Chapter 28
The desert stretched flat and brown in every direction. Nine hours of nothing, and my body was screaming for ice.
This was the longest I'd gone without training since I was fourteen.
By now I should have been three hours into my morning session, running through the short program until every transition was automatic.
Instead, I was behind the wheel of a rental car, the speedometer hovering at eighty, calculating how many days of conditioning I was losing with every mile.
Red was asleep in the passenger seat, his bandaged hand cradled against his chest.
I could have woken him, made him talk to me instead of retreating into unconsciousness. But he needed the escape more than I needed the company, so I let him sleep and counted exits instead. My father had trained that into me young: always know your way out.
My phone buzzed in the cupholder. Natalia. The third time in the last hour.
Your father won't stop calling. He's threatening to fire me if I don't tell him where you are. He says he'll call the police and report you missing. Joel, PLEASE.
I turned the phone face down and kept driving.
I'd told Natalia everything before we left.
Cleared my schedule, rescheduled press, explained that I was driving Red to New Mexico because his father was dying.
She'd asked if I needed anything. I'd said just keep everyone off my back.
She was doing her best, but my father wasn't everyone. My father didn't accept being managed.
Red shifted in his sleep, his forehead creasing. Whatever he was dreaming, it wasn't good.
I reached over and rested my hand on his knee. The crease smoothed. He didn't wake.
At a red light in some town I didn't catch the name of, I typed back one-handed.
Tell him I'm with a friend. Tell him I'll call when I'm ready. If he fires you, I'll double your salary and you can work for me directly.
Her response was immediate.
Be careful.
I put the phone back. She was right. He would find out. He always did. But that was a problem for later, and right now the only thing that mattered was the man sleeping beside me and the road stretching out ahead.
The light turned green. I drove.
The neighborhood was every other neighborhood in America. Ranch-style homes lined the streets, their brown lawns going gold in the autumn sun. Basketball hoops hung over garage doors. It was the kind of place where people left their doors unlocked and knew their neighbors' names.
Derek's house had a minivan in the driveway and a kid's bicycle on its side near the porch. I parked on the street.
Red didn't move to get out.
"You okay?" I asked.
"Yeah." His eyes were fixed on the house. "Just give me a second."
I gave him a second. Then another. A woman walked past on the sidewalk with a stroller, glancing at the rental car with mild curiosity.
"Okay," Red said finally. "Let's go."
Derek answered the door before we knocked. He must have been watching from the window.
He pulled Red into a hug immediately, one arm tight around his shoulders, the other hand gripping the back of his neck.
Red went stiff for a second, then melted into it.
I stood on the porch while they held each other, two brothers who'd learned to communicate in shorthand, and I had no idea what to do with my hands.
When Derek let go, his eyes were wet. He blinked it away and turned to me.
"You must be Joel," he said. "Thanks for driving him."
He was giving me an out. Letting me pretend we hadn't already met, hadn't already sat together in a hospital waiting room for hours while Red was recovering. Red had been too drugged afterward to remember any of it, and I'd never told him.
I could take the out, shake Derek's hand, play the stranger, let Red keep believing I'd shown up after the worst was over.
"Good to see you again," I said. "How's your father doing?"
Red's head turned sharply. I didn't look at him.
Derek's chin lifted slightly, the recalibration of a man realizing his brother's relationship was further along than he'd thought.
"Day by day," Derek said. He stepped back to let us in. "Sarah's in the kitchen. Kids are—" A crash from somewhere in the house, followed by a shriek. "—being kids."
We stepped inside. The house smelled like something baking, warm and sweet. Every wall had pictures on it: Red as a teenager in a hockey jersey, Red and Derek as kids with gap-toothed grins and sunburned shoulders, Robert Piper Sr. holding a baby in each arm like he'd won the lottery.
I looked away.
A woman came around the corner from the kitchen. She was visibly pregnant, six or seven months maybe, with flour on her apron and her hair pulled back in a messy ponytail. Her eyes went wide when she registered who was standing in her foyer.
"Oh my God," she said through her fingers. "I would have changed. I would have cleaned. There's flour in my hair, Red."
I smiled the smile I'd perfected for press junkets and sponsor meetings, the one that made people feel special without giving them anything real. "It's nice to meet you, Sarah. Red's told me a lot about you."
He hadn't. I didn't know anything about her except that she had posters of me. But the line worked the way it always worked, making her light up like I'd given her a gift.
"Can I get you something to drink?" she asked, already backing toward the kitchen. "Water? Coffee?"
"Water's fine. Thank you."
She disappeared. Derek rubbed a hand over his face.
"She's been like this since I told her you were coming," he said. "I had to hide her phone so she wouldn't post about it."
"I'm used to it." The words came out flatter than I meant them to. Derek's eyes sharpened. I'd let something slip, the exhaustion maybe, or the hollowness underneath the charm.
Red pushed off the wall. "Where are the kids?"
"Owen's in the backyard. Lily's upstairs reading." Derek glanced between us. "Red, you're in the guest room. Joel, I can set you up on the couch if that works. It pulls out."
"The couch is—" I started.
"Joel can have the guest room," Red said. "He just drove nine hours. I'll take the couch."
His eyes met mine, steady, daring me to argue.
"You sure?" Derek asked. "You're the one with the busted hand."
"I'm sure."
Derek shrugged. "Okay. Joel, the guest room's down the hall, second door on the left. Red, I'll grab you some blankets."
Red headed toward the living room without looking at me.
The guest room was small and clean, with a patchwork quilt on the bed and family photos on the walls. More pictures of Red: in a Lobos jersey at seventeen or eighteen, mid-laugh; standing next to Derek at someone's wedding, both in ill-fitting suits; holding a newborn, his face soft with wonder.
I set my bag down and stood there, surrounded by evidence of a life I'd never had.
Someone knocked. I expected Red, come to fight with me about the couch or the hospital or any of the other landmines we'd laid between us.
It was the boy, Owen. He stood in the doorway with a plastic hockey stick in his hand and zero sense of boundaries.
"Mom says you're a figure skater," he said.
"That's right."
"That's the spinning thing."
"That's the spinning thing."
He considered this, his face scrunched in thought. "Uncle Red plays real hockey."
"He's pretty good at it."
"He's the best." Owen said this with absolute certainty, the way only a child could. "He's going to teach me when I'm bigger. The fast kind, not the spinning kind."
"The fast kind is good too."
Owen held up the plastic stick. "Want to play? Dad's too tired and Uncle Red's hand is broken."
I should have said no. I should have stayed in the guest room and given Red space and figured out how to apologize for whatever I'd done wrong. But Owen was already turning away, assuming I'd follow, and something in me wanted to see what it was like to play in a backyard.
I followed him outside.
The backyard was small and brown, a chain-link fence separating it from identical yards on either side. Owen positioned me in front of a makeshift goal made from two garden stakes and handed me another plastic stick.
"You're goalie," he said.
"Okay."
"I'm going to score a hundred goals."
"We'll see about that."
He grinned and lined up his shot with intense concentration.
The ball came at me slow and wobbly, and I blocked it easily.
Owen retrieved it without complaint and tried again.
We played for twenty minutes. He narrated the whole time, giving himself play-by-play commentary, announcing his own goals even when I blocked them.
He was fast and uncoordinated and utterly certain of his own brilliance.
"You're not very good," Owen informed me after I let one through on purpose.
"You're right. I'm not."
"Uncle Red's better."
"Uncle Red's better than most people."
He grinned at that, gap-toothed and proud.
The sliding door opened. Lily stepped onto the patio with a book tucked under her arm. She sat on the steps, her eyes on us.
After a few minutes, she said, "You're the quad guy."
I glanced at her. "Yeah."
Owen fired another shot. I missed it completely.
"Are you Uncle Red's boyfriend?" Lily asked.
The question hung in the air. Owen wasn't paying attention, already crashing through the bushes after his ball.
"We're friends," I said. "I'm just here to help."
Lily nodded, but her expression said she wasn't buying it.
She went back to her book without pushing.
Owen demanded my attention with another shot.
And through the kitchen window, Red sat at the table with Derek and Sarah, his head thrown back laughing at something, his whole body loose in a way that was new to me.
He belonged here.
Derek and Red appeared at the sliding door. "Red and I are heading out to Sunrise."
I looked at Red, who still looked like he was bracing for a hit on the ice. "I'll be here when you get back."