Chapter 13
JANUARY
The call came on a Tuesday morning while I was making my father's oatmeal.
"Red. It's Andy." Andy Allemen, my agent, the guy who'd signed me out of juniors when nobody else would take a flier on an undersized center with a bad hip and no connections. He'd believed in me when believing didn't make financial sense. "You sitting down?"
"I'm making oatmeal."
"Sit down anyway." His voice was tight, holding something back. "I just got off the phone with Utah. The Hive."
I turned off the burner. The oatmeal kept bubbling for another second before it got the message.
"They lost Marchetti last night. Bad hit, he's on IR for at least eight weeks. They need a second-line center who can step in fast, play smart, fill a gap." Andy paused. "They want you, Red. Two-way contract with a guaranteed call-up. They've had scouts at three of your games this season."
The kitchen went quiet except for the tick of the cooling burner and the hum of the fridge.
"They know about the hip," Andy continued. "They don't care. They like your speed, your hockey IQ, the way you create space for your linemates." Another pause. "Red? You still there?"
"Yeah, I'm here."
"They want an answer by Friday. I know that's fast, but these injury call-ups move quick. I can buy you a couple of extra days if you need them, but—"
"I don't need extra days."
"Okay." I could hear him smiling through the phone. "Okay, Red. Let's talk terms."
By the end of the call, my hand was shaking so badly I had to set the phone down on the counter. I stared at the black screen, at my reflection in the glass.
My father shuffled into the kitchen in his bathrobe, his white hair sticking up on one side the way it always did in the mornings. He stopped in the doorway and sniffed the air.
"Something burning?" He looked at me and hesitated. His face went through that thing it did sometimes, searching for a file that wasn't where he'd left it. Then he smiled. "Oh. Hello. I'm Bob."
He held out his hand.
I shook it. "Robert," I said. "Nice to meet you."
"Robert." He tested the name and nodded like it meant something. "That's a good name. Strong."
I scraped the burnt layer off the bottom of the pot and served him what was left. The TV was on in the living room, some game show on mute.
I didn't tell him about the call. He wouldn't remember anyway.
I sat across from him and pushed a spoon through cold coffee while he worked through his oatmeal one slow bite at a time
Derek came over that night after his shift. He worked construction, same company for eight years now, and he still showed up smelling like sawdust and sweat even after he'd showered. Some things just got into your skin and stayed there.
The TV was still on, the same game show from this morning. Dad had fallen asleep in front of it, his chin on his chest, and the blue light flickered across his face. He didn't stir.
Derek stood in the doorway with two beers in his hands. He was grinning now, that wide Derek grin that made him look twelve years old, like we were back in Columbus and he'd just found out I'd made the travel team. "NHL, Red. My little brother got called up to the fucking NHL."
"It's a two-way contract. I might get sent back down."
"But you might not." He pointed the bottle at me. "You might stay up. You might be playing against guys we used to watch on TV."
"What about Dad?"
Derek's grin faded. He set his beer down on the counter.
"You know what about Dad."
"I can't just leave him."
"You're not leaving him. You're letting someone else help." He leaned forward. "Sunrise has a bed open."
"You called?"
"I call every month, Red. I've been calling for a year." He held up a hand before I could argue. "Look. I'm not trying to win an argument here. I'm trying to get you to take this thing."
"And Dad?"
"Dad would kick your ass if he knew you were even hesitating." Derek picked up his beer again, turning it in his hands. "You remember what he used to say? When we were kids and you'd come home crying because some coach told you that you were too small?"
I remembered.
"He'd say, 'Junior, the only thing smaller than your body is the imagination of the people who can't see what you're gonna do with it.
'" Derek's voice had gone rough around the edges.
"He believed in you before anyone else did.
And if he was sitting here right now, if he was having a good day, he'd tell you to stop being a stubborn little shit and go play hockey. "
"That's not fair."
"None of this is fair." He wasn't angry, just tired in the same way I was tired. "But fair doesn't matter. What matters is that you've got a shot, and you're going to take it, and I'm going to handle things here. That's what's going to happen."
"Derek."
"Sarah and I already talked about it. Sunrise is fifteen minutes from our house. I'll be there every day. Every single day, Red. And when he has good days, I'll call you, and you can talk to him, and he'll tell you he's proud of you. And when he has bad days, I'll be there for those too."
Dad stirred in his chair. His eyes opened, and he looked around the room for a long moment before turning to Derek.
"Is it late?" he asked.
"Getting there, Dad."
"I must have dozed off." He rubbed his eyes, then looked at me. His face did that searching thing again, like he was trying to place me. "You're still here."
Derek and I looked at each other.
"Yeah," I said. "I'm still here."
Dad nodded slowly, then smiled that same polite smile he'd given me this morning.
"Well," he said. "That's nice. Having company."
I called Andy on Thursday and said yes.
The paperwork came by email, and I signed it at the kitchen table while Dad napped in the other room. I signed the Hive contract first, then the Sunrise Memory Care admission forms, then the Power of Attorney documents Derek had been asking me to sign for months.
My hand was steady because I made it steady. Hockey had taught me that much.
I sat at the table for a while after I finished, listening to Dad's breathing, to the tick of the kitchen clock, to the neighbor's dog barking at something that probably wasn't there. The stack of papers sat in front of me, neat and final.
Moving my father into Sunrise took three hours.
The facility smelled like floor cleaner and something floral underneath, air freshener trying to cover what it couldn't fix.
Dad's new room was on the second floor, a single with a window overlooking a courtyard where residents could sit in good weather.
The bed was narrow, and the closet was small.
Derek handled the paperwork at the front desk while I unpacked Dad's suitcase.
His flannel shirts went in the top drawer.
His slippers went by the bed. The photo of Mom from before she left, the one he'd kept on his nightstand for thirty years even though she'd been gone for twenty of them, went on the windowsill where he could see it.
I didn't know why he'd kept it. Some questions you don't ask your father.
"Where are we?"
I turned around. Dad was standing in the doorway with a nurse beside him, his hands clasped in front of him like a kid on his first day of school. He had that look on his face, the one that meant he was trying to hold on to something that kept slipping.
"This is your new room, Dad."
"My room." He looked around, taking it in. His eyes landed on the photo of Mom, and something moved across his face before it was gone again. "It's nice."
"Yeah. It's nice."
"Do I live here now?"
"Yeah, Dad. You live here now."
He nodded slowly. Then his face went blank, and he looked at me again, and whatever thread he'd been holding dissolved like sugar in water.
"Where are we?" he asked.
I told him again. I told him three more times over the next hour, and each time he nodded like it made sense, and each time the understanding dissolved before it could set.
The fourth time he asked, I was sitting on the edge of his new bed while he stood by the window looking at the courtyard. An old woman was down there in a wheelchair, a blanket over her knees, staring at nothing. She didn't move the whole time I watched her.
"This is Sunrise, Dad. It's a place where people can help take care of you."
"Oh." He turned to look at me. "And you'll visit?"
"Every chance I get."
He smiled at me, that same polite smile. "That's kind of you." He paused, his eyes searching my face like he was looking for something he'd misplaced. "Robert, was it?"
I nodded. My voice wouldn't come.
Derek found me in the hallway ten minutes later, leaning against the wall outside Dad's room with my eyes closed. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead.
"Hey." His hand landed on my shoulder. "You okay?"
"He asked me four times where he was. Four times in an hour. What happens when it's forty times? What happens when he forgets how to eat, how to walk?"
"Then he'll have people who know how to help him." Derek's grip tightened. "And he'll have us."
Through the door, the TV the nurse had turned on was playing some game show with applause and bells.
I hoped he was right.
The Ristras threw me a party at Boxcar that weekend.
The back room was packed and too warm, bodies pressed together and the smell of beer and hot wings filling the space. Lucero stood on a chair to give a toast, wobbled, grabbed Martinez's shoulder for balance, and his voice cracked on the word "brother."
"To Piper," someone shouted, and glasses went up, and the sound of them clinking together was like something breaking and coming together at the same time.
The TV above the bar was playing highlights from some game I didn't recognize. Nobody was watching it. They were watching me instead, waiting for me to be happy about the thing I was supposed to be happy about.
I smiled and raised my glass, and said the right words in the right order.
Martinez grabbed me in a headlock, his breath smelling like tequila, his grip too tight. I let him hold on anyway. The guys kept refilling my drink even though I wasn't drinking it, and the ice melted and the whiskey got watery, and I held the glass because it gave my hands something to do.
After an hour, the crowd thinned out. Some guys had early mornings, and others had wives who texted with increasing urgency. I nursed my warm beer and watched the room empty, and when Santos finally headed out with a hug and a promise to text, I slipped out the back door to the alley.
The cold hit like a wall. I leaned against the brick and closed my eyes, breathing in the smell of garbage and cigarette smoke, and winter. The bass from inside was muffled now, just a thump I could feel in my chest.
The door opened behind me.
"Thought I'd find you out here." Sarah stepped into the alley, pulling her coat tighter. "Derek said you do this. Disappear from your own parties."
"Not disappearing. Just taking a break."
"Sure." She didn't sound convinced, but she leaned against the wall beside me anyway, close enough that her shoulder almost touched mine. We stood there for a while, not talking, our breath making clouds in the cold air.
"I'm glad you're going," she said finally. "I know that sounds weird. But I am."
"Thanks, Sarah."
"Derek worries about you. More than he says." She was quiet for a second. "I do too, if that matters."
I didn't know what to say to that, so I didn't say anything.
She was quiet for a moment, her hands shoved in her coat pockets. Then she pulled out her phone and looked at it like she was deciding something.
"Can I show you something stupid?" she asked. "I've been sitting on it for weeks because the timing was never right, but you're leaving tomorrow and I'm going to burst if I don't tell someone."
"Sure."
She turned the screen toward me.
The photo showed Joel in a black suit, his hand on another man's back. They were both smiling for the cameras. The man was taller than him, broader, the kind of face that looked like it belonged on a movie poster.
"Joel Coffey is dating Milo Hayes," Sarah said. "The pop star. They were at some charity thing in Berlin last week."
I looked at the photo and kept my face neutral.
Two months. Two months since Joel climbed into my truck and kissed me like he was trying to take something apart. Two months since he'd said my name in that voice, since he'd told me he was moving to Colorado Springs and watched my face while I tried not to let anything show.
I'd been telling myself I was over it.
"I've been dying to talk about this," Sarah continued. "He's been so private for years, and now suddenly he's at public events with this guy? I think it's serious."
"Yeah." My voice came out flat. "Looks serious."
The silence stretched out between us. Inside, someone had changed the music to something slower.
"I met him," I said. "At the rink. He was training there for a while."
"Oh." She processed that. "That must have been cool."
"Yeah."
She waited, but I gave her nothing else.
"Okay," she said finally. She reached out and squeezed my arm through my jacket. "Come back inside when you're ready. Armijo's doing karaoke and it's going to be terrible."
She went back in, and the door swung shut behind her.
I stood in the alley for a long time, my back against the cold brick.
Joel Coffey was with someone who got to stand next to him at charity events, public and proud, while I hid behind a bar in New Mexico with a secret I couldn't say out loud. He was with someone who got to touch him like it was nothing, like it was easy.
My phone was in my pocket. His number was still in it, unused. I'd looked at it a hundred times in the past two months, typed out messages I never sent, deleted them, started over, deleted those too.
I pulled it out. Opened my contacts. Scrolled to the number with no name.
My thumb hovered over the delete button.
The door opened again, and Santos stuck his head out. "Yo, Piper. Armijo's about to sing Journey. You gotta see this."
I put the phone away.
"Coming," I said.
I went back inside and stood in the back while Armijo butchered "Don't Stop Believin'" and everyone sang along anyway.
I let the guys buy me one more shot I didn't drink.
I hugged everyone goodbye and promised to text and said all the things you say when your life is changing and everyone is happy for you.
The number stayed in my phone.