6. Gideon
Gideon
I sat halfway up the lower bowl with my elbows resting on my knees, staring out across the untouched sheet of ice. The lights reflected off the surface so perfectly it almost looked like a frozen lake, and that thought came every year the same way. Ice. Water. Then Ethan.
Ten years today since my little brother died.
He would’ve been twenty-three, and every year it got harder to imagine him older—my memory refused to let him grow up.
He was still thirteen in every version I had.
Skinny, gangly, too smart for his own good, hair sticking up because he never believed in brushes, missing his front tooth after taking a puck to the mouth and proudly refusing to smile with his lips closed.
He stayed thirteen. The rest of us got older around him.
I got older.
I tried to picture him now. Maybe he’d have played college hockey, maybe even made the NHL—he’d had the talent, probably would’ve been better than me.
Or maybe hockey would’ve become something he did for fun once he went off to college because Ethan had always been the clever one.
Math came naturally to him, science too, and he used to explain things to me that I pretended to understand because I didn’t want my kid brother knowing he was smarter than I was.
Maybe he could have been training to become an engineer, or a teacher, or one of those doctors who made impossible things possible.
Maybe he’d have met someone early. He’d had a little girlfriend, Amy, back then, some kid from two streets over who he was completely besotted with.
I used to tease him about her until his ears went red.
Maybe they’d have stuck. Maybe she’d have grown up alongside him instead of just existing in a handful of thirteen-year-old memories, and maybe there’d have been a wedding, kids, Dad a grandfather by now, Noah an Uncle Noah, Sundays noisy instead of quiet.
Maybe our family would’ve remembered how to laugh.
Instead, there was a granite headstone in Maple Grove Cemetery outside Lansing. Ethan Michael Taftwell. Beloved Son. Beloved Brother. The dates underneath never changed. Neither had we.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket. Dad’s name sat above Noah’s in my favorites, and my thumb hovered over it while I typed and deleted three different versions of the same message—thinking about Ethan today, hope you’re doing okay, love you—none of them right, all of them gone before I could send them.
Dad would answer if I did. He always answered with something simple like thinking about him too, maybe a picture of the flowers he’d already taken to the cemetery before work.
We’d trade half a dozen messages that carefully stepped around the conversation we’d spent ten years avoiding.
Noah wouldn’t answer. He never did. I couldn’t remember the last text I’d sent him and gotten anything back.
I didn’t know why today would be any different.
I locked the phone and put it away. Some days the silence felt easier than finding out how much distance still sat between us.
Dr. Ellison called it depression—clinical, treatable, manageable. I called it the black dog. It never really left; most days it padded a few steps behind me, quiet enough that hockey kept it there. Today it had climbed onto the seat beside me, heavy and patient, breathing against my shoulder.
“You planning on sitting here all morning?”
Chip. I hadn’t heard him come in. He stood a few rows up, dressed in jeans and a Copperheads hoodie, a travel mug in one hand, and Sable beside him in her bright blue harness with her amber eyes already on me.
“Morning.”
“Morning.” He came down the steps but stopped a row behind me instead of sitting.
He didn’t crowd me, didn’t ask if I was okay.
Chip knew what today was. Of course he did.
“I’ve got a meeting with Coach before everyone else gets here.
” He looked down at Sable. “Mind doing me a favor? Keep an eye on her for ten minutes?”
“Sure.” I blinked.
Chip unclipped the lead from his wrist and handed it over. “You need her more than me today.” Sable stood immediately, crossed the gap between us without waiting for permission, climbed onto the bench beside me, and rested her chin on my thigh.
I swallowed. “Hi, Sable.” Her tail thumped once against the plastic seat, slow, content.
Chip smiled. “I’ll be back.” He turned for the tunnel then paused halfway up the steps. “I’ll be twenty minutes with Coach, and then I’ll walk about for another forty. Take your time with her.” Then he disappeared into the corridor.
For a long while neither of us moved. I scratched behind Sable’s ears, and she leaned harder into my leg with a soft sigh that carried more than just words.
Dogs didn’t ask questions, didn’t need explanations, didn’t care whether someone was broken.
They just stayed. I buried my fingers into the thick fur at her neck and felt the steady warmth underneath it.
The black dog didn’t leave—it never did—but it shifted back a few feet. Far enough that I could breathe again.
“You know I told you about Scruff,” I said quietly into the top of her head.
“He was a terrier we had growing up.” She flicked an ear toward me but didn’t move.
“He was Ethan’s dog, really. Followed him everywhere.
Used to sneak onto his bed at night, and Ethan would swear up and down to Dad that he had no idea how the fur got there.
” I scratched behind her ears again, slower this time.
“He was good for us, after Mom. I don’t know how he knew what to do, but he did.
Same as you.” My throat tightened around the rest of it.
“You’ve got some kind of magical superpower, huh. ”
Sable whined, low in her chest, and I closed my eyes against it.
“I miss you, Ethan.”
I don’t know how long I sat there. Maybe it was the whole hour Chip had given me, maybe less, but a voice called my name from somewhere below.
“Hey.”
I opened my eyes. Ryan stood a few rows down, a bottle of water in one hand and a banana in the other. “Chip said you needed this. And that I needed to bring it.” He glanced at Sable then back at me. “Is everything okay?”
I couldn’t talk to him. I couldn’t even manage a smile, or a word, or anything that would’ve told him I was fine. Ryan’s expression shifted, uneasy, like he was already regretting climbing up here. I should’ve said something. Told him I was being stupid, that I just needed a minute. Nothing came.
He nodded slowly and set the water and the banana down on the seat beside me, close enough that I could reach them.
“Okay. I’ll…” He didn’t finish it. He turned and left the way he’d come, his shoulders dropping a little with every step.
I knew he’d wanted more from me than silence—a word, a smile, even just a hello.
Sable whined softly and leaned harder into my side, and the tears started again in the empty rows.
I let them come until I’d cried enough. It’s been ten fucking years.
Why am I not done with it? I was so angry with myself I could’ve put my fist through the seat in front of me—angry that I couldn’t say two words to Ryan, angry that a banana and a bottle of water had nearly broken me, angry that ten years hadn’t done a single thing to make this easier.
Somewhere below us a door opened, voices echoed faintly through the arena, a cart rattled over concrete, someone laughed.
The building was waking up. Sable’s head came up first, ears twitching toward the sound, always listening, always ready.
I gave her one last scratch before standing.
Why was this such an awful fucking spiral, every single year, and yet here I was in it again?
I needed to go. Optional skate started in an hour—a chance to get on the ice, lose myself in something that didn’t require words, listen to whoever else turned up, maybe even pretend everything was okay.
“Come on, girl.”
She fell into step beside me. Today would always hurt. Every anniversary would. But there was a game to play, and somehow I didn’t think Ethan would’ve wanted it any other way.
I headed down to the locker room, Sable trotting beside me, and turned the corner straight into Chip talking to Ryan, who had a hand pressed flat to his chest. What the fuck.
Chip glanced my way and clicked his fingers.
Sable peeled off toward him without hesitation, falling in at his side.
He left without a word, without so much as a look back, which meant I was standing alone in the corridor with Ryan.
My chest hurt, my eyes were scratchy from crying, and I was just done. Completely done.
“Chip told me…” Ryan started then stopped. He took a step closer. “I’m so sorry, Gideon.”
He called me Gideon with so much compassion behind it.
He said he was sorry, and I didn’t want it, not right then.
Ten years of sorry hadn’t fixed anything, and I couldn’t collect more of it in a corridor.
I needed the words to say thank you, or to explain, or anything at all, and they just weren’t there.
Everything was black and heavy behind my eyes.
I brushed past him without a word because it was the only thing I had left in me.
So much for making friends and connections.
By the time I’d suited up, Arnaud was already out there in net, along with Walker, Chip, and Bob, plus a couple of the rookies who clearly decided showing up to optional skate counted as brownie points. “Passing,” was all Walker said when I stepped onto the ice, and that was enough.
We didn’t do anything more than that. Lazy passing, drifting in loose circles, nobody keeping score, just the feel of the ice under my blades and the soothing repetition of receive, look up, send it on.
Arnaud stood in goal and didn’t let in a single easy goal, cursing us out in rapid-fire French Canadian every time someone even looked like they might score.
Bob crowded the crease trying to screen him on purpose, and Arnaud shoved him off with a stick to the pads.
“Calisse, tabarnak, get out of my crease.”
“Make me.”
“You’re not even trying.”
“I’m always trying.” Bob crowded back in, and Arnaud shoved him again, harder this time.
“Get. Out.”
“Or what?”
“Or the moose comes for you.” Arnaud didn’t even blink when he said it.
Bob backed off anyway, muttering something under his breath, and Arnaud muttered something back in French that didn’t sound complimentary.
Nobody stepped in or asked what the hell a moose had to do with anything.
Bob and Arnaud fought on a daily basis, so we all just let them go at it.
Somewhere in the middle of their bickering, Walker kept finding me with the puck, passing to me every single time like it was nothing.
The warmth building in my muscles from the exercise finally caught up with everything else, and the black dog moved off my shoulder.
By the time we wrapped up, I was breathing easier than I had all morning.
The ice had taken my brother. Yet it was still the only place I ever found peace.
It didn’t last. By the time I skated off, Ryan was all I could think about, and the fact that I owed him an apology for walking away from him in that corridor without a single word.
I just didn’t know how to do it without it turning into a conversation I wasn’t ready for—the kind where people meant well and asked questions anyway, where they wanted the details, the age, the how, and ended up saying something they thought was comforting and wasn’t.
I went looking for him anyway. I found him in one of the equipment rooms with his dad, their heads bent together over a bag of something on the bench between them.
“Ryan,” I blurted, and he startled, turning to face me.
“I’m sorry,” he said immediately.
That wasn’t it. That wasn’t what I needed. I stood there trying to find what I actually wanted to say while his dad looked between us then said something about needing to check on the Zamboni schedule and slipped out.
“No, I’m sorry.” I held up a hand before Ryan could say anything else. “I don’t want to… I can’t talk about it. Not right now.” I took a breath. “Are you due a break, lunch or something?”
Ryan blinked at me. “I’m not actually on the clock today. I just promised Dad I’d help him sort gear. I can leave whenever.”
“Oh.” I checked my own watch, more for something to do with my hands than any real need to know the time.
“It’s a bit early, maybe, and I have the game later, so I’d need to be back by four.
But there’s this noodle place,” I said too fast. “Would you… could we… do you like noodles? I mean, if you’re not busy.
I could treat you for your time.” God, did that sound too needy?
“And you could tell me more about the makeup?”
“Makeup?” Ryan looked confused for a second. Then he brightened. “Sure.”