41. Lucy #3
“Exactly. Emergencies could happen.” I kept my eyes on Dottie, who had her nose pressed to the ground and was snuffling along with the focus of an investigative journalist.
The sounds of the party softened behind us. Laughter became a hum. The music blurred into bass and heat. Through the trees, the lake flashed silver where sunlight hit it.
Arlo walked beside me, hands in the pockets of his shorts. He looked like our father when he was thinking too hard and like our mother when he was trying not to show it.
“I’m fine,” I said.
“I know.”
“Then why are you using your concerned brotherly voice?” I bumped his shoulder with mine.
For a minute, we walked like that, our steps falling into an old rhythm. Arlo and me. Two kids who had learned too young that families could shift without warning. Two adults who had found different ways to make sure we were never the unstable thing in anyone else’s life.
He glanced at me. “You look happier.”
The words were so simple I nearly tripped over them.
Dottie chose that moment to stop and investigate a fern with deep suspicion, giving me no forward motion to hide behind.
“I look tired,” I said.
“You always look tired. It’s part of your charm.”
“Rude.”
“You also look happier.”
I swallowed and watched Dottie sniff the same patch of dirt for what felt like an unnecessary amount of time. Finally, I said, “It feels real now.”
“That generally happens when you tell an entire hockey team your dog sleeps in his bed.”
I closed my eyes. “I said our dog.”
“Everyone heard you.”
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“No, I don’t.”
I wrapped Dottie’s leash around my hand once, then unwound it. “It’s not the team knowing. Not really.”
“I figured.”
“I thought it would be. I thought being watched would make it feel cheap, maybe. Like everybody got to have a piece of something before I understood what it was.”
Arlo looked out through the trees toward the lake. “And?”
“It felt good,” I admitted, and the confession was so quiet I almost did not hear it myself. I exhaled. “I’m scared it will hurt worse because it’s real now.”
He looked down at Dottie first, then back at me. “Yeah.”
“That’s all you’ve got?”
“I’m deciding whether you want comfort or honesty.”
“Both. Obviously.”
His smile faded, but his voice stayed gentle. “Ty isn’t like Mom, Lucy. He’s proven that much.”
I looked away. At the lake. At the lodge. At the smear of sunlight on the water. At anything except my brother, who had just put his hand directly over a bruise and pressed.
“I loved him so much I thought I had invented a new organ just to have somewhere to put it.” I laughed once, but it did not sound like humor. “That was horrible. Pretend I didn’t say that.”
“No,” he said. “That’s the point, isn’t it? You loved him like that, and you survived what happened. Now you love him as the person you are, not the girl you were.”
My hand tightened around Dottie’s leash.
“She looks happier too,” he added.
I followed his gaze down. Dottie had rolled onto her back in a patch of sun, muddy paws in the air, tongue lolling out, completely untroubled by permanence, abandonment, or the social implications of becoming a shared dog.
“She looks ridiculous.”
He shrugged. “Dogs know things.”
“She ate a napkin last week.” Despite myself, I smiled.
Dottie flopped upright suddenly, shook dirt from her fur, and took off toward the lodge with enough determination to nearly dislocate my shoulder.
“Apparently we’re done processing,” Arlo said.
“Dottie has released us from therapy.”
“Generous of her.”
By the time we got back to the lawn, the light had shifted. The sun sat lower, warmer, turning the lake gold at the edges. The whole property smelled like sunscreen, cut grass, charcoal, and North Line fries.
Ty’s eyes found me immediately.
He was standing near the food tables now, talking with Ezra and Lo. When I approached, he did not ask if I was okay in front of everyone. He simply took Dottie’s leash from me, brushed his fingers over mine, and handed me a plate Arlo must have made.
No onions. Extra pickles. A ridiculous amount of fries.
“Hungry?” he asked.
I looked at the plate. “You are smug about knowing my order.”
“I am quietly accomplished.”
I took a fry and ate it. “Thank you.”
His thumb brushed the inside of my wrist.
It was barely anything.
It was everything.
Across the lawn, Bea stood carefully from her chair. One hand braced on the arm of the chair. The other was pressed low against her belly. Her face was composed.
Alois was at her side in two strides.
Lo noticed next. Her fork lowered. Ezra followed her gaze. Freya, who had been sitting on a blanket with Nora, rose to her feet.
Bea inhaled through her nose. Then her composure cracked. A sound tore out of her, low and startled and full of pain, and every person on that lawn froze.
Alois put one hand at her back and the other on her arm. “Beatriz.”
“I’m fine,” she grumbled immediately.
No one believed her.
Another contraction hit before anyone could pretend to.
Bea bent forward with a sharp cry, fingers digging into Alois’s forearm.
The entire Frosthawks organization discovered, in that moment, that chaos had a hierarchy.
At the top was Alois Müller. He did not raise his voice, panic, or look around for instructions. He became terrifyingly calm. “Ezra,” he barked.
Ezra was already moving. “Keys?”
“My SUV. Hospital bag is in the back. Second bag behind the driver’s seat. Folder in the glove compartment.”
Of course Alois had brought a hospital bag to an informal lake day because Bea was thirty-nine weeks pregnant and he trusted luck about as much as he trusted opposing forwards near his goalie.
Lo was beside Bea now, one hand on her shoulder. “Darling, breathe for me.”
“I am breathing,” Bea snapped, then gasped as another pain hit. “I am doing an excellent job breathing.”
“You are,” Lo said, voice trembling only at the edges. “You are doing beautifully.”
“I hate this.”
“You’re allowed,” Lo cooed, stroking her hair gently. “But it’s happening. Bea, you’re having a baby.”
Alois lowered his face close to Bea’s. His voice changed. Not softer exactly. More private. Like every other sound in the world had been dismissed. “We go now.”
Bea nodded once, jaw clenched.
Freya stepped closer, practical and steady. “Do you need—”
“I have it,” Alois said.
Freya stopped, assessed him, then nodded. “Okay. Need me to call her doc?”
“Already called. Three minutes ago.”
I had not even seen him take out his phone.
Ty leaned toward me. “He scares me in new ways every year.”
“Same.”
The controlled mobilization that followed would have been impressive if it had not involved someone I loved screaming through contractions beside a lake.
Ezra pulled the SUV around.
Alois guided Bea across the grass with his body angled around hers, blocking nothing, controlling nothing, but making himself a structure she could lean into. His hand did shake once when he reached to help fasten her seat belt.
Lo climbed into the back seat without asking.
Ezra got into the passenger side after one look from Bea that apparently authorized him to exist nearby.
Freya handed Alois a water bottle and a stack of towels someone had produced from the lodge.
Arlo was already directing staff to pack up food, because even impending birth did not stop my brother from seeing a logistics problem and making it submit.
The rest of the team stood in stunned silence until Zee said, “Are we going?”
Alois looked back from the driver’s door. The entire lawn straightened like they had been called to formation.
Bea, pale and sweating, rolled her head against the seat and said, “If anyone live-posts my cervix, I will ruin them.”
Marco placed a hand over his heart. “Sacred privacy. Understood.”
The Frosthawks did not decide to go to the hospital so much as accept that going to the hospital was the only available reality. Players grabbed keys. Staff packed leftover food. Someone collected kids. Someone else called partners.
Ty looked at me. Then down at Dottie. Dottie looked back, still faintly damp, still smelling like lake mud and poor judgment. “We drop her at my place,” he said.
I nodded. His lake house was on the way to Northbend Medical. “Fast.”
“Fast,” he promised.
At his house, we moved like people who had already practiced being a unit without realizing it.
Ty opened the door. I unclipped Dottie’s leash.
He filled her water bowl. I tossed the muddy towel into the laundry room.
He grabbed the extra chew from the pantry and set it on her bed.
I checked the back door. He checked the lock.
Dottie circled twice on the blanket near the window, then collapsed with a sigh like she had personally managed the birth emergency and could now rest.
On the way back to the truck, Ty stopped me beside the driver’s door. “You okay?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”