Chapter 4
LEAH
We meet at Cara and Pierre’s place for the emergency meeting.
When I walk in, I holler, “There had better be snacks!”
Thankfully, Ella brings popcorn and Jess has a new Bundt cake flavor for us to sample.
She calls it banana nut brown sugar. I call it sticky …
and delicious, even though generally I have a salty tooth rather than a sweet one.
However, I fully support her new little shop in the revamped Old Mill building. Her Bundts are selling like hotcakes.
As we settle in, the question everyone is asking is What’s this about? I’m usually the first to hear when Cara is in crisis. Given her smile, I can’t fathom why she’d be wearing one if this were truly urgent.
Margo, a wedding planner who’s married to Beau Hammer, the original Knights goalie, breezes in with two big jugs of lemonade.
“Can you imagine fighting over what kind of lemonade to serve at your wedding? My latest couple were going back and forth ad nauseam. I brought them both types to taste to demonstrate that they’re the same. ”
“Couldn’t they have both?” asks Ella, my other bestie.
She likes to joke that I played fairy godmother in her romance with Jack, but I give my brother credit. I know, weird. He came through for them in the biggest ways. If only Marisol could see that side of him.
“That’s what I gently suggested.” Margo shakes her head. “If they’re already bickering about this, I don’t have high hopes for their future.”
“Says the woman who married the single most disagreeable guy in hockey,” Whit says. She and Redd are a couple and have a few kids.
Margo beams a smile. “He’s not grumpy. He’s stoic.”
“Before you two start fighting like an old couple, is everything okay, Cara?” I ask.
She smirks. “Yes.”
“Then why the emergency?” we all echo at the same time.
Delaney rushes in, her big baby belly leading the way and calling, “Where’s the fire?”
Heidi, balancing a toddler on her hip, simultaneously pours the winger’s wife some lemonade. “You look thirsty.”
“Always.” Delaney takes a big gulp.
Cara paces in front of us like she’s about to lead a police procedural before turning on me.
Me?
She asks, “What do we know about the garden gnome?”
Stunned silence turns into confusion for everyone except for yours truly. My cheeks turn the faintest shade of pink.
Then Cara’s eyes bulge, cartoon-like. “Your hair!”
It’s my time to smirk and thank my lucky stars because that was perfect timing. Demurely, I smooth my hand down my strands. “Oh, this? Valentina said it was time for a change.”
In reality, after I realized a few pieces of my hair had fallen loose from my disguise early this morning, I begged my sister to chop it. Instead, she dyed my hair Barbie Doll blonde.
It isn’t so much that I want to go incognito, but that I want to have more fun … and possibly catch the eye of a cute hockey guy as we start a new season. The color update is enough to detour the conversation for the next ten minutes as the girls talk all things hair.
Before I can make a hasty escape, the gnome topic returns to the table.
Meg, married to our former star forward, says, “Actually, I vaguely recall Micah mentioning that whenever Badaszek gets really ticked off, he brings up how someone stole his wife’s favorite garden gnome and that nothing is sacred in this world.”
I swallow thickly. Rightfully, I should’ve returned Howie to the Badaszeks. But it’s technically a Roboveitchek problem and I wasn’t about to get caught on the coach’s property.
Hands laced, Gracie’s shoulders climb to her ears. “Gnomes are so cute.”
“Not this one,” I mutter. It’s creepy. Has shown up in my dreams. Is possibly haunted.
Ella says, “I read an article once about a gnome liberation effort. A gang was going around taking them from people’s yards and—? Actually, I don’t know what happened next.”
Leaving them at the end of your bed to scare you in the middle of the night? Or in your locker? Or the backseat of your car?
Howie would show up in my shower, under my bed, everywhere. I’d put it on the Roboveitchek’s stoop and days, weeks, or months would pass and I’d forget about it. Then the creepy little thing would appear and scare the living daylights out of me.
Finding it wrapped in Hudson’s jersey confirmed that the mean-spirited pranks had his name written all over them. Not literally because that would be incriminating. However, he can do the dirty work of explaining to his coach and neighbor why he was in possession of the precious gnome.
Cara says, “Pierre texted that one of the guys came across a garden gnome at Robo’s new house.”
“Aren’t they still there?” Whit checks the time.
“For another hour or two.”
“I made Bundts for the new player welcome party,” Jess says proudly.
“Traitor,” I mutter.
Cara arches her eyebrow. “Pierre texted with concern when the gnome came out and promptly disappeared. Said some of the guys got weird about it. Hid it. Asked me if I knew anything.”
Cara knows all about the gnome itself and everything about me … except this. And maybe a couple of other tiny related details.
“Anyone want to share about the hockey garden gnome?” Her eyes alight on me.
Flapping my hands instead of talking with them as I’ve been told I often do, I say, “The eagle has landed. To be sure, it may have been a pigeon. Or a duck. A turkey, perhaps.”
Everyone stares at us, trying to puzzle out what’s going on as I ramble nonsensically about birds in reference to the text exchange earlier, because I don’t want anyone else to know about my history with the Roboveitchek brothers. No matter which way you spin it, I look like a loser and a reject.
I press my lips together, trying to hold back the truth, but much like my mother, Cara is somehow able to drag it out of me without firing a shot.
I blurt, “I found the gnome in the box of Robo’s things.”
They all lean in, likely wondering why I had one of the NHL’s goalie’s belongings to begin with. Well, everyone except Cara. She knew Hunter and I were friends and, by association, his brother’s enemy.
“Why didn’t you return it?” Hurt coats her voice.
Drawing a deep breath, I answer, “The gnome tormented me for years. I’d find it in my locker, car, everywhere.
I had a feeling Hudson was behind it since he was the hockey player and Howie is a hockey gnome.
When I looked in the box and saw it, that was confirmation.
It’s petty, but I figured if I left it in his garage on top of the boxes, I’d get a teeny tiny bit of revenge because, as the guilty party, he’d have to face your father … his new coach.”
Ella rubs her hands together. “Ooh, sounds like a juicy story.”
Jess plants herself on the couch. “This ought to be good.”
Cara nods and joins her. “Spill the beans.”
Plopping down on the loveseat like I’m being interrogated, I tell them how Howie came to be in my possession.
“Hunter always said his brother had a habit of generating bad ideas around midnight.”
“Nothing good happens at that hour,” Gracie says.
“He’d texted me a few times saying Hudson was threatening to steal the school mascot.”
Cara gasps. “Not Reggie!”
“For the record, I was adamantly against it.” Prickling with shame, I shrug. “Hunter always acted as if he was against most of his twins’ ideas. Looking back, if I’m being totally honest, I think he was the mastermind. I just kind of went along with them.”
“Let me guess, this one was no different.”
“More like, I knew that if I didn’t sneak out and try to stop them …”
“How did Howie become part of this caper?” Cara asks.
I gaze at my hands. “After the hockey team won their game against Clarkson’s biggest rivals, Hudson came home pretty boastful. Hunter and Hudson argued in the bathroom. I guess that rattled Hunter and so instead of going after the mascot, Reggie, he convinced him to steal something from the coach.”
“This was in high school and Dadaszek had only just started with the Knights,” Cara says.
“Coach Walker lived in north Omaha. Hunter said the car he shared with his brother was on empty and he didn’t have gas money. I wouldn’t cough any up, so we ended up walking around with the plan to toilet paper some houses. Then it started raining and soggy TP is no fun.”
“Where was Hudson in all this?”
I wince. “He probably fell asleep.”
Looking back, the times Hunter said his brother was going to get up to no good, Hudson usually dropped out of frame and I ended up tagging along with Hunter to make sure he didn’t get into too much trouble.
“You toilet-papered houses?” Gracie gasps as if scandalized.
“This sounds like a series of terrible ideas,” Heidi adds.
Emerson, my coworker at O’Neely’s, leans in, “I had no idea you led such a sordid life, Leah.”
I sigh. “More like I was trying to save Hunter from himself.”
It’s all so clear now. A soft voice among all the louder ones whispers that maybe Hudson was trying to save me from Hunter.
It instantly goes quiet when the other voices in my mind argue that Hunter was afraid to admit how much he liked me, otherwise he risked ruining our friendship—at least, that’s what he told me.
Cara spins her finger. “Back to the story.”
“We were walking down Golden Bantam Lane—”
“More like prowling.”
Much like this morning.
I continue, “Hunter saw the garden gnome with the little spotlight on it in the front garden. In several long strides, he nabbed it, and then took off running. I was halfway down the block, chasing him and urging him to put it back, when I realized it was your house, Cara.”
“Obviously, he didn’t listen to you.”
He never did. Not even when I confessed how much I liked him.
“For days, I begged him to put it back. It was like each time I asked, he’d do something more outrageous like photographing Howie on the school’s roof and text it me during English class.
Put him in the middle of a busy road.” I dip into my memories and realize, in a weird way, he used the garden gnome as a stand-in for how precipitously close to the edge he was …
until he finally left without looking back.
That was sophomore year. One day during junior year, Hudson left his bedroom door open, and I spotted Howie on his bureau. After that, it started tormenting me, meaning Hunter must’ve passed the torch.
When I’m done, the women shrug like it’s not that outrageous of a tale.
Cara sucks in her cheek. “You knew it came from my family’s yard.”
Guilt gathers inside like Zamboni slush.
“Why didn’t you ever give it back?”
“Hunter said it was a trophy.” And back then, I did everything he said, scarfing up the crumbs he left me like cake, which I take a bite of now so I don’t have to talk about the stupid boy I had a stupid crush on.
Cara knows the full story, the heartbreak, and the tears shed. She says, “I’m getting it back.”
Letting out a long breath, I say, “Leave it to me.”
I don’t have a plan, but I’ll be sure to return the gnome to its home … and hopefully, avoid Hudson, especially if he’s in a towel.