Twenty-Two
Stonebridge is a fifteen-minute drive past Alta Lake.
I pull up outside the gate and idle at the bottom of Martin Westfield’s driveway. His address was saved to my phone months ago, and I don’t have the entry code.
The bottle sits on the passenger seat, its bow flattened from rolling around the seat on the drive up.
It cost more than the shirt Ivy ruined, but I still picked it out in less than five minutes because I’ve known the label my whole life.
A rare, sherried scotch, the same bottle Dad kept on hand for special occasions.
Go in smiling. Stay for an hour. Blame the eight minutes. Don’t say her name unless he says it first.
I consider returning Westfield’s missed call now to ask for the code, let him know I’m dropping by to surprise him.
Normally I’d have called back within the hour.
This time, he got four days of nothing. And now he’ll get an apology, on his terms, in his home.
I lived in his house. I know which gestures he counts.
The gate swings open before I reach the intercom.
The door opens before I knock.
Nothing in this house waits to be asked.
“There he is,” Martin Westfield announces, his voice echoing off the stone. My gaze flicks to the empty space behind him.
He fills the doorway in a plush robe and sheepskin slippers, reading glasses hanging around his neck. His mouth curves, and for once it reaches his eyes. His hand lands warm on the back of my neck in his version of a hug. The scent of wood smoke and cloves wafts my way.
“Hope I’m not interrupting the holidays, Marty,” I say, returning the gesture with a couple of pats on the shoulder.
“Not at all. It was a quiet one,” he says lightly. “Come in, come in. Boots off. There’s enough catering left to feed a second line, if you’re hungry.”
“Thanks, but I can’t stay long,” I say as I step inside.
A panorama view of endless white mountains blinds me through floor-to-ceiling windows.
The fireplace crackles, a tree standing nearby, its evenly spaced silver ornaments making it look like it was designed in a hotel lobby.
Professional. Nothing homemade in sight.
Except for one thing, on an end table. I recognize it as soon as I see it: a lopsided ceramic mug glazed the color of a bruise gone purple.
A wobbly M scratched into the side. Val made it at day camp the summer she was eight, copying the kid next to her who was making one for their mom.
Without ours in the picture, she’d given it to Uncle Marty instead.
And he kept it. That’s the problem with Marty—the evidence goes both ways.
“Where’s Valentina?” He pads toward the kitchen ahead of me. “I’d hoped I’d have you both at the table this year.”
He never invited us—he never does. He just misses us out loud.
“Tuscany.” I give him the crumb on purpose. “She’s happy.”
“Mm.” A cupboard opens. Two mugs come down. “Good to hear it. Mulled wine or coffee?”
“Coffee’s good.”
He sets a mug in the Nespresso machine, switches it on, and settles onto a stool as the device whirrs to life. His own mug he ladles with mulled wine, an orange slice floating on top. I hand him the bottle before I lose my nerve.
“Merry Christmas,” I say.
He reads the label, and his face does something I’ve seen maybe four times in my life.
“Gabriel,” he says, and for once it isn’t an instruction. He turns the label to the light. “You remembered.”
“You mentioned it once.”
“Your father drank this. Terrible taste in everything else. Cars. Suits. Music, Lord help us.” He laughs. “This, he got right.”
Carefully, he sets it on the counter with both hands. When he looks at me, his usual gray eyes shine a bright, clear blue. “We killed one the night you were drafted. Did I ever tell you that? He called me from the hallway outside your hotel room so you wouldn’t hear him crying.”
Something in my chest comes loose.
I put my hands in my pockets. “You told me.”
He didn’t. I’d have remembered if he had. But if I let him tell it now, I’m going to lose the face I came here wearing, and I need it for another hour.
As if remembering his manners, he reaches for the mug of steaming coffee and slides it my way. I cup the ceramic, grateful he isn’t pushing Christmas dinner on me.
“You went dark on me,” he says, his tone mild. “Maxine said she called you over twenty times, Gabriel. I called you thrice, directly.” So the assistant’s name is Maxine, I muse.
“I know.” I take a sip, scalding the tip of my lip.
“The courier went to your building twice.”
“I know that, too.” I set my mug down and take a breath, letting him watch me take it.
“Look, Marty, getting yanked after eight minutes sent me sideways. I had to blow off steam. We’re not back on ice until after the holidays anyway, so I figured what the hell, the courier could wait.
I didn’t expect it to be urgent.” I hold his eyes.
“By the time I turned the phone on, a paperwork problem had turned into a story. That’s on me. ”
He watches carefully, eyes searching my face, the way he watches game tape.
“Yanked after eight minutes,” he repeats, tasting each word.
“Yeah.”
I hold his gaze and blank my face, my mind empty. It’s a skill. I’ve had ten years of practice, and he paid for most of it.
The story has holes, and he’s nobody’s fool. I wait with that neutral expression until his shoulders come down. I watch as he picks the version he likes: a kid who spins out over lost ice time is a kid who still wants what Marty is selling. That version of me fits into his world.
“You’ve always taken it hard.” His voice has gone almost fond. “Your father was the same. I outscored him once in ’92—same line, same ice time—and he didn’t speak to me for a month. A month, Gabriel. Grown man.”
“Runs in the family.”
“Mm.” He stands, disappears into the study off the great room, and comes back with a leather folio. “To spare you from dealing with the courier…”
I know what’s in it before it touches the island.
The release. A fresh copy with clean edges. I reread “my” quote in the middle of the page. Under it, the subhead Tiffany’s people are proudest of: The Future of Whistler Nightlife, right next to the blank signature line for my approval.
He lays a pen beside it.
“No pressure,” he says, meaning the opposite.
I pick up the pen. The first stroke doesn’t catch—I have to go over the G twice, ink dragging dry across the grain, so my own initial comes out looking traced. Copied from somewhere else. The rest of my signature is crisp.
Westfield draws the folio back across the island and squares it with the counter’s edge. Then his hand lands on my shoulder. Right side. Same weight, same spot, and his thumb finds the seam of the scar through my shirt without hunting for it.
“Good man,” he says.
He carries his mug to the window and examines the valley below, king again now that the paper is signed.
“You’ll like the launch. I’ve kept the list tight and exclusive.
” He takes a sip of spiced wine, then adds, “You just need to make a little announcement—drafted for your convenience by Tiffany and her team, of course. Shake some hands. Start your own legacy with the new thing—the one your father would’ve given anything to see. ”
“And the old thing?” It’s out before I’ve weighed it.
“The Hayes property will find its level,” he says mildly. “Somewhere smaller, away from the Stroll.” He tips his mug at the view. “Sentiment is a lovely thing, Gabriel. It just isn’t a business plan.”
“She’s tougher than you think.”
Westfield turns all the way around, his blue eyes hardening to gray.
Swallowing, I reach for the easiest thing. “Tough enough to dump a beer on me in front of a crowd.” I let my mouth tilt. “I’d rather have her surviving somewhere off the Stroll than aiming at me.”
A beat passes. Then he laughs. A hearty one, from the chest, and I feel the cost of the joke go on my tab with everything else.
“That’s the spirit,” he says. “Keep your enemies entertaining.”
But when he turns to the window, I catch it. The flicker of doubt.
Martin Westfield doesn’t drop things. He shelves them.
The Sin Bin is two blocks north of her bar, and I feel every meter of it.
Tiffany Ling meets us at the construction entrance in a white hard hat that has never touched work, with a two-man crew behind her on holiday rates.
Westfield’s money, flexing. Inside, the place is torn to the studs—exposed brick, steel beams, cabling hung like vines, cold enough to see your breath.
Somebody has swept a runway of clean plywood from the door to the future bar so nobody’s shoes get dirty.
“Twenty minutes,” Tiffany says. “B-roll and one voice pass. We’ll cut and edit tonight. It’ll air with the game tomorrow.”
Someone puts a hard hat on me. White, like his.
“Walk and talk,” the camera op says. “You don’t have to actually talk.”
We walk. We don’t talk. A guy with a light meter orbits us while Westfield points at ductwork and I nod at nothing. On the third pass his arm comes up around my shoulders—same side, always the same side—and Tiffany calls out, “Give me a laugh, like he said something funny.”
He hasn’t said anything at all.
I laugh.
We go again—because the first one read cold on the monitor. The second one reads warm.
Then Tiffany stands me against the brick and hands me a card with my own quote on it.
“Once through, nice and easy. It runs under the renderings.”
The tally light goes red.
“It’s exciting,” I tell the lens. “The Sin Bin is the future of Whistler hockey. A place that reflects what this team stands for: excellence, community, championship culture.”
“Perfect,” Tiffany says. “Once more, for safety.”
I say the lines again; it comes out identically.
While the crew breaks down the lights, the editor kid runs it back on the monitor to check levels, and my own voice climbs out of the little speaker into the gutted room. Even. Warm. Certain.
Three days ago I read those words on my kitchen island and my hands shook. I told myself the worst part was that I could hear myself saying them. I was wrong. The worst part is standing in the cold in a borrowed hard hat, listening to it played back, and knowing nobody had to invent a word of it.
Seven years ago, other people decided what my name meant. Today they didn’t have to.
I opened my own mouth. I picked up the pen myself.
“Great stuff,” the editor kid says.
The truck is an icebox. I don’t start the engine.
Down the Stroll, past the construction fencing and the holiday crowds, her sign hangs dark over the door.
I sit with my hands on the wheel while the crew loads out behind me, and the thing I’ve been holding down all day finally surfaces. Guilt, I know. Nerves, I know. What’s underneath both of those is how easy it was to fake it.
“Fuck.”
The word fogs the windshield.
I pull out my phone. Her name is right there, and my thumb hovers over it, and then I put the phone back in my pocket. The job is the job. She doesn’t need to hear from the good soldier.
I start the engine.
Tomorrow there’s a game, and a tunnel, and a reporter holding a question already answered for me. I’ll give the quote again, live this time. I’ll say it like I mean it, because that’s what Ivy is counting on.