."
"You'll be okay with Finn during the week?"
"We'll be more than okay. You know he and I have our own whole social life that has nothing to do with you."
I laughed despite everything. "I know."
"Are you nervous?"
I looked at the photo of Finn on my phone screen. Asleep, stick in hand, number seventeen drawn in crayon on his nightstand.
"A little," I admitted. "Hockey is—I've been avoiding it. Because of Cornell. Because of everything."
"Liam could be anywhere by now. What are the odds?"
"I know. You're right."
"Stop looking for problems that don't exist yet."
She was right. She was always right.
We hung up and I sat on the couch in the quiet of the apartment, listening to the city outside and thinking about tomorrow.
A new client. A new city. A new chapter.
Eight weeks, then home.
I opened my photos one more time and looked at Finn's face.
My beautiful, hockey-obsessed, number-seventeen-claiming, fireman-turned-hockey-player boy.
The best thing that had ever happened to me.
The secret I had kept for five years.
I put my phone down and went to bed.
Tomorrow I would deal with whatever came next.
What was the worst that could happen?