Chapter 37
thirty-seven
MAINE
The two-hour drive from campus to my parents’ house stretches through the dark. My hands grip the steering wheel hard enough to make my knuckles ache, but the physical pain is nothing compared to the crushing weight in my chest, after a call I got from my parents.
We have to sell the house.
Six words. That’s all it took to demolish twenty-two years of my life.
The house where Chloe took her first wheezing steps. Where I learned to ride a bike in the driveway. Where Dad built that ridiculous ramp in the backyard because Chloe wanted to learn to skateboard even though she could barely breathe after walking up stairs.
The house that held every birthday, every crisis, every small victory against the disease that’s been slowly stealing my sister since the day she was born.
And now it’s gone. Or soon will be. Another casualty of medical bills that multiply faster than cancer cells, of insurance companies that find new ways to deny coverage, of a system that forces families to choose between a roof and a heartbeat.
My fault.
The thought pounds in my skull with every mile marker I pass.
If I’d been better. Smarter. Maybe we wouldn’t be here.
Maybe my parents wouldn’t have to pack up twenty-three years of memories.
My phone, face-down in the cupholder, buzzes with another text. Mike, probably. Or maybe Rook with some stupid meme he thinks will cheer me up. I don’t check. There’s nothing anyone can say that will fix this, and I’m only really going home to be with my parents… help them… support them.
They’re back home from the hospital for just a few hours to sign the papers.
That’s what kills me about today—how fucking good it had been after I’d confessed everything to the team. After months of carrying everything, telling them about Chloe, about the money, and about the bet, had been like finally exhaling a breath I’d been holding since September.
They’d rallied around me. Not with pity, but with the kind of gruff, shoulder-checking support that hockey players excel at. Practice had been perfect. For two hours, I’d remembered what it felt like to just be a hockey player again. My passes connected. I even scored a beauty of a goal.
Then my phone rang.
And now the dark highway stretches ahead.
The exit for my hometown appears in the headlights, the familiar green sign now feeling like a grave marker. This is it. The place where the performance ends. Where I stop being Maine the charming, Maine the funny, Maine the guy who’s always fine, and become… what?
Just a son who couldn’t save his family.
I pull into the driveway, the headlights sweeping across the “For Sale by Owner” sign my dad must have hammered into the ground. The sight of it—crooked, hand-painted because they couldn’t even afford a realtor—is sad and devastating.
The kitchen light is on. Through the window, I can see them at the table.
The same scarred oak table where I ate thousands of meals, did homework, and learned that my value was in being easy, in never adding to the burden.
Now it’s covered in paper, the physical documentation of our family’s slow-motion collapse.
I sit in the car for another minute, engine ticking as it cools, trying to summon the mask one more time. The easy grin. The casual slouch. The voice that says everything’s going to be fine, that this is just a speed bump, that we’ve been through worse.
But I can’t find it.
So with a sigh, I exit the car and head inside, and my parents look up from their ocean of paperwork. They somehow look even worse than they have for the last few weeks, holding vigil over Chloe in the ICU, like ghosts haunting their own life.
“Hey, bud,” Dad says, his voice forcefully casual.
Mom’s already moving toward the stove. “Are you hungry? I can heat up?—“
“Stop.”
The word comes out sharper than I intended, raw and cracked down the middle. They both freeze, Mom with her hand on the refrigerator handle, Dad with his reading glasses sliding down his nose, pen hovering over papers he’s about to sign.
I sink into my chair, the one I’ve sat in since I was five years old, the one with the wobbly leg that Dad always meant to fix. My head drops into my hands, and I feel the weight of every lie, every performance, every moment I chose pride over truth pressing down on my shoulders.
“I’m not OK,” I say.
The words fall into the silence like stones into still water. Three words I’ve never said in this kitchen. Three words that betray twenty-two years of being the son who didn’t need, who didn’t take, who didn’t burden. Who always gave, helped, and was easy.
Mom’s hand leaves the refrigerator. “Maine?—“
Now that the dam has cracked, everything floods out. “I’ve been drowning for months. I maxed out credit cards I couldn’t afford to get. I’ve been working sixty-hour weeks. I can barely make rent even with Maya paying half, and now I fucked that up too, and?—“
My voice cracks completely, and suddenly I’m crying. Actually crying in front of my parents. The sound that comes out of me doesn’t even sound human—it’s raw and ugly and broken, the sound of every suppressed breakdown finally escaping at once.
“I tried so fucking hard to handle it myself and not be another problem. To be the easy one, the one you didn’t have to worry about.
But I fucked it all up. I can’t… I can’t fix this.
I can’t fix any of it. I’m supposed to graduate in a few months and maybe get drafted, but what if I don’t? What if?—“
“Stop.” Dad’s voice cuts through my spiral. Not harsh, just… firm. Solid. He takes off his reading glasses, sets them carefully on the medical bills and the house paperwork, then looks at me with eyes that are red-rimmed but steady. “Son, stop.”
I shake my head. “The house?—“
“Fuck the house.”
I’ve heard my father swear maybe five times in my entire life.
The word hangs in the kitchen like a challenge to God himself.
“Richard—“ Mom starts.
“No, Susan. Fuck the house.” He stands up, his chair scraping against the linoleum. “You think I care about these walls? You think any of this matters compared to…” He gestures helplessly at me. “We’re watching Chloe die, and we’ve been watching you kill yourself trying to carry everything alone.”
“That’s not—“ I pause, not knowing what to say, but knowing I need to say something. To relieve them, to make things right. “Dad?—“
“It’s true.” Mom’s voice is quiet but certain. “We failed you, Maine. We got so caught up in Chloe’s illness, in the bills, and in surviving each day, that we forgot you needed us sometimes too. We let you become the parent when you were just a kid yourself.”
“I’m twenty-two?—“
“You’ve been taking care of yourself since you were fourteen.
” The tears are rolling down her cheeks now.
“Every time we missed a game because Chloe was in the hospital. Every time you made your own dinner because we were at appointments. Every time you said you were fine when you weren’t… we knew.”
My dad nods. “And we let it happen because it was easier than admitting we couldn’t handle everything, and because we were too exhausted.”
Dad moves around the table, and then his arms are around me.
Not the quick, back-slapping hugs we usually trade, but a real embrace.
That breaks me completely. I’m sobbing into my father’s shoulder like I’m five years old again, like I’m the kid who could admit when he was scared or hurt or needed help.
Mom joins us, her arms wrapping around both of us, and we stand there in our soon-to-be-sold kitchen, three people who’ve been living on the same sinking ship, finally admitting the water’s coming in too fast to bail out alone, and with no choice but to share the same lifeboat.
When we finally separate, we’re all a mess.
Dad has to blow his nose into a paper towel.
Mom’s mascara has created abstract art on her cheeks.
I probably look like I’ve been hit by a truck, which isn’t far from how I feel.
We’re a collective mess that wouldn’t look out of place on the interstate, being run over by a truck.
“We’ll figure it out,” Dad says.
“Richard, language.”
“The boy’s twenty-two, Susan. I think he’s heard worse on the ice.”
For the first time in months, maybe years, I actually laugh in front of them. Not the performance laugh, not the crowd-pleaser, but the weird, hiccupping sound that happens when you’re emotionally destroyed but something still seems like the funniest thing you’ve ever heard.
We sit back down at the table, shoving aside the paperwork that represents our failures to make room for cups of coffee that Mom insists on making despite everything. It’s terrible coffee—she always makes it too weak—but it tastes like home.
“There is one piece of good news. Small, but…” Mom pulls out her phone, ancient and cracked. “Some group at your school. They’re organizing something.”
She turns the screen toward me, and the world stops.
It’s a website. Professional. Clean. And, at the top, in elegant letters, it says Run for Chloe .
There’s a picture of my sister from last summer, laughing despite the oxygen tubes, looking so fierce and alive it makes my chest ache. And below that…
“Thousands of dollars,” Mom whispers. “In just a few hours. The comments… Maine, there are dozens of them. People from your school, people we don’t even know, all…” She’s crying again, but these are different tears. “All wanting to help Chloe get the treatment…”
I take the phone with shaking hands, scrolling through the page. The language is pitch-perfect, compelling without being manipulative. The organization is flawless—sponsors lined up, logistics handled, social media campaign already viral. This isn’t some half-assed campus charity drive.
This is the work of someone who knows exactly what they’re doing.
Someone who organizes parties that people talk about for months.
Someone who can make order out of chaos with terrifying efficiency.
Someone who once organized a party for me when she couldn’t find the words.
Maya.
Maya did this. Maya, who has every reason to hate me, who should be celebrating my destruction, instead chose to save the thing I love most in the world. She did this for Chloe and for my family.
For me.