Chapter 54
~Hudson~
Even in the dead of winter, there’s plenty to do on my grandparents’ farm.
My uncle Jack runs most of the operations now and he quickly puts me to work with the chickens.
Feeding, egg collecting, and cleaning keeps my mind occupied for hours, giving me little chance to think about anything else.
Each day just after noon, I speak to Clara on a video call for an hour, but other than that, my dad keeps a tight grip on my electronics. I can’t call or text or email anyone.
By the time I come back inside on Tuesday afternoon, my cheeks tight with cold, I’m at my wits’ end.
“Dad, I need to talk to Riley. She’s leaving in the morning for Denver.”
Clara doesn’t think I should go to the US National Championships.
She worries that being back in an arena so soon, in a space so similar to the one that just triggered my shut-down, will set me back again.
My parents are still planning to go, so Riley will have their support even if she doesn’t have mine.
It doesn’t feel right to me, though, especially knowing that Trevor and Evelyn will both be there. I’d rather focus on helping her through her tough time instead of fixating on mine. Already, I feel less rattled than I did before, and as my shock recedes, anger begins to creep in.
Someone made that call to me. Someone who knows my deepest pain used it against me, and the list of possible suspects is very small.
I never spoke to any of my friends about what happened to Sophie, because I couldn’t.
Hell, I didn’t even tell Riley. The people who know the whole story and would have access to my phone number are practically limited to my family, and I know they’re not to blame.
So who the fuck is behind this?
“Has Clara given the okay to call Riley?” my dad asks.
Clara hasn’t budged on her position that I’m rushing things with Riley.
I keep trying to explain that none of this is Riley’s fault, and the more I talk things through with Clara, the more I’m convinced that she’s wrong about this.
For the first time since Sophie, I want to put myself in a position where someone else is relying on me, and I don’t see how that’s a bad thing.
If it weren’t for this whole fucked-up prank someone pulled, I wouldn’t be doubting it at all.
Whoever made that call also knew about Riley. They knew we were together and that letting her down would be the one fear that would keep me from her. Whether they wanted to break us up or just break me, I can’t be sure, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let them do either.
I explain this to my dad as well as I can, making sure to keep my tone even and tempered. “Honestly, I don’t care what Clara says. Riley’s more important to me. I need to talk to her. Please give me my phone.”
“Why don’t we call Clara together and ask her?”
Apparently, he decided to ignore the part where I said I don’t care about Clara’s opinion, but if it’ll get me what, I’ll go along with it. “Fine.”
He places the call, putting the phone on speaker so we can both hear, and Clara’s response when my dad relays my request is unfortunately predictable. “I don’t think you’re ready for that just yet, Hudson. You need to focus on yourself.”
“What would convince you that I’m ready?” I ask. There must be a way to reach a compromise.
In the short silence that follows, I can picture the way her lips press together as she considers her options.
“Well, before speaking to Riley, you could talk to Peggy.”
The mention of Sophie’s sister chills my blood, but aware of my dad watching my reaction, I do my best to appear unaffected. “I already tried. She won’t speak to me.”
A year after Sophie’s death, a year after she point-blank told me that if I didn’t care more about my skating career than I did about her sister that Sophie would still be alive, I wrote Peggy a letter asking her to meet with me.
Clara thought it would help me deal with the guilt I still felt, guilt that Peggy’s words had only intensified.
She replied a week later telling me to go to hell.
I haven’t tried again since.
Clara thinks I’m avoiding it. I think Peggy’s entitled to grieve in her own way and I respect her pain enough to not want to cause her any more of it. If she doesn’t want to listen to me, I can’t force her to.
However, hearing her name brings up something I’d forgotten: in the letter I sent her, I gave her my phone number in case she ever wanted to reach out to me. She never has, but maybe…
Maybe there is someone who knows the whole story and has access to my phone number after all.
“Actually, I think you’re right. I’ll go talk to her tonight.” My swift turn-around on the subject takes both my dad and Clara by surprise, but I’m already on my feet, ready to go. “I’ll take Sutton with me.”
Sutton and Peggy are close in age and were acquainted, if not friends. Having her there rather than my dad feels like a better plan.
“Are you sure?” A worried frown creases my dad’s face, but I give him my most convincing smile and nod.
“I’m leaving now. Are you coming with me?”
Not intending to let me out of his sight, he hangs up with Clara and we say a quick goodbye to our extended family before heading back onto the snowy highway towards Edmonton.
In the truck, my dad places a call to Sutton to explain the situation to her, and she promises to meet us at the house.
By the time we get there, it’s going to be late evening, so I try to convince my dad to let me call Riley in the meantime.
Unfortunately, he holds firm in his refusal. “One thing at a time, Hudson. Let’s see how talking to Peggy goes first.”
The front door opens as soon as we reach the house and Sutton runs out.
“Move over,” she instructs me, and I slide into the driver’s seat my dad just vacated while Sutton gets in the passenger side.
As soon as her seatbelt is fastened and the door is closed, I take off, and she shoots me a curious look. “How do you know where to find her?”
“I don’t, but we’ll start with Sophie’s parents and go from there.”
I haven’t seen them in a long time either, but they were never upset with me the way that Peggy was. Given the chance to help us try to mend fences, I believe they’ll do what they can.
“This isn’t just about getting closure, is it?” Sutton guesses. My dad gave her Clara’s reason for why I need to talk to Peggy, but Sutton knows me better than that.
“There might be more to it, but I don’t want to influence you. You can tell me afterwards what you think.”
Sophie’s dad answers the door, and after expressing his surprise at seeing me, he hands over Peggy’s address. She lives not far from Sutton since they’re both attending classes at the university.
“Be patient with her,” he requests, his eyes holding a lingering pain that I can only partly comprehend. “She struggles with all of it, still.”
“I understand. I’ll do my best.”
Twenty minutes later, we pull up outside a town house on a quiet, residential street.
Lights shine from inside and voices drift through the door as we climb the snow-slicked stairs, our breath puffing out in thick clouds in the still night air.
Peggy’s dad said she lives with a couple of friends, so maybe having some extra people around will keep this civil.
With my gloved hand, I press the doorbell and listen as the chatter inside stops and footsteps approach the door.
A young woman opens the door, her hair the same shade of blonde as Sophie’s but her eyes blue where Sophie’s were brown. The curious look on her face instantly morphs into both alarm and anger when her eyes land on me.
Over her shoulder, hanging on a hook from the wall, I catch a flash of pink.
Peggy moves to shut the door in our faces, but I manage to stick my arm out before she gets the chance. My arm gets a little crunched, but the door stays unlocked.
“Move back,” I order before pushing the door inwards. Peggy stumbles back into another woman who has appeared in the hall.
“What’s going on?” the newcomer asks, her eyes darting between all of us.
“What’s going on is that this woman is a psychopath,” Sutton seethes, marching into the hall and snatching the coat off the hook.
It’s Sophie’s coat, there’s no question about it, and it’s also an exact match for the one I saw in the crowd this weekend.
“Did you really fly across the country to harass my brother?”
“Give me her coat,” Peggy shrieks, grabbing it back from Sutton. The two of them tug on it for a moment until I step forward and wrap an arm around Sutton’s shoulders, pulling her back.
“Okay, let’s all calm down.” I shoot an imploring look at Peggy’s friend, who’s pulled her phone out, no doubt ready to call for help if we don’t leave. “We just came by to see if Peggy knew anything about this coat being in London this weekend, and I think we have our answer.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Peggy insists, clutching the coat to her chest as she glares at Sutton. “I wasn’t in London.”
“She wasn’t,” her friend backs her up. “She was here all weekend. We had a party, there are tons of pictures.”
She sounds convinced of it, but that doesn’t make any sense. Why is that coat hanging in her hallway, four years later, when I just saw it on the other side of the country? It can’t be a coincidence. Not with the phone calls and everything else.
Sutton obviously agrees with me. “Do you have pictures of the coat? Was it here all weekend?”
“Of course we don’t have pictures of a fucking coat,” Peggy retorts, but I see what Sutton’s getting at. Maybe Peggy wasn’t the one in the crowd; in fact, she probably wasn’t. Sutton probably would have recognized her if it was her.
But that doesn’t mean she didn’t play some part in it.
I focus my gaze on Peggy, trying to keep my tone as conciliatory as possible. “Someone in the crowd at Canadians was wearing a coat just like this. Do you know anything about that?”
“No,” she spits back, finally turning her stare on me. “And if seeing it made you feel guilty enough to fall, maybe you are guilty.”
Her words are just as venom-tipped as they were four years ago. For her, nothing has changed, and Clara and her parents and anyone else who thinks otherwise is in for a disappointment.
But it’s also obvious to me that she did have something to do with what happened this weekend. How else would she know that I fell after seeing the coat? “What about the phone call?” I try. “Was that you?”
Her eyes dart away just enough to confirm I’m right. It doesn’t completely make sense to me how she knew about Riley, but deep in my gut, I know it was her.
When her gaze returns to me, it’s still burning with contempt. “I don’t have to answer any of your fucking questions. I wish you’d done more than fall. I wish you could never skate again. You don’t deserve any of it.”
Sutton surges forward again, forcing me to tighten my grip around her. Peggy might be stuck in the past, but what has changed is my reaction to her.
Back then, the blame she placed on me suffocated me.
It broke me because it echoed my deepest guilt and fear, but four years and a lot of therapy has taught me that I wasn’t the cause of Sophie’s depression.
Her decision to leave this world had nothing to do with me and everything to do with her own struggles.
Peggy’s grief is the same in a lot of ways. She’s directing it at me, but deep down, it’s something only she can fix, and any time I spend here while she’s still drowning in her anger will be wasted.
I got some of the answers I needed and I’m ready to figure out the rest with the people who truly matter in my life.
It’s time for me to talk to Riley.
“Let’s go, Sutton.”
Reluctantly, my sister lets me pull her out of the house and back to my dad’s truck.
When I don’t turn towards home, she doesn’t even ask where we’re going.
It’s not too hard to read my mind. We make the short drive to Riley’s house, but when we arrive, darkness greets us.
Not a single light can be seen from inside the house and the car port is empty.
I knock anyway, but I’m not surprised when no one answers.
“Have you heard from her today?” I ask Sutton when I climb back into the truck, but she shakes her head.
“Maybe she texted you?”
It’s another half hour before I can check, when we get back to my parents’ house and they finally give me my phone back. That’s when I see the message Riley sent earlier that afternoon.
I’m changing to an earlier flight, I’ll be heading out this afternoon. I think it’s best that I keep my phone off for the competition so I can stay focused. Please take your time and do whatever you need to do to feel better. I’ll see you when I get back.