Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Rowan
“What day is it?” Arthur asks as I approach him at the nursing home.
He’s sitting in a chair in the common area, just looking out the window. With no family visiting, I sometimes wonder how much time he spends just sitting like this, with nothing to do.
I set down the cup of coffee and donut in a brown paper bag I brought him. “Wednesday. I couldn’t come yesterday because I was dog tired after my road trip.”
He nods and glances at the bag. “What’s that?”
“I brought you one of those maple bacon donuts you like.”
His heavy white brows shoot up. “That beats the hell out of the watery oatmeal I usually have. Thank you.”
I have to be at practice at nine this morning, so I’m visiting Arthur at seven. Practice is a long one today, and then I have a Zoom meeting with my agent and Duke has a vet appointment.
“Did he get you anything?” Arthur asks Duke.
I set Duke’s favorite bed down next to my chair and he slowly settles into it. With his arthritis, it hurts him to lie on a floor with no cushioning.
“He had scrambled eggs at home,” I assure Arthur.
“So what’s new?”
Cam and I haven’t spoken since I left her house last week. I had a busy road trip and Dom told me she came down with Tate’s flu. We texted a few times, but she was down for three full days and behind on everything when she felt better.
So things between us aren’t “new,” but it’s still the only thing that’s been on my mind since that night.
“We won three out of four games on our road trip. And today’s the anniversary of my dad’s death. Always kind of a shitty day for me.”
Arthur takes a tentative sip of his coffee and nods with satisfaction. “I’d forgotten what good coffee tastes like.” He sets the cup back on the table. “How long has it been since your dad died?”
I’ll never forget the night before it happened. He put his hand on my shoulder and told me how much he loved me and that I should keep working hard in hockey and in school. That my mom would be proud of me and want me to be happy. I had no idea why he was saying those things, but it was because he had a plan in place.
“Thirteen years.”
“It’s been more than fifty years since my late wife and I lost our baby girl.”
I meet his eyes, surprised. “I didn’t know about that. I’m sorry, Arthur.”
He nods. “She passed away in her sleep at one week old. My wife...I think she knew. When we woke up that morning and Annette hadn’t cried all night long, Mabel... she flew out of our bed.”
“Was she older or younger than your two sons?”
“Older. She was our first. When Mabel got pregnant both times after Annette, she prayed for boys because she didn’t want to feel like she was having another girl to replace the one we’d lost.”
I think about my teammate’s young kids, about Tate and Sam. I can’t imagine what their parents would go through if they lost them.
“Having our sons helped dull that pain, but we never forgot Annette.”
When I first met Arthur, I saw him as an old guy. I never thought about him once being my age. My teammates who volunteered with me at the nursing home would say they didn’t know what to talk to the residents about. I felt that way, too. But over time, I’ve realized that I can talk to Arthur about the same things I’d talk to anyone my age about.
“I’m still carrying around some baggage over my dad’s death.” I look out the window at the barren brown trees and gray sky. “I guess it’s one thing when someone dies from a disease, but it’s different when they choose to go.”
“That’s a hell of a thing,” Arthur murmurs.
“Yeah.” I take a deep breath in and let it out. “Anyway, you want to play some chess?”
“You’re a sucker for punishment if I ever saw one.” Arthur shakes his head. “Let me eat my donut first.”
When I get to practice later, Dom’s sitting on one of the locker room’s long wood benches, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.
“Hey,” I say to him. “What’s up?”
His forehead crinkles with worry. “Tess is stressed, which means I’m stressed.”
I sit down next to him. “About what?”
“She took over for Cam with the boys when Cam was sick, so now she’s helping Sam build a castle for an end-of-the-semester project, and you know Tess—it has to be the biggest, best castle any adult has ever done ninety percent of the work on. She’s been to every craft store in the city looking for some sort of crackle paint.” He pauses to take a breath. “Tate told her Sam’s been down because he can’t do the Cub Scout winter campout because it’s a father-son thing. So Tess came to me, and I said, of course I’d go. It’s during All-Star weekend, so what are the chances I’d actually be able to make it during the season? But I can. Only Hannah’s big dance thing in Florida is the same weekend. I can’t be in two places at once.”
He gives me a frazzled look.
“Hannah still gets to do the dance competition whether you go or not,” I say. “And Sam will have to miss the campout if you don’t go. That seems like an easy choice.”
“I know, but...I want to be a good stepdad. And this is a big deal for Hannah. She was excited about the whole family going. She actually said that when Tess told her it was All-Star weekend and I could go, too. The whole family .”
My best friend has grown more than I thought he was capable of since meeting Tess and her kids. He’s still got a teenage boy sense of humor, but he manned up so he could be good for them.
I envy him. He gets to be a father figure for Tess’s kids and Cam’s. And he knows what a big deal that is.
“Hey, you got tape?” Ben asks us.
I get into my locker and hand him some. “That’s my emergency stash, though. Bring it back.”
He nods and takes the tape and his stick into the training room.
I lean against my locker, looking down at Dom. He looks like he has the weight of the world on his shoulders.
“Also, Cam’s stalker is being released in two days and Tess is a hot mess over that. She’s begging Cam to move back in with us.”
“I’m pretty worried about it, too,” I admit. “Is Cam willing to move back in?”
Dom shakes his head. “She’s all about taking care of herself and her kids on her own, but we can tell she’s freaked out. This guy’s no joke. He had a gun on him when I caught him.”
“I’ll see if she’ll let me sleep on her couch when we’re home.”
He shakes his head. “You can try. She won’t let me hire the security guys I hired before. She said she’s not living every day in fear.”
That’s not gonna work. I won’t be able to sleep at night wondering if that asshole is after her again. He might hold a grudge over going to prison. For all we know, his number one to-do could be to come back and hurt her or her kids.
“I’ll talk to her,” I say.
He stands up and starts changing clothes. “Are you ever gonna tell me what happened with you guys last week? All she’ll tell Tess is that she’s not dating El Cheapo anymore and she saw you on the night they went out for coffee.”
I’m relieved to hear that. Every time I’ve seen Dom since that night, I’ve wondered if he knows what I said to Cam about my parents. Usually Tess and Cam tell each other everything. It means a lot that she kept that conversation between the two of us.
I get ready for practice, deep in thought, as I skate onto the ice. My conversation with Dom is still running through my mind as we do shooting drills.
When I was a kid, I was in Cub Scouts. It was only for two years because I got more serious about hockey after that and it took up all my time. It was also a big financial commitment for my parents, so they told me I couldn’t add any other sports or activities to the mix.
That was fine with me. I loved hockey and all I wanted to do was spend as much time getting better at it as I could. It’s only when I looked back as an adult that I realized how much the two years of Cub Scouts meant to me.
My dad was with me at every meeting, every campout, every project we did to earn badges. I still remember the pride I felt when he cooked bacon and eggs for everyone one morning over the campfire.
I didn’t realize as a kid how important those memories would become to me. That one day, far sooner than I ever would have thought, memories would be all I had of my parents.
“Hey,” I say to Dom as we’re finishing up practice. “What if I do the campout with Sam and you go to Hannah’s dance thing?”
He lowers his brows, taken aback. “Are you serious, dude?”
“Yeah. I mean, I’ll have to make sure it’s okay with Cam first. But Sam knows me. We’ve always gotten along great.”
“That would be...great. Yeah, that would be really good if we can make that happen.”
I nod. “I’ll talk to Cam.”
As soon as the idea came to me during practice, I knew I had to try. It’ll be hard for me to go on a scouting trip with Sam because of the memories I have of doing them with my dad, but it’ll be more than that, too. I’ll get to see Sam being part of something he deserves to be part of. There’ll be new memories made.
As long as I can convince Cam it’s a good idea, that is. Part of me wants to call her this second and another part of me isn’t ready to talk to her yet. I haven’t forgotten the vulnerability of being stripped bare emotionally in front of her.
I wanted to be a man she thought was sexy and fun. Nice is good, too. But I showed her the other night that I’m a fucked-up mess inside. We can’t go back to the way it was.
Tomorrow, I have to face her. It’s Thanksgiving, and we’re both going over to Dom and Tess’s house. I just hope she still looks at me the same way she did before.