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“I don’t want to talk about that.” Hank’s tone had shifted to that of a hostile witness, surprising me. I remembered customers in DeMarco’s Diner stopping to shake his hand, asking for his autograph and takingtheir picture with him. I’d thought he would want to boast about his celebrity status, which as far as I knew he still had today.
“Why does that matter?” he asked.
It doesn’t,I thought as I repeated Elizabeth’s words. “It humanizes the story.”
Oliver gave up gnawing on the stick and climbed up on the snowbank, squatting when he reached the top. Mr.Abrams banged on the window, pointed at my puppy, and raised a fist. I pulled a plastic bag from my coat to let him know I would clean up after Oliver, but Mr.Abrams kept banging. I tugged on Oliver’s leash and led him across the street to our yard.
“I was in a bad way, Nikki,” Hank said. “I’d sacrificed a lot for hockey, and I couldn’t play anymore.”
“What did you sacrifice?”
The sound of Hank’s heavy breathing filled the phone line. I pictured him younger, sprinting across the ice. “It’s not a story for the magazine, but if you want to hear it, I’ll tell you sometime.”
The melancholy from his voice practically dripped out of my phone. I definitely didn’t want to hear what he had to say.
He cleared his throat. “Send me a draft of the article.” He barked the words out like a command. “I’ll review it and let you know what I think.”
“I’ll email it tomorrow morning.”
“Arianna and I are going to be traveling for the next few months, spending time in Rome, Paris, and London. Maybe Madrid too. We won’t be back to Stapleton until the summer. If you still want to know what happened when my career ended, I’ll have you over for a cookout or something.”
I bent and scooped up Oliver, wanting to run into the house and away from this conversation. “That’s okay. Elizabeth just wanted to know for the article. You don’t have to tell me about it.”
“I’d like to tell you. You might find out I’m not the asshole you think I am.”
A car turned onto my road. Headlights flooded the street, momentarily blinding me.
“Think about it while I’m gone.”
“I will.” I had no intention of ever hearing his story, but I didn’t want to get him mad before he signed off on the article.
“See you in a few months.”
Chapter 27
The monstrous snowbanks that had outlined the streets of Stapleton since late November had melted. The ski lifts on the mountain had stopped running, and downtown, tourists wearing hiking boots had replaced those with skis on their roof racks. In our neighborhood, the dogwoods were blooming, and daffodils sprouted up in flower beds.
On this Saturday morning in late May, the sun shone with a ferocity usually reserved for sweltering days in late July or the dog days of August. I longed to sit by the ocean, look out at the endless blue water, breathe in the salt air, and listen to the waves crash against the shoreline. By dangling the reward of a lobster roll in front of Kyle, I easily convinced him to accompany me on the two-hour drive to the nearest beach. Almost two months had passed since he’d moved back in, and we were finally starting to feel comfortable with each other again. With each day that passed, I was coming to terms with the fact that I’d never be a mother. Sometimes after spending time with Sharon, Cameron, and Noah and hearing her talk to the boys about their little sister, Baby Sharon, who would arrive in August, I would cry on the way home. Mostly, though, I focused on the good in my life, the things I had—Oliver; Kyle; my aunt, sister, and friends; my health—and not on the baby I would never have.
Today as Kyle steered his Jeep down the winding roads, Oliver sat in the back seat with his head out the window and not a care in the world. I thought about the early years of our marriage, when Cole hadsat behind us and the idea of a baby seat by his side had seemed like a certainty.Don’t go there, Nikki. Don’t go there.
I turned up the volume of the stereo to drown out my thoughts. A song by Blake Shelton came on the radio. Kyle grinned and sang along.
“I don’t think you look like him,” I said.
His earlobes reddened, and he stopped singing. “Why would you say that?” His voice had a defensive edge.
“Because of Aunt Izzie.”
“What about Aunt Izzie?” He had a white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel. I didn’t understand why he was getting so worked up about this. He was acting like I was accusing him of something.
“She always says you look like him.”
His muscles relaxed. “I’d forgotten about that.”
“What did you think I was talking about?”
He rubbed his palm over his stubbled chin but didn’t answer.
