Chapter Seventeen
Seventeen
Kyle focused on what he was doing, running through the motions again and again: grip the stick, shift his weight, shoot the puck. Grip, shift, shoot. Grip, shift, shoot. He’d been at it for well over an hour, settled into a rhythm. He only paused after he’d gone through all forty pucks and had to collect them. Then he did it again.
When he left Angie’s earlier, he wasn’t sure where to go. Initially he thought he’d find Casey and ask his burning questions— Did you really want to die? Did you know you were going to do it when I left? Why did you say everything was your fault? He badly needed to understand what she was thinking, now and back then. But Angie had asked him to wait until she talked to Casey herself first; she wanted the chance to explain why she broke her promise. Angie also said Casey was struggling lately as it was, maybe she couldn’t handle talking to him about it right now. The idea that Casey was so fragile people had to tiptoe around her defied what Kyle knew to be true about her. But then, so did a suicide attempt.
So he’d driven aimlessly for a while. He didn’t want to go home, didn’t want to be around his father, or anybody really. There was too much to think about. When he wandered past the ice rink, he’d wished for an actual game, where he could check other guys, block shots with his body, find an excuse to throw his gloves down and go after someone. He ended up pulling into the empty arena. Even though there was no game to be had, he figured he’d go with the next best thing. He had his skates in the truck and a key to the rink. He borrowed a stick and a bag of pucks from the storage room and went to work.
With every shot he took he felt like he was batting away images: Casey bleeding on the floor, Wyatt hauling himself upstairs in a panic, all of them sitting in that therapy session where Casey was so desperate to go home she agreed to let them babysit her… Focusing on his shots allowed him to think about all of it without the emotions taking over, and he cycled through a slew of emotions. Acute fear at the idea that he’d almost lost her too; the heaviest kind of sorrow that she hurt so much she saw only one way out. But what he felt most, what he tried to infuse every shot with in hopes of unloading some of it, was an anger that bordered on rage.
Everyone had lied to him. His dad, Wyatt, Angie, Todd, even Coach and Mateo had all lied to him. For years, including every single day since he’d come back, even after he apologized to each of them for leaving the way he did. Not one of them had picked up the phone to let him know what she did, that she’d come so close to losing her life. He was also angry with Casey for doing it, and for blackmailing everyone into keeping it from him.
With that thought Kyle shot the last puck as hard as he could and watched it hit the back of the net before bouncing onto the ice to rest among a sea of other pucks.
“I think you still got it.”
He turned to see Coach Geiger sitting on the other side of the boards, watching from the players’ bench, arms folded against his chest. But Kyle wasn’t ready to talk to Coach, possibly the person he was most disappointed in right then. If there was anybody in Potsdam he thought he could count on, he would have said Coach. Until tonight. So Kyle didn’t acknowledge him, just skated toward the net to start gathering the pucks.
“Danny called me,” Coach said, his words echoing around the empty rink, “after Angie called him. Thought you might be here.”
Kyle continued sweeping the pucks together with his stick.
“I guess you’ve had a hell of a day,” Coach said.
“You could say so,” Kyle said, letting an edge creep into his tone.
“I’m sorry about that.”
“Oh, is that what you’re sorry about?” Kyle asked. He tossed his stick down on the ice, skated straight to the players’ bench, and looked Coach in the face. “How the hell could you keep that from me? Of everyone in this town, I never would have thought you’d do that.”
Coach removed his hat. “The only thing I can offer right now, son, is we all believed we were doing right by Casey.”
“Don’t call me ‘son.’ You lied to me—you all lied to me.”
“I can’t argue with that. But we did it for her.”
“What about me ?” Kyle asked, bringing a fist to his chest.
“You left, Kyle.” Coach’s voice was gentle, no accusation or bitterness in his tone. “You did what you had to do to get through that time. And we had to support Casey however she needed to get through that time.”
As Kyle listened to those words, coming from the man he’d always had such great love and respect for, he felt all the anger rush out of him. Or maybe it just turned inward. That’s who he was angriest with: himself. He was angry at himself for leaving, for believing she was doing okay back then. He had forgotten that while everyone else relied on Casey, she and Kyle had relied on each other. They’d always been a team.
Every muscle in his body suddenly felt weak with exhaustion. He stepped off the ice and dropped down beside Coach on the bench. They were quiet for a while, which is just what Kyle needed right then. But Coach had always been good at knowing what Kyle needed.
“You’re doing a good job with these boys,” he eventually said.
Kyle didn’t respond, just focused on pulling off his gloves, not sure if he was ready to accept Coach’s olive branch.
“I mean it. That’s no easy feat, they’re a tough crew. Everybody else was afraid to take them on.”
“You didn’t tell me that when you offered me the job.”
“Damn right.”
Kyle couldn’t help but smile a little, grateful now that Coach was still sitting there beside him. “You know, when Casey first told me she wanted to teach middle school, I thought she was crazy. I remembered everyone being so miserable in middle school, especially me. But I get it now. They’re starting to figure out who they are, yet there’s still an innocence about them. They have a lot to say, and they generally tell it like it is.”
Coach chuckled. “Yuh, they’re a special breed. And they love Casey. She’s always been good with them.”
“They’re good with her too. The only time I see her come alive is when she’s with them, or talking about them. She smiles, she even laughs.”
“I’ve seen it,” Coach said. “It’s like, for just a little while, she forgets she’s not allowed to be happy.”
Kyle felt himself stiffen in surprise at that statement, but at the same time it rang so true. Coach had captured everything in that one thought. After losing Charlie, Kyle thought it would never be possible to feel happiness again. But Casey behaved like it would be wrong to feel happiness again. He remembered how closed off she became, how she wouldn’t let anyone console her, not even him. How even when they’d had small, hopeful moments of reconnection—a nice dinner, a shared laugh, his hand on hers—she’d been so quick to shut them down. She was the same way now.
“I don’t know what to do, Coach,” Kyle said. “She won’t let me help with anything, won’t let me in at all. I can’t talk to her about Charlie. Angie said I shouldn’t ask her about what she did after I left. I even had to work on the Bronco behind her back. I couldn’t make anything better for her back then, and I can’t do it now…”
Coach sat back, propped his elbows up on the back of the bench. “I’ve known you a long time, since you were younger than the kids you’re coaching. You’ve always wanted to fix things for people. Hell, it’s your chosen profession, fixing broken parts and putting them back together again. When I had to pull you outta all those fights when you were a kid, it was because you wanted to fix your parents’ marriage and you couldn’t. Then you wanted to make things right for Danny because he was so miserable, and you couldn’t do that either. But I think you got used to being able to fix things for Casey. You’d been taking care of her since you were eighteen years old. But what you two went through, losing Charlie the way you did…” Coach shook his head. “All you and Casey could do was survive that kind of loss in your own ways. And it changed both of you. Whatever’s going on with Casey, nothing you do is going to fix it for her. She has to do that herself.”
Coach was right about grief taking them in opposite directions. While Kyle had longed for the rest of the world to go away and leave them alone, Casey had wanted it to distract her so completely there was room for nothing else. He’d wanted to focus on taking care of her. At a time when he felt utterly powerless, he thought that was one thing he could do. But Casey had needed to focus elsewhere, pull away and get busy. He remembered thinking she was managing it all so much better than he was. At his ugliest moments, he’d even resented it.
If Kyle had ever been this tired, he couldn’t remember when. He felt like he could curl up on the bench and sleep. “I just wish there was something I could do.”
“Looks to me like you’re doing it,” Coach said. “You see joy in Casey when she’s around the kids. So keep up the good work, get them in the best shape possible for the Holiday Cup Tournament.”
Winning the Cup was a pipe dream, but Kyle recalled what Ben Landy said the first day he met the team— We came in dead last the past two Holiday Cup Tournaments, and we don’t want to do it again. That was possible. “There might be something to that idea,” he said.
Coach shrugged. “Like Gretzky said…”
“You miss a hundred percent of the shots you don’t take,” Kyle said. He smiled as a warm memory flashed across his mind. He’d tried to teach Charlie that quote when he was too little, and he had always remembered it wrong. What did Gretzky say? Kyle would ask him. You should take a hundred shots, Dad.
“Tell you what, Coach,” Kyle said. “Let me see what I can do.”
When he walked into the house a little later his dad was sitting at the table in the dimly lit kitchen. His face was pale and drawn and uncertain, reminiscent of when he first got out of the hospital. Kyle left his jacket on and fell into the seat across from him.
Dad started with a heavy sigh. “I didn’t like it. But it was… what she wanted.”
Kyle didn’t say anything. He was having difficulty nailing down how he felt about his father right then. He’d kept this secret from Kyle for years, during every conversation they’d had, even after Kyle had come home to help him. It made these last several weeks they’d spent together feel false.
“I was scared, Kyle. I just… wanted her to be all right.”
And there was the “but.” Yes, Dad had kept this from him. But one thing Kyle knew was his dad loved Casey, and right or wrong by anyone else’s standards, he would have done what he thought was best for her.
“You don’t know,” Dad said, “how many times… I almost told you. But, remember”—he gave Kyle a pointed look—“you left. And I didn’t know why, what… happened between you two.”
Kyle nodded. That was fair. He had left, and he hadn’t talked to his dad or anyone else before he did it. He’d never explained why; he didn’t want to admit the obvious truth. That he’d completely failed at his singular most important purpose in life: keeping his family safe from harm. He looked across the table at his father, who had always doubted Kyle when it came to so many things. “Maybe you were right, all those times you worried I wasn’t enough for her.”
A pained expression crossed his dad’s face. “No. I wanted the best for her. But I also worried for you. I didn’t want you to get hurt, end up alone. Like me.”
God, if Kyle had talked to his dad back then, things might have turned out differently. He’d lost his wife a long time ago and might have been the one person who could understand best. So Kyle asked him a question he’d been asking himself the last few hours. “For two and a half years I’ve been telling myself I left because it was the best thing for her,” he said. “I know that’s not true now, but do you think I really believed that back then?” He waited for his dad to shake his head, say that had been some self-serving bullshit, an excuse to run away.
But instead Dad thought it over and nodded. “I think you did believe that, at the time, otherwise you wouldn’t have done it. You’re doubting yourself now”—he poked his own chest with his thumb—“but I know better. Because you were the best husband and father I ever knew.”
Kyle thought he’d cried all the tears he could in a day when he was sitting with Angie earlier, but apparently there were a few more left. So he sat in the quiet of the kitchen, across from his dad, and let them come.
At lunchtime the next day he headed for Casey’s classroom. He didn’t text ahead, didn’t let her know he was coming so she could find an excuse to tell him not to. If he gave her the chance to put the wall up she would. So he’d have to back-door this whole thing.
He heard voices as he neared her room and took a look inside. She was in there with Will, Ben, the McKee boys, Logan, and Rosie. He had to pause in the hall before entering and shore himself up for a couple reasons. One, as soon as he laid eyes on Casey he pictured her bleeding on the bathroom floor, and two, she and Will were sitting next to each other, heads bent over a notebook, her brown waves close to his blond flyaways. Will was looking at her intently while she explained something to him. The other kids were eating and chatting.
They all looked up when he knocked on the open door. “Sorry to interrupt, but this is just the crew I was looking for. I was hoping to run something by all of you, but if this isn’t a good time…” He directed the question to Casey.
“No, that’s okay.”
He pulled a desk-chair combo next to hers in the loose circle they had going and took a seat. He couldn’t keep his eyes from darting to her left arm, looking for that scar of their own volition. But, like every other day, she wore long sleeves. He wondered what she did in summer, if and how she tried to hide it then. “So I was thinking,” he said to the group, “we have our first game coming up, and then the Holiday Cup weekend after next. I thought that last scrimmage was promising.”
“Coach,” Ben said, “that scrimmage was lit.”
Kyle glanced at Casey. “That means good, right?”
“Yeah, it means good.”
“Okay,” he said. “It was lit. But we’re still making up for lost time, and I wondered if you all would consider some extra practices over the next few weeks so we’re in the best shape possible for the season.”
“You guys are stepping it up lately,” Rosie said, twirling the end of her long ponytail around a finger. “I vote yes.”
“Do you even get a vote?” Ben asked her.
“Of course she does,” Kyle said.
“I vote we do it too,” Logan said. “We’ve been turning things around lately.”
“Exactly,” Kyle said. “We have good momentum going now, and I’d like to capitalize on it.”
“Extra practice would only help,” Casey said.
“I’m down,” Will said.
“Me too,” Ben said.
Kyle nodded. “How about you, Rory?”
“I’m Soren.”
Damn. Kyle thought he had them figured out. “Sorry, Soren,” he said, shaking his head.
“Coach,” Rosie said. “He is Rory.” She pointed across the circle. “That’s Soren.”
Kyle shot a look at Rory, who smiled wide and said, “Yeah, I’m in.”
“Me too,” Soren said.
“And Rosie,” Kyle said, “I could use your help if you can be there. I want to run a lot of drills and need an extra timekeeper.”
“Sure, Coach.”
“Okay,” Kyle said. “Now, you guys think you can get the rest of the team on board with that?”
“Probably,” Ben said. “But, you know, Coach, we might have more luck if you did something to really motivate us.”
Kyle propped a hand against his knee. “I thought improving as a team would be motivation enough.”
“It’s pretty good,” Ben said. “I just thought we might do better—maybe even place in the tournament—if we had a little reward to look forward to…”
“ Place in the tournament? That’s a lofty goal, Landy.”
“Well, then”—he shrugged—“you wouldn’t have much to worry about.”
“I’m not allowed to bribe my players.”
“It doesn’t have to be money. I’m sure we could think of something you could do for us…” Ben’s eyes went around the circle. “Right, guys?”
They nodded at each other with enthusiasm.
Kyle studied them, thought about the worst thing they could ask him to do. “As long as it doesn’t involve breaking the law or eating live insects, you got a deal. What do you have in mind?”
Rory jumped up from his chair. “We need a minute.” He waved for the others to follow, and the boys gathered across the room, started talking in hushed voices.
After a moment Logan called out, “Rosie, come on.”
Her whole face lit up before she jogged over to join them.
Kyle leaned toward Casey, keeping his voice low so he didn’t give them any ideas. “I really hope I don’t have to shave my head.”
She pressed her lips together and arched her eyebrows like that possibility had occurred to her as well.
“Wait, I know,” Will said, stepping out of their huddle. “I know what we want.”
Ben held up a hand. “Tell us first, Will—”
“If we place in the tournament,” Will said, waving Ben off, “you have to stay for the whole season, Coach.”
Kyle had been prepared for all sorts of creative middle school imaginings—wearing the Sandstoner Steve mascot uniform around town, doing everybody’s chores for a day, standing defenseless while they threw water balloons at him—but he had not seen that one coming.
“That’s what we want,” Will said, his eyes and expression full of hope.
Behind him, the rest of the crew nodded in agreement. Even Rosie.
Kyle was so stunned and so touched he couldn’t respond right away. Of all the things they could have asked him for, they wanted him to stay. Which is what he wanted too. But the woman in the seat beside him wanted something else. “You sure that’s what you want?” he asked them.
“Yeah,” Ben said, crossing his arms. “And that’s how we sell the rest of the team on extra practices.”
When Casey stayed silent and gave nothing away, Kyle considered telling the boys he’d think about it so he could talk to her before promising anything. But then Coach’s words came back to him. Nothing you do is going to fix it for her. He was right. Kyle wasn’t going to solve Casey’s problems by leaving in December as opposed to March. And she had to know he couldn’t turn them down.
“You said we had a deal, Coach,” Will said, his brow pinching.
Kyle flipped his cap around. “Okay. If you guys place third or better in the tournament, I’ll stay until the end of the season.”
He stood and left then, to the sound of mild cheering, without looking at Casey again. He was afraid he’d see disappointment or frustration on her face. The truth was they both knew the team was highly unlikely to take third place or better in two weeks’ time. But the kids she cared so much about had made their wishes known.