Chapter Two
Two
Casey was running late. She never would have scheduled a meeting for 8:00 P.M. , and definitely not on the night of parent-teacher conferences—they always ran long, parents rarely respected her conference time limits—but Jake was heading out of town tomorrow on vacation. So this was her last chance to plead her case before he made a final decision about sponsoring new uniforms for the junior hockey team.
Normally it was less than a five-minute drive from the middle school to downtown, but tonight, as all the teachers and parents departed at the same time, the parking lot was a sea of brake lights made blurry by the rain. Even blurrier by the shitty windshield wipers on her old Bronco. Wyatt had been bugging her for months to put new ones on before winter hit; he even ordered her replacement wipers. Since it was difficult physically for her brother to change them out, she said she would do it, but there was always something more pressing to do.
Her fingers drummed a rapid beat against the wheel as the minutes rolled past and she inched along in the bottleneck of vehicles heading for the exit. The Potsdam elementary, middle, and high schools shared a large campus, and all the parking lots funneled onto a couple of small roads. In a genius move the school district had decided to hold conferences at all three schools on the same night.
She pulled out her cell phone, checked for a message from someone at the hospital. Danny had been there for three days now, and they’d promised to call her if he woke up, or there was any change in his condition, but there was nothing. She shot Jake a text: Sorry. Traffic bad. Running late.
Blinking dots appeared while he read the message but then disappeared, presumably while he considered his response. For a moment she feared he would tell her he couldn’t wait. But then he sent his answer: No prob. See you soon.
Her shoulders relaxed a bit, and she pulled off her wool hat, since the truck was finally heating up. She flipped down the visor and sighed at her reflection in the mirror, ran fingers through her hair to try to freshen it up. Her light brown waves did a decent job of hiding the grays that had started creeping in the last few years, but they were there. The rare mascara she’d put on before conferences had faded, and maybe it was the ghoulish, artificial light coming from the dashboard beneath her, but her face had a drawn quality that hinted at its full forty years. Thankfully her attention was called back to the road, and she crawled the Bronco forward to make the right onto Lawrence Avenue.
She was grateful for Jake’s patience but didn’t like imposing on him. It was her own fault. She had dodged previous meetings with him, hoping they could work it out through emails, but his last text said he’d like to talk about it in person. Seeing Jake was always awkward now. That’s what happened when people engage in a brief tipsy-friends-with-benefits thing, and one friend hopes for more so the other calls it off. Lesson learned.
But the clock was ticking on the hockey uniforms. If she didn’t order them soon they wouldn’t get here before the season started. The parents were burdened enough financially by the cost of traveling to games and buying equipment—sticks, skates, practice jerseys, helmets, and pads—for boys who would outgrow it all the following year; most of them simply couldn’t afford to also pay for new uniforms. If Jake wasn’t willing to sponsor them, the kids would be forced to reuse the dull, mismatched ensembles handed down from years gone by. And the Under 14 team was already feeling like the unwanted stepchild of the athletic program after all the coaching changes in the last two years.
To get away from the traffic she veered through quieter side streets, which were lined with older, Colonial-style homes that imparted a cozy traditional feel. But many of the grander homes had been converted to apartments, or taken over by frats and sororities from the two nearby universities—the State University of New York at Potsdam and Clarkson University. As a middle school social studies teacher, Casey covered a local history unit with her sixth-grade students each year, and they learned that the St. Lawrence Valley was known as the hunting ground of the Iroquois until the late 1700s. After the Revolutionary War, with the British occupying land right across the Canadian border, the state legislature decided this dangerous buffer area needed to be settled ASAP, and ten towns were deeded for sale, including Potsdam. For the first hundred years of its existence Potsdam had been known for its supply of natural reddish-pink sandstone, which became famous when it was used in important structures outside the area, like the Parliament buildings up in Ottawa, Canada, and the Cathedral of All Saints in Albany. Add to that a thriving lumber business, and their little town had prospered as a manufacturing center for the first half of the twentieth century.
However, as it became more economical for manufacturing companies to leave small towns for urban centers, effort went into making education a major local industry, and the colleges grew quickly. They provided jobs and gave the chamber of commerce cause to tout Potsdam as an “educational and cultural center.” But since the universities were nonprofit, around 70 percent of the property in town was tax-free, which created shortfalls in local budgets—including education—and placed an extra burden on the residents. And Casey often tired of the eight thousand entitled college kids who bumped the population by almost 50 percent each fall. They took over restaurants, created congestion with their expensive cars, and their drunken escapades often affected local neighbors.
There was no traffic when she made the left onto Market Street. Even on the main drag it was hard to find anywhere open past eight on a weeknight. Downtown was a quarter-mile span of eateries, specialty shops, and municipal buildings. Jake’s office was located in the historic area, where the architecture was classic early 1800s, two- and three-story buildings in varying shades of red brick, with elaborate cornices and vintage sash windows. The west side of the street backed up to the Raquette River, which flowed past town on its way to meet the St. Lawrence up north. Most of the storefronts had been maintained in keeping with the original village style.
She parked in front of the bookstore and looked up to the second story to see a light on in the North Country Property Management office. Jake Renner was a local boy who’d been a couple years ahead of Casey in high school. After attending UMass he married and moved to Ogdensburg to start his business, which had steadily grown to be the largest such business in the largest county by area in New York State. He had listings throughout the region, which was a rural mix of farms, forests, and small towns, extending from the Adirondack Mountains to the Canadian border, and he owned many of the properties himself. He’d moved back to Potsdam a year ago, following an ugly divorce.
She knew the security code to enter the side door that led up to his office; there was a time she’d used it regularly. For many years now Casey had managed the administrative side of the junior hockey program, and Jake was a sponsor. About six months ago, when the indoor ice-skating rink was being renovated, she and Jake had met regularly to evaluate progress and track the budget, usually in the evenings over takeout food and a couple of drinks. Which is how one thing led to another for several weeks.
She’d been officially single for a year and a half by then, and feeling lonely for a long time. Jake was kind, and good-looking in a clean-cut way that was rare in this town: trim build, tidy dark hair, close-shaven face. Since they’d been years apart in school, and he’d been mostly gone for two decades, they shared almost no history, which was less complicated. She figured they were just meeting a need for each other, but then he started talking about going out to dinner, doing something other than eating in his office. He asked her to come to his place, half joking about having sex in a bed instead of fumbling around on a desk. That’s when she ended it. Not just the sex. She claimed too much work, ended their meetings, limited their interaction to emails and texts until the arena reno was completed.
That’s some stone-cold shit, Casey , Wyatt had said. Most days she didn’t mind living with her younger brother. But it did make it hard to keep many secrets from him.
She climbed the stairs to Jake’s office, which took up the second story. Two work areas were spaced out in the open floor plan, including one for his admin assistant, who would have left hours ago. When she turned at the top of the stairs, there he was, sitting at his sleek Scandinavian desk in the center of the room, a tall tripod lamp giving the area a warm glow. He wore a blue button-down that matched his eyes, sleeves rolled up and collar open.
His smile was wide as he stood and walked around the desk to come in for a tight hug. “Casey, it’s so good to see you.” He stepped back but held on to her shoulders. “How are you?”
“I’m good, thanks. Sorry I’m late.” She shook her head. “Parent conferences, I should have known.”
“No worries. Come on in.” He gestured toward his guest chair and moved around the desk to take his own seat. “Since it’s after hours I brought some of the good stuff,” he said, flicking a thumb toward a bottle of tequila on a nearby file cabinet. He appeared to be working on a glass of it already. “Can I offer you some?”
Casey wanted to say yes. It would take the edge off what had been a long day, and a longer week. But she shouldn’t send mixed signals. “No, thanks. Tempting, but I have to grade quizzes when I get home.”
“God, your day is never done, huh?”
She offered a one-shoulder shrug. “Feels that way sometimes.”
He sipped his drink and folded his hands together on the desk. The one they’d had sex on last time she was here. She should have asked to meet him somewhere else.
“I was sorry to hear about Danny,” he said. “How’s he doing?”
“I don’t know. I stopped by the hospital this afternoon, but he was asleep. They’re still evaluating the severity of the stroke.”
He softened his voice. “Is it true you were the one who found him?”
Word spread fast around here. “Yeah. I was bringing him leftovers, and I saw him through the window…” That image materialized in her mind to the exclusion of everything else: big, broad, dependable Danny lying on his side on the kitchen floor, one arm flung behind him and his forehead bleeding profusely from where he hit the edge of the counter on his way down.
“He was damn lucky you came by,” Jake said. “But that had to be tough. I know how much you care about him.”
“Yeah.” She looked away from the concern or compassion or whatever it was in his eyes that was causing the sharp ache in her throat. So far she’d been handling Danny’s stroke well, but that image stopped her short every time. For one moment, when she first saw him lying there in a pool of blood, she thought he was dead. She thought she’d lost him too.
“Have you…” Jake paused and cleared his throat. “Do you think Kyle will come back?”
“I don’t know,” she said with a quick shrug. “I haven’t thought about it.” She hadn’t let herself think about it, and she didn’t want to think about it now. Her eyes landed on the bottle of tequila.
“You sure I can’t pour you a small one?” Jake’s eyebrows lifted in question, or maybe hope.
She almost said yes, but the whole inevitable scenario flashed through her mind: one pour, then a second. Then Jake would make a move and she would give in because she’d been feeling shaky, sort of untethered, since finding Danny three days ago, and losing herself in Jake for a few minutes would help. But only for the few minutes, then she’d have to cut the cord all over again.
“No, thanks,” she said.
“Okay. Well, I guess we’re really here to talk about your second full-time job.”
She gave him a weary nod. Being the manager for the junior hockey team was not supposed to be a full-time job. However, it almost became one when the program was facing so many challenges: erratic coaching, insufficient funding, a yearslong losing record—which meant upset parents and player attrition. Families were frustrated, and the team couldn’t afford to lose any more players.
She sat up a little straighter in her chair. “I know how much money you already donated for the rink renovation, Jake, and I hate to ask for more.”
“I know, I get it—”
“I’m just so afraid of losing more kids. They need this program as much as we need them, but the last two years have been so hard on them.” She kept talking, even though the look on his face said the decision had already been made. “I really think new uniforms would give them such a boost.”
He held up a hand. “I understand.”
“And we have the Krispy Kreme fundraiser coming up in the new year to help offset the cost—”
“Casey.”
She stopped talking and let her shoulders dip in anticipation of the bad news.
“I’ll buy the uniforms.”
It took a moment to sink in. “Seriously?” she asked.
“Yep.”
She felt a smile break across her face. “That’s awesome, Jake.”
“And I put in a call to the apparel company. If you get the order in this week, they’ll be ready in time for the tournament next month.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll submit it tonight.”
He laughed and shook his head. “I have no doubt you will.”
“Wow. I can’t thank you enough.”
“It’s okay. I know how important this is, to you and the team.”
She wasn’t sure what to say next. It was not lost on her that Jake could have given her the good news via a phone call or text, instead of asking her to come in. But she didn’t want to just rush off now, right after getting what she wanted. “So,” she said, “you’re headed on vacation tomorrow, right? Where’re you going?”
He leaned back in his chair, linked his hands behind his head. “I’m spending a week in Key West. Sailing, snorkeling, swimming in the ocean…”
“A true vacation. I don’t really remember what those are like.”
“I bet.” He swiveled his chair back and forth. “You know, you could join me if you want. It’s a little last minute, but I’m sure we could still get you a plane ticket. And I’m willing to bet you have a bunch of PTO banked up. The school could find a sub for a few days.”
She tried to read his expression, prayed he was kidding.
He gave her one of his boyish smiles. “I can’t think of anyone I’d rather sit on the beach and drink margaritas with more than you.”
“Jake…”
“It would be fun, Casey. And, of course, no strings attached.” But his carefree tone was betrayed by an urgency she saw in his eyes.
This is really why he’d wanted to meet with her, so he could ask her to go with him. Damn it. How had he read this—read her —so wrong? “I appreciate the thought, really. But I have work, the hockey team, and Danny in the hospital… I can’t. I’m sorry, Jake.”
His laugh was too sharp and too loud. “No, no. Please. It was a totally impulsive idea.”
She thought about explaining more, telling him she just didn’t do vacations. They were full of empty time, days void of structure and noise and distraction, which wasn’t something she could handle. But softening the blow might lead to more of this in the future, so she didn’t go there. Instead, she stood. “Thanks again. I’ll take any chance I get to tell people how much you’ve done for the program.”
He rose as well and slid his hands in his pockets. “Happy to help.” She said goodbye and was almost to the stairs when he spoke again. “Casey.”
Bracing herself for another entreaty of some kind she turned, but he was only holding out her keys, which she’d left on his desk. She walked over and took them from his hand.
“You do that every time,” he said.
She nodded, then decided to ask him a question. Partly to try to make him feel better, partly because she was honestly curious. “Jake, you know a lot of women would jump at that invitation, right?”
His eyebrows ticked up. “But you’re not one of them.”
“I just can’t.”
“It’s all right.” Though he looked pretty crushed, standing there with his slumped shoulders and downcast gaze.
“Have a good trip,” she said. “And I’ll see you when you get back, okay?”
He nodded and offered a perfunctory smile before she left his office.
Back in the Bronco and headed for home, she had a hard time getting excited about the uniforms. Jake was a decent guy, but that’s not why he was going above and beyond for the hockey team. He was doing it for her. And tonight, after she got what she wanted, she had shot down his hopes.
She didn’t regret it though. He was better off accepting the reality of the situation rather than trying to change it. Casey couldn’t give Jake any of what he wanted. She simply had nothing left to give.