Chapter 22
CARSON
We walk silently through the softly falling snow. My muscles are tense and something weird is happening inside my chest from everything that just happened.
After all this, Gia knew. Did the whole fucking family know? Did they let us make fools of ourselves pretending to still be married, when they knew?
We go in to say goodbye to Ayla’s aunt and uncle.
“Thank you so much for all the work you did,” Gia says to Ayla as they hug goodbye. “It was amazing to have the whole family here. At my age, there won’t be many more chances to do that.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Phht. I’m ninety-nine. It’s the truth.” She cups Ayla’s face and peers into her eyes. “You do so much for everyone else. I see it.”
Ayla gives a tiny nod.
“Don’t set yourself on fire to keep others warm.”
“Uh…”
“You are important, too.”
Ayla gazes at her great-grandmother. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
Nonna and I hug, too, me having to bend my legs to her height. She pats my cheek. “You’re a good man. I know you want to fix everything. But not everything is yours to fix.”
My face feels hot. No idea how to respond to that, so I nod, and then we leave.
Ayla and I walk back to our own cottage along the path, shiny black, wet from the melting snow. Ayla’s hands are shoved in the pockets of her jacket, her shoulders hunched.
I don’t know exactly what she’s feeling, but it isn’t good. Ayla’s more emotional than me. I like to think things through. Stay in control. She tends to react quickly, passionately.
Except after Kane died. Then, she was almost comatose. It scares me even thinking back to that time, how worried and terrified I was for her.
She drops onto the couch and buries her face in her hands. “I can’t believe they all knew.”
I sit beside her. “I know. I feel like a fucking idiot.”
“I’m sorry. This is all my fault.”
“Apparently, also Rachel’s.”
“I’m so mad at her!” She jumps up and starts pacing across the room. “She set us up! And she’s the one who told me you can’t put poop back in your butt!”
My jaw drops. “Uh…”
She waves a hand. “That’s a whole other issue.” She faces me. “Are we doing this now?”
“I thought we could talk when we get home.”
She nods slowly and I can see her thinking. “Okay. That’s probably best. We need to pack and there are some things at the pavilion that I have to load into your car.”
“Right.”
We pack our suitcases. I carry things out to my SUV, then we pull it around to the entrance of the pavilion and I help her load up the stuff she needs to bring home.
“What will you do with all this?” I ask.
“I don’t know. Save it for the next family party.”
“Someone else should organize the next family party.”
She slides me a look as she pushes a box into the vehicle. “Sure.”
“Are we ready to hit the road?”
She looks around. “I feel… it’s kind of a letdown when it’s all done.” The corners of her mouth turn down. “All the work getting ready and then all the activity with the family. Which I loved! But now…” She lifts one shoulder. “At least Nonna said thank you.”
“Fuck.” I shake my head. I hate it that once again, her family has taken her for granted. She gets so much joy out of doing things for them, but she’d get a hell of a lot more if they just showed their appreciation. “I’m sorry, angel. Come on.”
The snow has stopped and the sun is out so there are no worries about weather impacting our trip home. Ayla starts a playlist on the sound system in the car and we listen to a lot of Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter, and Nikki Sullivan.
“Nikki Sullivan is dating Smitty,” I remark. “Did you know that?”
“I did know that. I saw it online somewhere. Have you met her?”
“Yeah. She’s come to a few games. The Thanksgiving party.”
“That’s so cool. What’s she like?”
“She seems pretty normal.”
Ayla laughs. “Okay.”
“I mean, she’s not a raging diva because she’s famous. She went through a rough time after that disaster at one of her concerts.”
“Oh, right. I read about that, too.”
“She seems to really love Smitty, and he’s nuts about her. So that’s good.”
“Yeah. I’m happy for him. He’s a nice guy.”
She sounds a little wistful. She sounded like that when we were talking about the team and the wives that night in the hot tub. Does she miss that? Fuck. That makes my stomach cramp.
As we fall silent, I think about what’s happened the last couple of days and the conversation we’re about to have.
The conflict inside of me is making me a little nauseous.
After being with Ayla again, I can’t deny I still have feelings for her.
I fucking love her so much. I never stopped.
Things were rough between us and I feel hopeful that we’ve gotten beyond that, with the time that’s passed.
But I also have this vague worry that it’s not going to be that easy.
Sleeping with Ayla was amazing. That was the good part of the trip. Okay, also talking to her, and laughing with her. There’s nobody I’ve ever been with who makes me feel the way she does—like I’m all powerful. Like I can do anything. Win the Stanley Cup. Walk on water. End climate change.
There were also tough moments. Talking about Kane.
Talking about how Ayla felt like a failure, when I was the one who failed.
Every time these things came up, the rock in my gut got bigger.
It’s still there, hard and painful. I have a sense of impending doom creeping up on me that makes my chest tight and breathing shallow.
I want my wife back. She’s my heart and my soul and I’m not the poetic type but Jesus, I love her and miss her more than anything. And I’m terrified I’m going to mess it up. Again.
* * *
“Coffee?”
We’re in the kitchen at Ayla’s house. I’ve helped carry everything in including Ayla’s suitcase. I don’t need caffeine; I’m as edgy as a one-eyed cat watching two rat holes.
“Sure.” I make my voice calm as I sit on a stool at the big island.
When we both have mugs of coffee in our hands, Ayla says, “We can go into the family room.”
She leads the way into the comfortable room and turns on the fireplace. All the windows on three sides of the room look out on the backyard. Colorful cushions are layered on the big cream-colored sectional where we used to snuggle up to watch TV. I take a seat on one side; Ayla sits adjacent.
“Okay,” she says. “Let’s talk.”
I rub the back of my neck and look away. Christ, is my hand shaking? “I feel like I always say the wrong thing. Where do we start?”
“Let’s start with you telling me I’m ridiculous.”
“What?” I lower my hand, staring at her.
“Back at breakfast. When I said my divorce felt like a failure. You said that’s ridiculous.”
“I didn’t mean you’re ridiculous. I meant, you have to get over that idea that you’re a failure. You’re not.”
“And there you go again. “Just get over it.” That’s always what you said.”
My face tightens and my back teeth grind together. “Because you have to do it.”
“It’s not that easy!”
I make a rough noise. “I know that.”
“Do you? Really? Because after Kane died, it seemed like you didn’t have much empathy for what I was going through. I felt like you were pressuring me to just get on with life.”
Pressured? What the fuck? This isn’t going well. I take a breath. “I wasn’t pressuring you.”
“I said, that’s how I felt. Argh! And you never…” She pauses and draws in a breath, then rephrases her sentence. “Sorry. I felt like you weren’t acknowledging how I felt when you said that.”
“I’m sorry I made you feel pressured.” I rephrase my own sentence.
“Do you see why I felt that way?”
I nod slowly. “Yeah.”
“You didn’t want to talk about it. About what happened or how you felt. I felt like you didn’t care, you got over it so quickly, and you kept telling me to get over it and get on with life and I couldn’t.”
He nods.
“I didn’t want to talk about what happened either, at first. I was a zombie. But then… I wanted to talk about my baby. About how I felt. I wanted you to talk about it, too. I thought that would help you move on. But you shut me down all the time, saying you were fine. And you know what?”
“What?”
“It pissed me off.”
My attention is riveted on her beautiful face, at the emotions passing over it. I’m stunned by her declaration that she’d been angry with me.
“Your desire to ‘get on with life’ pissed me off. It felt like a betrayal. And that was a double loss. I’d lost my son… and my husband was betraying me. It made me angry. It made my grief even worse. It made me doubt myself and question our love.”
“Fuck.” My heart is hammering and I start sweating. I fold my arms across my chest.
“I just wanted to talk about it, just wanted you to listen, but I felt like you were judging me. Like you thought I wasn’t trying hard enough.
Like you were trying to control me. Because you’re like that.
You want to fix everything. And I got uncomfortable talking to you about it.
So I didn’t.” She drags fingertips under one eye. “You were treating me like a child.”
My whole body heats. Defensiveness makes me want to argue with that. My brain scrambles to try to find something that will refute what she just said. “I didn’t treat you like a child,” I mutter.
Christ. Is that the best I’ve got?
I take a deep breath and let it out, remembering what it was like back then.
“Okay. Yes. Every time you talked about your feelings, it made me uncomfortable. Anxious. You’re right…
I did want to fix things. I tried. But it was killing me because I couldn’t fix it for you.
I got frustrated because it seemed like…
” I hesitate. “Like you tried to make yourself feel worse by constantly going into Kane’s bedroom, sitting in there, leaving it just like it was.
” I close my eyes and cover them with my hand.
“I felt like you didn’t want to move forward. ”
She’s silent and when I look over at her, her eyes are glossy, her mouth soft. “I guess… maybe that’s true. I didn’t want to move on.” Her voice is small. “Moving on made me feel guilty. Like I was forgetting him. Like he didn’t m-matter.”
“But you have to move on.”
“I know that! I just said it’s not that easy! Maybe for you, it was. You just wanted to get back to playing hockey and get on with life.”
“That’s what you’re supposed to do. You don’t grieve forever.”
“You don’t?”
What does that mean? She’s looking at me like she’s confused. “No. You don’t.”
She slowly moves her head from side to side. “I can’t believe you’re saying that.”
“Why would you hang on to negativity like that?”
“It’s not hanging on to negativity. Didn’t you hear what Nonna said earlier?
It’s hanging on to love. That’s why it’s always there.
I’ll always love K-Kane.” Her voice breaks and it feels like a stabbing in my gut.
“And it will always hurt. Would I trade the love to avoid the pain?” She shakes her head. “No.”
A helpless feeling is creeping over me. I fucking hate it. “You think I didn’t love him.”
She gazes at me. “I didn’t say that.”
“But you think it.”
“No. I know you loved him. But…” She closes her eyes briefly. “I don’t understand how you don’t still love him.”
I’m trying to sort this all out in my head. To understand what she’s saying. “You can’t be miserable forever.”
“I’m not miserable. But I’ll always have that empty ache, that place he used to be. It reminds me that he was real, that he existed. That I loved him. Like I said… I wouldn’t trade the love to avoid the pain. That’s the tradeoff for having loved him. I’ll always have that hole. That sadness.”
What she describes does sound vaguely… familiar. It sounds like that bruised, tender spot deep inside me I sometimes feel. Which I always ignore. And the emptiness that still throbs when I think of my dad.
The sense of helplessness grows, making me feel weak and anxious. I need to fix this. But I don’t know how. “I don’t want you to be sad forever.” I rub my hands together. “I just need to be able to fix this.”
Her chest rises and falls as she sits there looking at me. “I’m not sad, Carson. Not all the time. But sometimes, yes. I’ll always be sad about losing Kane.”
We sit in silence for a moment. This is a fuck of a lot to take in.