Chapter 52
~Hudson~
The incessant buzzing of my phone pulls me from the recesses of sleep, and my arm flails in the darkness as I try to locate it. My bedside table isn’t where it should be, reminding me that I’m not at home.
Right. Canadians.
After a few more swings of my arm, I manage to find the phone and answer it, my voice groggy and my head heavy. I would swear I’m hung over except that I don’t remember drinking.
I don’t remember much of anything after my skate yesterday.
“Hello?”
“Hudson, it’s Clara. How are you?”
The sound of my therapist’s voice brings back the remaining fuzzy memories from the arena: the woman in the pink coat in the crowd and the phone call that sent me into a spiral.
“I… uh, I’m okay. What time is it?”
I grope around for the alarm clock that sat on the hotel nightstand, but it’s nowhere to be found. It must have fallen to the floor at some point.
“It’s ten o’clock Sunday morning. Are you still in bed?”
So, I lost the whole evening last night and worried my family enough that they made Clara call me on her day off. Vaguely, these facts filter into my mind, but the emotions that should accompany them are muted. I don’t feel much of anything besides fatigue and emptiness.
“Yeah. I just woke up.”
My hand drags roughly down my face as I try to shake the fog from my head.
“Make yourself a cup of tea,” Clara instructs, guessing that I need it. “I’ll wait.”
Putting the phone down, I do as she says, turning on the kettle and using the bathroom while the water boils. When I’ve taken a few sips of the hot liquid and feel a little more alert, I pick the phone back up.
“Hi.”
Clara’s been my therapist ever since I got home from Canadians four years ago and found out about Sophie.
She’s seen me in just about every state of mind, and I trust her completely.
So, when she says, “Tell me what happened yesterday,” I don’t leave anything out.
Details about the pink coat in the crowd and the phone calls, both the silent one and the one I got yesterday, as much as I can remember of it, spill out of me.
I relay it all analytically, as if it happened to someone else and not to me.
She doesn’t interrupt until I run out of words, trailing off into uneasy silence that I break with the question that’s uppermost in my mind. “Am I making all of this up? Is it some kind of hallucination?”
“Why do you think you’d be hallucinating about Sophie now?” she presses gently. “What’s different about this year?”
That’s easy. “Riley’s different.”
Clara doesn’t sound surprised at that confession, even though I haven’t mentioned Riley to her before. My family must have filled in some blanks.
“Well, Sutton says she saw the woman in the crowd too, so you didn’t imagine her. Check your phone logs. Are there calls at the times you remember taking them?”
Obediently, I lower the phone from my ear and scroll back through my call log. Sure enough, there are the ‘unknown number’ calls following each skate.
“Someone did call me,” I confirm. “But in a way, that’s almost worse. If I’m not imagining it, who the fuck called me?”
“I don’t know, but it seems like someone may have wanted to rattle you, someone who knows your history.”
My stomach recoils at the idea. What kind of sociopath would use Sophie’s death against me like that?
“I don’t know who would hate me that much.”
“It’s not a normal thing to do,” Clara agrees mildly. “And I’m not a detective. I can’t help you figure that out, but I can help you come up with a plan so that if anything like that happens again, you know what to do.”
She’s big on taking positive action to feel in control of situations, a method that usually works for me. Today, though, I’m not so sure.
“I didn’t see Riley yesterday.”
Through the fog of my memory, I can almost picture her waiting outside somewhere as I walked by. It’s so indistinct, I’m not sure if it actually happened or not. Either way, I know that it’s Sunday and I’m alone, so she must have flown back to Edmonton without seeing me.
Guilt immediately swells inside me as I imagine her taking that long plane ride home, by herself, completely in the dark about why I ignored her. It’s the first true emotion I’ve felt since I woke up, and my groan interrupts whatever Clara’s saying.
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
“I let her down.”
“Sophie?”
Well, yes, but that’s not what I mean.
“Riley. The person on the phone said I would let Riley down, just like I let Sophie down, and she’s right. I must have completely ignored her yesterday. I thought I was ready for this, but maybe I’m not. Fuck, I’m messing it all up.”
“Take a deep breath,” Clara advises. “Count it out with me.”
My heart pounding, I do my best to follow along as she counts out a deep inhale and a longer exhale, three times.
I wait to speak, afraid I’ll start rambling again without a direct question from Clara.
When it comes, it’s not the question I want to answer. “Why didn’t you tell Riley about Sophie?”
In my head, I review the excuses I made over the last couple of months, each one sounding flimsy and insubstantial now. If I take away all the ‘reasons’ I came up with, I can boil it down to one true one. “I was afraid to.”
“Why?” she asks again, gentle but firm as always. “What were you afraid of?”
Images flash through my mind, each one a memory from the past three months with Riley. Every conversation we had where she hesitated to get involved with me and I assured her it would be okay.
“I’m afraid she’ll figure out I can’t be what she needs.”
I expect Clara to correct me and tell me I’m wrong. I brace for the words to come, hoping that they’ll give me the reassurance I need, but they never do.
Instead, she speaks my deepest fears out loud.
“Maybe it’s a bit too early to be putting this much pressure on yourself in a relationship. It’s wonderful that you want to move on, but it might be too much, too fast. Your reaction yesterday might be your brain’s way of telling you to take a step back.”
Fuck. As much as I don’t want to believe that, I have to at least consider my therapist’s point of view. She knows me better than just about anyone.
But if I take a step back, will Riley take it as rejection? She’s already put herself on the line for this, and if I pull the rug out from under her, am I going to lose her forever?