CHAPTER 110
Troy
“DAD?” MY brOWS crease when I open the door of my apartment to find my father standing right on the other side of it.
With his hands fidgeting.
Like he’s nervous.
“Uh,” he says, his voice just as frazzled, “can I come in?”
The question barely registers as I part to the side, giving him room to come in.
My father, who’s never made a trip to my apartment before who decided to just show up tonight.
His pale blue eyes linger along every corner of the complex, scanning each table, each piece of furniture, his hands sliding over the kitchen counter like he’s examining it to try and find a fault.
I stand in place by the television, frozen.
Waiting for the other shoe to drop any second now, for him to share his disapproval of the shade of my wallpaper or that one of the sofa’s should’ve been brown instead of blue, but then he steps toward me.
No, to the television, it looks like.
Moving to my right above the cable box, on a small table where a picture of my brothers, my mom, and my dad sits, he brings his coarse hands to the frame, picking it up.
His gaze on the picture, he takes a deep sigh, somewhere in the breath a hint of relief that he was included in the picture.
In my apartment.
To be fair, I loved that photo so much since it reminded me of the moment right before it was taken.
The time when my brothers and I had been snowboarding in St. Moritz and Karl had just lost a shoe while rapidly sledding down the thick Swiss snow. Dad just happened to be in the photo, meeting us with Mom for a picture right outside the slopes, Karl still without his boot.
I don’t share this detail with him though, since by some freakish reason, my father’s cheeks have softened in a way they haven’t since we were all still together.
He sets the frame back on the table, my heart leaping in my chest in anxiousness when he turns to face me.
“It’s nice,” he says, his voice unrecognizable for the guy who’s usually cold as ice. “Your place, it’s nice.”
I nod simply because words have also managed to escape me by his unannounced arrival and even more off-character behavior.
And I think he realizes just how weird this is, how different he’s acting, that his face twists all of a sudden like he doesn’t know how to talk to me. Anymore.
Same.
Then the column of his throat dips, swallowing deep as he runs a hand through his silver hair, all nerves.
“My father,” he rips out, his voice hoarse, “he used to hit me and my brother. At least once a week. Until we got big enough where we could fight back when we were teenagers. That’s how he made us disciplined. Why he told us he’d do it.”
In such a state of shock, I only manage to blink vacantly, completely unaware of what I’m hearing, what he’s telling me.
“He told us we’d understand when we’d have kids one day,” my dad goes on heavily. “I think Lars was more traumatized than me, pretty sure that’s why he never wanted to have kids. Then he met his wife, and well, I think she changed his mind.”
Dad never hit us. Not once.
“But I couldn’t bring myself to hit any of you,” he says. “No matter how angry or frustrated I was, I just couldn’t. I was weaker than my father, he’d confirm that with you.”
“Dad,” I blurt out, livid at what I’ve just learned, so fucking pissed at my grandfather for what he did, “that doesn’t make you weak. He’s a coward for what he did to you guys. I wish you had told me. I had no idea.”
But my father—my 6’5”, intimidating, very serious father—just looks at me with a strange curve to his lips like I’m a silly little kid for being so na?ve.
“Troy,” he says, his voice still a bit shaky, “it’s not easy for us to talk about these things.
We weren’t raised during a time when feelings were so out in the open.
It’s why I fell for your mother.” His gaze drops to his feet in dread.
“She was so unapologetically open. And I just shut her out when she needed me.”
When he lifts his gaze back to my face, I see it in his cold eyes.
A bit of warmth and a whole lot of sadness.
“There’s not a day that goes by where I’m not haunted by her death,” he chokes out. “I don’t think I will ever forgive myself for not being there for her.”
And I don’t know why, but I quickly say, “It’s not your fault, what happened to her. I shouldn’t have said it was.”
“When I first found her pills,” he goes on, “I was stunned. Then I was in denial. I didn’t want to accept something was bothering her.”
“Because she was always so happy?” I guess.
“Yes. Because I couldn’t picture her as anything but happy. And that was selfish of me. She was allowed to be sad and she probably thought we couldn’t handle her, that I couldn’t handle her at her worst.”
“I wish you had told us.”
“I know I should’ve. I got so caught up in hockey. Shit, it’s all I ever knew. What I had to carry into the next generation and ones to come. I chose hockey when I should’ve chosen her and you, and our family.”
He swallows deep like this part is about to sting him a whole lot worse, and it jolts a wave of nerves up my throat.
“When you were younger,” he shares, “my pride got in the way of seeing how brilliant you were at figure skating. And when she passed, I couldn’t even think about the sport.
All I saw when I’d watch you skate was her.
And I hate myself for shutting you out like that.
When you needed me even more. But you’re strong, and stubborn like me.
If I didn’t tell you this before, I always knew you were the best skater.
When you got your skates on that ice, there was nothing and no one stopping you.
I’m sorry for missing all your competitions when I should’ve been there at each one of them right next to your mother. ”
“I didn’t need you to be at every competition,” I point out. “I just needed you to be there.”
“I know, I’m sorry for that, too.” He shakes his head, a single tear falling from his cheek, one that immediately shuts down my entire system.
Dad hasn’t cried in front of any of us since Mom’s funeral.
“You’re a fucking idiot if you think I care about anything other than you boys and her,” he says, wiping away the salt. “And I’m an even bigger one for doing a shit job at showing it. But I’m proud of you, Son.”
His hands shake, I notice when his mouth starts to twitch. And I know he’d never say it or probably ever show it, but he showed up tonight going against everything I’d ever thought about him.
That notion is enough for me to approach him, to pull him in for a hug, something I couldn’t have imagined even up until an hour ago.
But he holds onto me, tight like how Mom used to, and I realize just how much we both needed this.
_________
“Naomi?” I say, confused, opening my door to find Ana’s friend standing in the hallway.
Looks like tonight I’m having the most random visitors, making a mental note to keep my door shut at the next knock, when it very well could be someone like fucking Carter or worse, that fucker Ethan.
After my dad left—and I cried for a decent amount of time in his arms, still a strange concept—yeah, I kind of lost it.
Then Kyle immediately arrived later, his car (finally) fixed, joining with Karl to show me the final copy of the music for our long program.
And now, there’s Naomi Yamamoto staring at me right outside my door, her features raised in concern.
Then all she says is, “Hey. I need your help.”
_________
“This feels like a horror film waiting to happen,” Karl says.
“Yeah,” Kyle agrees, “I wonder which one of us would die first?”
All eyes shoot up toward Kyle.
Naomi, Karl, Dean, me, and Todd.
Kyle just stares at us. “What?”
“Remind me why we’re here again?” I ask Naomi.
The determined, never fearful girl with the jet black hair pulls a hand up to her mouth with a loud shhhh.
Before we all arrived at the rink just an hour until midnight, Naomi tried to explain how she was convinced something strange was happening behind the scenes and that it somehow connected all back to Colette—the ice dance instructor our coaches had assigned Ana and me at the start of summer.
And when I tried to understand how any of this had to do with us, Naomi very convincingly reasoned how Colette was the one who might’ve shared the memo of our old revised free skate with Violet and Ethan, and that’s how they knew to come and watch us perform it.
The memory still stings when I think about it, remembering how joyous Ana looked insisting to wear her costume just for that one night practice because that’s just how damn excited she was for the routine.
The one they just fucking took from her. From us.
Even if Colette was the reason this all unfolded—which still doesn’t make sense to me when she was supposed to be stuck in France until Milan—it’s not connecting how being here at the rink tonight would be productive.
But I’ve now learned why Naomi and Ana are so close—the two girls won’t give up until they’ve gotten to the bottom of something.
Which meant Kyle and Karl (of course) wanted to tag along with us, thinking it’d be cool shit—their words—to lurk around the dark rink with only Todd around at this hour.
Then Dean, the rink’s Zamboni driver, was just finishing up smoothing the ice, when he bumped into us and decided to join.
Dean and Todd are like family so we knew they could be trusted. And they both agreed to keep our cover just in case a Dupont or other suspicious person would also be roaming these hallways with us.
I never realized just how creepy a rink feels with almost all its lights off, Ana and I heading right to the ice and then home for our night sessions, but all the empty office spaces and supply closets are kind of spooking me out now as we make our way deeper into the building.
When we reach the navy logo of a pair of white skates and the set of matching double doors leading into our academy’s boardroom, Naomi slips out a key that I had no clue she even had—one that I don’t even think I own—her tongue pulled between her teeth as she carefully works it through the slit, unlocking it.
“Woah.”
I nudge Kyle in the stomach for making noise.
And at all the stacks of papers on each desk, the drawers that Naomi starts searching through—the ones very meticulously organized where their owners would most definitely notice if any are displaced—I realize that this might be a very dangerous idea.
If someone sees us, what if this fucks up our qualifications for Milan?
Nationals might be over, but we just made it for the Winter Games, and being here might just jeopardize us the whole competition.
So I quickly tell Naomi, “I think we should go.”
Instead she raises a hand at me, continuing to read a sheet of paper with her brows creased deeply.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” she mumbles from our director Adrienne Fontaine’s desk.
I’m about to aimlessly tell her to just bring the paper with us to read it later, but—thankfully—she slides the sheet back into the drawer where she found it, sighing as we all exit the room, heading back to the dim lobby.