Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Vesper
It doesn’t.
What it depends on is the phone call I don’t see coming until it’s already ringing. It starts vibrating before I see the screen, and for half a second I convince myself it’s a producer, or a friend, or one of my brothers sending me a meme that says we’re fine while actively not being fine.
Then Dad’s name flashes across the glass. Along with his photo—him in a baseball cap that’s seen too many summers, squinting into the sun like it’s always in his way.
My father doesn’t call when I’m on assignment. He texts—short, practical, usually one sentence written by a man allergic to punctuation and convinced emotions are a luxury item. He’ll say things like:
Landed?
Eat.
Don’t die.
The most he’s written was last year with a: What’s my Netflix password?
I had to remind him that he canceled his subscription because they stopped airing his favorite show.
He had to reactivate his account. It happens a lot.
Someone pisses him off, he cancels his service, and you know what?
I love that for him. It keeps him entertained.
So when he calls, my first thought is: Someone’s dead.
My second thought is: It better not be him.
I answer on the first ring, because if I let it go to voicemail, my imagination will set itself on fire right here between the Hudson News and the coffee shop that smells like heavenly pastries.
“If this is about you buying another truck you don’t need,” I say, going for sarcastic, going for normal, “I’m starting a GoFundMe for your impulse control. ”
His laugh comes through, but it’s not his full laugh. It sounds like it had to fight its way out. As if it got stuck somewhere and had to be tugged free.
“Hey, kiddo.”
My stomach tilts.
Not from nerves. From recognition.
That Hey, kiddo isn’t a greeting. It’s a door cracking open.
My fingers curl tighter around the phone. I stare at my timeline—paused on a frame of a teenage goalie in a dusty rink, eyes bright with that particular delusion boys have when they still think talent is enough.
“Dad,” I say, softer now, “what’s going on?”
The pause is long enough to make the airport dissolve around me.
A toddler shrieks nearby, high-pitched and furious, but it’s like I’m underwater. Someone drags a suitcase with a busted wheel and it thunks-thunks-thunks across the tiles. A gate agent repeats an announcement in Finnish and then English, but really, no one is listening to it.
All of it fades until it’s just my father breathing on the other end of the line.
My father doesn’t choose words unless there’s a problem.
I flick my eyes over my email, my messages, as if I’ll find a headline that explains this. I do a quick search out of habit—because my brain grabs for facts when my chest goes to war with my heart.
I check on my brothers, and Luther’s team might not make it to the playoffs. Creed might retire. Nothing about my family, because the press never really knows my brothers. They’re too private, too disciplined, too trained in the art of saying nothing and giving reporters even less.
They also don’t quit. Not really. Not the way normal people quit.
My father won the Cup twice. My brothers have been chasing that same dream like it’s a religion.
And my best friends Cally and Monty—well.
They’re fighting for it too, even if they pretend their fight is only with the league, and not with each other, and not with the history they keep pretending doesn’t exist.
“Ves,” Dad says, and my nickname hits like fingers at the back of my neck. “I hate to ask for this, but . . . I need you to come home.”
My breath catches hard enough that I almost cough.
Home.
My apartment in New York comes to mind first—laundry piled on a chair, camera batteries charging on my kitchen counter, the coffee maker I never clean.
“Well, lucky for you, I’m on the way to New York,” I say automatically, because logistics are easier than fear. “I’m flying out in—”
“Not your apartment.” His voice drags, low and rough around the edges. “Camp. Juniper Ridge.”
The words hit like a punch I don’t see coming. My world narrows to my dad’s breathing on the other end of the line.
Juniper Ridge.
My throat closes up on the name.
My hand tightens around the phone until my knuckles sting. “Are you—” I swallow hard. “Is everything okay?”
Another careful breath before I lose my shit and start crying.
“Listen,” he says, and my father never says listen unless he’s bracing for impact. “I’m not . . . I’m not great.”
The confession is so unlike him that it makes my eyes sting immediately. My father is a man who will pull his own stitches out if it means he gets back on the ice faster. He’s the guy who tells kids to walk it off while he’s bleeding through his sock.
“I’m not great,” from him, is practically an alarm—sirens, red lights, the whole emergency broadcast system cutting into whatever I thought my day was. It’s the sentence that means stop what you’re doing, because something has already gone wrong, and it’s moving faster than you are.
“Dad.” My voice cracks around the word, and I hate myself for it. I blink fast, stare hard at my screen like I can force my eyes dry. “What happened?”
“It’s . . . I’m not sure. Just need you to stay for the summer,” he says, trying to package it up neatly. Trying to keep it small. “Just . . . a couple of months.”
Just for the summer is not a couple of months.
I want to tell him that it’s only the beginning of March.
Staying until the end of summer would mean almost six months of Juniper Ridge.
He always talks as if bodies behave on schedules.
As if problems respect calendar pages. As if August can wrap its arms around him and fix whatever is wrong.
“But what is it?” I have to ask.
My dad’s voice threads through my ears and drags me back to Gate C12.
“I had a . . . spell,” he admits.
“A spell?” I repeat, because if I mirror his words, maybe my hands will stop trembling. “Like you joined a coven? Are we doing witchcraft as a family now?”
A beat, and I feel him try for humor. “Dizzy. Fell. Scared the hell out of Margaret.”
Margaret. The camp nurse who has patched up every kid within a fifty-mile radius for the last twenty years and has never once apologized for telling the truth.
If Margaret is scared, something is wrong. Not a “take it easy” wrong. Not a “we’ll keep an eye on it” wrong. Wrong in a way that makes your life split into before and after.
Because that’s exactly how it happened with Mom.
One day she was fine—bossy and bright, running the camp like nothing could touch her. The next, Margaret dragged her to the hospital. There was a diagnosis that sounded like a foreign language. A calendar suddenly filled with appointments and later that year, she was gone.
There were no big warnings. No gentle slope into acceptance. Just . . . poof.
No more Mom.
It was almost like the universe snapped its fingers and decided we didn’t get time to catch up to our own lives.
“Did you go to the hospital, Dad?”
“She dragged me to the clinic and now . . .” His voice dips. “They want more tests. I need to go to Baker’s Creek to the main hospital.”
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“Because I didn’t want to pull you out of work.”
Work.
The word hits like a slap.
Because he knows. He knows I use work like armor. That I stack assignments, flights, and deadlines so I don’t have to sit too long in one place and get hurt.
“Dad,” I say, forcing lightness into my tone like it’s a life raft, “I film sad stories for a living. I can take a break to stop you from becoming one.”
He exhales, and it’s almost a laugh. Almost. It comes out tired.
“You always know what to say.”
I scoff. “Don’t give me credit. It’s mostly survival.”
I hear him clear his throat. I hear him shift, like he’s moving into the part he’s been trying not to say.
“It’s not just me, Ves.”
Every muscle in my body goes tight.
“What do you mean?” The words rush out too fast, like I can outrun whatever comes next. “Are my brothers okay?”
“County came by,” he says. “Inspection. They’re changing requirements.”
My stomach drops so hard I feel it in my teeth.
He keeps going, voice turning hard, bitter in a way I rarely hear from him. “They’re talking about upgrades. Permits. Compliance. Threatening closure if we don’t meet the new standards—in the middle of registration.”
Closure.
My mind refuses it at first.
Camp isn’t a building to our family. It’s not a property line on a map. It’s not a set of cabins and a rink and a lake.
It’s my mother’s truest self. It’s my father teaching kids how to skate without fear.
It’s where I learned you can be loud and brave and still belong.
It’s where my brothers became who they are—where they learned to get back up after they fell, where they learned discipline, where they learned to win and lose and keep breathing either way.
It’s also where I stopped coming back as often after Mom died five years ago, because grief doesn’t just hurt—it changes the air in your favorite places. It turns joy into a dare.
My eyes burn. My mother isn’t here to turn this into a battle plan. She isn’t here to march into a county office with her clipboard and her smile that could melt through red tape.
It’s just Dad now.
And my brothers—my loud, stubborn, too-proud brothers—who love him and resent him at the same time, because grief didn’t only take our mom. It also took the version of Dad they thought was supposed to be perfect.
I swallow again, throat raw. “Where are Luther and Creed?”
“Your brothers . . . they are around. Fighting for a position in the playoffs,” he says, which is Dad-speak for You don’t interrupt their concentration. “I haven’t told them everything yet.”
Of course he hasn’t—and won’t until the season is over for them.
He’s always trying to carry things alone, as if he can protect us by being the only one under the falling ceiling.
“Dad,” I say, and now I can’t keep the tremor out of my voice, “you can’t—”
“I know,” he interrupts quietly, and that scares me more than anything. Dad doesn’t interrupt. Not unless his control is slipping. “I know. I just . . . I need you here.”
My vision goes glossy. I press my palm against my laptop like it can hold me in place.
There’s a version of me that wants to say no.
Not because I don’t love him. Because I love him so much, it hurts to admit how afraid I am. Because I built a whole adult life around not needing Juniper Ridge. Around not needing anyone. Around proving I could live away from the place that made me.
Because Juniper Ridge isn’t only my parents.
Juniper Ridge is them.
Cally.
Monty.
Three summers that rewired my heart.
I close my eyes, and for a second I’m fifteen again—sunburned, cocky, certain I can handle anything. Certain that if I want something badly enough, the world will make room for it. Then I’m eighteen and I’ve lost it all.
I open my eyes and I’m at Gate C12, older, smarter, and still just as breakable when it comes to the people I love.
“Okay,” I whisper. “I’m coming.”
Dad exhales like he’s been holding his breath for days. “Thank you.”
My boarding group gets called over the loudspeaker. People stand. Bags get hoisted. Life keeps moving like nothing has changed.
Everything has changed.
And all I can think is: fuck.
Because going back to Juniper Ridge doesn’t just mean facing hospital tests and county inspections. It means stepping into the place where my mother’s absence still feels real.
It means seeing my father look smaller than the man I grew up believing was unbreakable.
It means my brothers—stubborn and hurting—are coming back home against their will.
“Send me everything,” I say. “Whatever you have from the doctors and the county. Email, texts, photos. I’ll sort it out.”
“You always were the organized one,” he says, which is a lie so blatant I almost laugh.
I’m not organized. I’m frantic in a cute outfit.
I let out a breath that shakes. “I love you.”
His voice softens in a way that pulls me straight back to being small enough to fit under his arm. “Love you too, kiddo.”
The call ends.
I stare at my phone for a second like it might offer a follow-up explanation, like it might ping again and say, Just kidding. False alarm. Go back to filming dramatic Europeans in hockey rinks.
It’s time to reroute. I just don’t know where to start.