Chapter 41
Chapter Forty-One
Logan
The minute I get off the plane, I watch the replay of Dalton getting arrested on my phone.
I’m petty like that—haven’t cleared customs—I’m just sitting on an airport bench enjoying his downfall with my carry-on sitting on the floor beside me.
Already the headlines are declaring his removal from the Advisory Council.
Celia told me it would be immediate—the accusation is enough.
I got the impression from Celia that even if her children won’t speak to her, other people aren’t allowed to go after her family.
A weird notion that she should be able to interfere in any way she wants, but no one else had better do the same.
By the end of my meeting with her, I could understand why her kids might value her protection and resent her interference.
But no matter what happens with my trade now, at least Dalton’s sphere of influence is diminished, likely completely gone.
My team in hockey might not be winning, but my team in life is fucking killing it. God help me, I really wanted to kill him.
After watching it for a third time, I’m satisfied, and I grab my duffel and head for customs. Clearing it is easy, and then I’m in a car my manager arranged and headed for my hotel.
When I climb into bed, I cradle my phone, and my heart kicks at the realization that when this trade goes through, I won’t get to shoot off random text messages to Sawyer, call her for no reason just to hear her voice, or see things and take pictures to send to her because they reminded me of her. All that stops.
All that stops.
It’s the first time I’ve let myself consider the full weight of my move, our breakup since we lost our final game. I ease down into the bed, getting comfortable, and I send the text because I still can.
Checking in. I was thinking about you. You doing okay?
Her reply is quick—like always. If she’s awake and free, she never makes me wait. My older brother is babysitting me. Is that weird?
Only if your boyfriend arranged it, I reply.
Oh shoot. He did. What does that mean?
That he loves you. I hit Send.
The stupid grin I always get whenever she texts me is making my cheeks hurt.
Honestly, getting Nathaniel here was top-tier boyfriend material, she adds.
Top-tier doesn’t sound too bad. Is there a higher level? I’m competitive. Don’t like the idea of anyone beating me.
You’ve got the top spot locked in.
That’s what I like to hear. I decide she might be ready for a gentle prod. How are you really?
I watched him get arrested about fifty times. That can’t be healthy, right?
The national paper calling you a “beloved physiotherapist” was my favorite, I type back.
My mom had her driver drop off a note to tell me she had the photos and videos taken care of too.
Ah, fuck. I have to call her. She picks up right away.
“I didn’t tell her about the photos or videos,” I say. “That wasn’t—I wouldn’t do that.”
“I wasn’t accusing you. My mom is resourceful and a bit evil, so I have no doubt she found out in ways I’d rather not think about,” she says.
“Using her evil powers for good here,” I suggest, keeping my voice light.
“More than likely just protecting the Tucker name. She’s obsessed with keeping our status and our family squeaky clean. What she did has benefitted me, but I doubt it was for me.”
“She likes the power more than anything.” Which fits the vibe she gave off when I was there.
“She doesn’t like being on the outside of the family secrets,” Sawyer says. “She resents that we resent her. It’s a big ball of mutual resentment.”
“Do you think you’ll all get along again?”
“I don’t know.” Sawyer sighs. “Family’s complicated, which you’re about to learn tomorrow.” Her voice perks up at the end, a hint of her old teasing evident. Something inside me that had been wound tight slowly unravels.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier that I decided to meet them.”
“We’re in a weird place,” she says, her voice gentle. “I get it.”
Her tone, the idea that these moments with her are almost over, causes a streak of longing to run from my throat and down the rest of my body. “As soon as I’m off the plane tomorrow, I’m coming straight home to you.”
“Perfect,” she says. “That sounds perfect.”
Even though I just saw her a few hours ago, we stay on the phone, talking about nothing and everything. I’ve never been closer to anyone, and when we finally hang up, I scroll through my phone, looking at photos of us from the last several months. Memory after memory after memory.
I don’t know how I’ll let her go, but I don’t know how I’ll keep her either.
This morning, I woke up to a text message from Jonathan Tucker telling me that they’re close to a deal with Oregon and to consider this my heads-up that a trade is coming.
Even though I knew, the news has put me in a weird headspace, where I don’t quite feel firmly in my life.
As though it’s spinning a little out of control without me being able to influence or steer the direction of it.
When the team was moved to Bellerive, I felt this way too, and maybe this feeling is just something I need to get used to, a part of the WHL I’ll have to learn to deal with.
Mary and Ernie Bishop greet me warmly at the door after I ring the doorbell of their small brick bungalow in a neighborhood that is old but well maintained.
The kind of place it might have been nice to grow up in, where you could ride your bike on the streets, knock on neighbors’ doors…
Far from the rich feel that so much of Bellerive has, but not a place that seems poor either.
Ernie is tall—over six feet—maybe almost my height, and Mary is tall, too, for a woman. Athletic looking. Both of them have hair streaked with silver, but I can’t help examining them, trying to figure out what parts of me might have come from parts of them.
In their kitchen, Ernie offers me a protein shake, but I ask for water instead. He seems disappointed, and I wonder whether they bought the stuff to make a shake just for me. One of my endorsement contracts is with a protein shake company, and maybe that’s where they got the idea.
“We thought you might bring your girlfriend,” Mary says. “We saw some videos from your games. She seems lovely.”
“She is,” I say with a nod. “But I wanted a chance to…” My bluntness almost pokes through, and I shut my mouth just in time. Tamiko would be proud.
“Make sure we were decent people?” Ernie suggests, handing me a glass of water before taking a seat at the table. “Wouldn’t blame you. Still can’t believe this whole set of circumstances.”
“To think Cathy is gone…” Mary’s eyes tear up as she looks at Ernie across the table, reaching for his hand. “We’re trying to find out where she was buried. Figure out if there’s any way we can get her home, or… Something. Feels like we need to do something.”
“Do you still have any of her things?” I ask. We’re related, but they’re strangers, and so their grief doesn’t quite feel real to me or maybe earned. Whatever it is, it’s making me uncomfortable. Maybe I should have brought Sawyer. She’s good at making people feel at ease—the doctor in her.
“Oh,” Mary breathes out. “Yes. Her room. It’s changed a little, but we left a lot of it. I always expected her to turn up one day. Come home.”
I follow them both out of the kitchen and down a narrow hall to a bedroom.
Mary opens the door, and the room smells stale.
She steps in and picks up framed photos, handing them to me.
There are ones of her, presumably with high school friends.
Then there’s one of her with a tall boy, and my heart skips. “Who’s this?”
“Her younger brother, Brandon. Took that just before she found out she was pregnant, I think,” Mary says, peering over my shoulder. “They were close before she left. I thought she might have kept in touch with him, maybe. But she didn’t.”
I absorb the fact that I have an uncle, that he has a family. It’s hard to process. People who finally share my DNA but still strangers.
“She was a Jill of all trades,” Mary says. “Loved creative tasks—painting, sewing, making things, but she was also on every school sports team. Straight A student. Couldn’t have asked for a better kid.”
“Which is what made her getting pregnant so tough. Turned her life upside down,” Ernie chimes in. “We didn’t handle it well.”
My mom didn’t paint her life as being that fantastic before she got pregnant, but I also know how time changes perspective. Maybe the things she wrote she didn’t really believe anymore by the time she died. Maybe Mary and Ernie are remembering her through a rosy tint. I’ll never know.
“When we had kids, I knew there’d be sacrifices,” Mary says. “Love always comes with sacrifice.”
I stare at the framed photo in my hands of my mom with her brother, trying to piece together the woman who birthed me, the family she came from, the history she’ll never be able to tell me herself.
But the mention of love meaning sacrifice causes my mind to stray to Sawyer—the only person I’ve ever loved enough to even consider giving up things I want, routes I planned to take.
“Sometimes we get those sacrifices right, and sometimes we have regrets over the ‘more’ we could have done. It’s that unanswered question that drives people mad: Did I do enough?
And I know I didn’t. I let love and happiness and family and connection slip through the cracks instead of putting in the effort to patch it.
Until the day I die, I’ll regret that we let Cathy down.
That we didn’t do everything we could to bring her back home.
Until the day I die, I’ll wish we did things differently. ”
It's the first time I’ve ever heard anyone talk about love leading to sacrifice, and if I’d heard it at any other point in my life, it might not have hit me square in the chest like it does right now.
This whole time, I’ve been acting like, let myself think like, Sawyer was the only one capable of sacrificing.
But maybe that’s not true. Maybe that’s not fair.
As I stare at the old photo of my mother in my hands, I really ask myself what I want. What I really want, in my gut, in my heart, and I realize it’s not what it’s been every other time I’ve asked myself that question.
Ernie pats me on the shoulder. “Struck a nerve, did it?”
“I needed to hear that,” I admit. “Sometimes what’s most important shifts.”
“If we’d known what happened to Cathy, what happened to you, we’d have stepped up. No question,” Ernie says.
And maybe I’m feeling sentimental, or maybe I’m taking a page out of Sawyer’s book and I just want to believe the best of them—but I do believe them.
They seem sincere. For years, I’ve had a great big question mark where my mother and father should be.
With the chance to fill in those blank spaces right in front of me, I’d be a fool to turn that down.
“I’d love to hear about my mom.” My voice goes rusty on the last word. “I’d love to know her through your eyes.”
“We’d love to tell you,” Mary says her voice thick with tears.