Comeback (4 page)

A trust fall.

I cringed as I saw the setup and listened to the coaching staff describing what we had to do. They’d set up a riser that was about shoulder height, and each of us had to get up on it, close our eyes, cross our arms, and fall backward, trusting that the rest of the team would be there to catch him. Actually, now that I looked closer, I saw that there were three such set-ups spread throughout the clearing in the park around us.

It wasn’t
just
me they would have to trust to catch them, though. Dropping from a height like that, you had to bring together at least six or seven guys and everyone had to work together to get the job done. So it wouldn’t be too bad. They couldn’t all rush in to save the day and prevent me from proving they could trust me again. I tried to shake off the sense of dread that had overtaken me as soon as I learned what we were doing, tried to convince myself that it would all be all right.

“Let’s split up into three groups,” Bergy said. “Zee, why don’t you take point on that?”

Zee was Eric Zellinger. He’d already been part of the Portland Storm for a few years before I’d joined the team, and he’d been named captain during my rookie season.

He started off by putting himself, Brenden “Soupy” Campbell, and Keith Burns—his two assistant captains—in charge of the three groups, and then he split all the boys apart. I ended up in the group with Soupy, as well as Riley Jezek, Colesy Paxton, Levi “501” Babcock, Marc “Danger” d’Aragon, Nate “Ghost” Golston, and Radar Cernak. It was a good mix of guys who’d been around and guys who were new to the team—and it was also a mix of guys who weren’t necessarily close to one another.

In fact, as I looked around, I realized that all the boys had been separated from their closest friends, the ones they would trust the most. Zee wanted to be sure everyone was really on board with what this exercise was all about, then.

After we listened to instruction about how we should link our catching arms and the distance we should be from the faller, Soupy led our group to one of the risers. “Who’s up first?” he asked.

Danger raised an eyebrow at him. “You’re up first,” he said matter-of-factly. “You’ve got the
A
. You’re in charge of this group. You show us how it’s done.” Danger was an agitating winger, a guy who’d been brought in for some leadership and experience and tendency to get under the opponents’ skin, and for the two Stanley Cup rings he had, more than for his goal-scoring ability. He was in his late-thirties, and he’d seen and done it all. He may not have been on our team long, but when he said something, everyone listened.

It shouldn’t be Soupy who went first, though, and I knew it. It had to be me.

I was trying to get them all to trust me again, but there was no good fucking reason why any of them should trust me if I couldn’t show them that I trusted each of them implicitly.

Soupy grunted in response to Danger’s assertion, and he was just stepping up onto the riser when I put a hand on his shoulder and shoved him back. He gave me a questioning look.

“Let me. Let me do it first.”

He gave me a long, assessing stare that made me feel as though he was trying to figure out my motive—but I seemed to get that feeling all the time lately, coming from every corner—and then he nodded. “Nicky’s first, then.”

I put on the blindfold we’d been given, stepped onto the platform, and crossed my arms over my chest. And then I waited. The guys grunted and cursed at one another behind me, trying to line themselves up into proper positioning.

“Ghost is the shortest, so he should be at the other end,” Danger grumbled. “We should move 501 up to the head.”

“I’ll move,” 501 added. He was a rookie this season, always willing to do whatever anyone asked of him, unless that someone happened to be his older brother Jamie, who was better known as Babs. It was only when something happened between the two brothers that 501 dug in his heels and let us see another side of him. I doubted it would be long before he was doing the same with all of us, but for now he was the rookie trying to prove himself to a team on which his brother had already made a lasting impact.

“Everybody stay put. Ghost is fine where he is,” Colesy argued. “Let’s just do this.”

“Just fucking decide where you want me,” came Ghost’s deep voice. It was his first season with the team after a trade over the summer. A lot of the media said that the Jets had given up on him too soon; a few of them said he was never going to pan out as the sort of player he could be because he was just too small to really make it in this league. My thought was that most of those who doubted him were more opposed to the color of his skin than anything else about him, and I was pretty sure he agreed with that. The trade had lit a fire under him, and he was bound and determined to prove himself.

“I go? Over there?” Radar asked with a heavy Czech accent, and in my mind’s eye, I could almost see him pointing. He’d been in the league for a few years now, but his understanding of English—at least when it came to anything not specifically hockey related—was questionable at best.

“Stay where you are,” Danger groused. “We’re fine. This is fine. Let’s just do it.”

“Whenever you’re ready,” Soupy said to me.

I had to admit, I wasn’t feeling overly confident that they were ready for me, and it wasn’t just because of the way they’d been arguing about how to line up. In fact, there was some small part of me expecting them to release their hands and back away as soon as I let myself fall. It would serve me right, considering the way I’d dropped the ball on them so many times over the last several years.

But I had to do it anyway. I had to drop. I had to trust that they would be there to catch me or I’d never earn back their confidence.

So I took a breath and shifted my weight backward, keeping my spine and legs all in a straight line, and I let the words of the Serenity Prayer fill my mind as my body fell back through space.

I landed in their waiting arms, my pulse having gone through the roof in about 0.002 seconds flat.

“Oof.” RJ was right by my head. “You don’t look like it, but you weigh a fucking ton.”

“Try catching his big ass,” Soupy said, and everyone laughed. They put me down on my feet and cuffed me on the head and joked around, and then we moved on to the next guy.

None of them balked at me being one of the guys catching him. No one tried to back out of the drop because I was involved. It wasn’t much, but it was something. I tucked it away in a corner of my mind, hoping they would remember that I had come through for them in this the next time I was in the net. Hoping they would take this memory and let it color how they saw me as a teammate, not just as some guy falling backward with a blindfold on.

After everyone finished, we took a charter bus back to the team’s practice facility in Portland, and we all went our separate ways. We’d been gone four days, so most of the guys wanted to get home to their wives and girlfriends and kids. A few of the younger guys decided to head out for some dinner and then maybe a night at the bar. I came up with a quick excuse when 501 asked me if I wanted to go with them, telling him I’d promised to meet with Jessica once we were back in town.

It wasn’t a lie. I did need to meet with her again. It just wasn’t going to be today. All I wanted was to go home and kick back for a bit, and no matter what, bars and I didn’t need to be near each other right now.

501 took off with Babs and the others; I got in my car and drove home.

There was a cab in the driveway when I pulled up in front of my house—one of the van types with a handicap tag and the kind of sliding door that would allow for wheelchair access. Weird.

I hadn’t been expecting anyone, so I got out of my car tentatively. But all my hesitation fled when I saw Elin’s big eyes peeping at me through the window. My twelve-year-old niece gave me a goofy grin, and then I saw her ten-year-old brother, Hugo, looking at me, as well. Emma must have brought them for a visit, although I couldn’t for the life of me understand why she wouldn’t have let me know they were coming. I would have been better prepared. I would have made plans for fun things to do with the kids on my days off. I could have had rooms ready for them.

It wasn’t like my sister to be so spontaneous. With three kids, a tremendous amount of planning and preparation would have to go into planning a trip from Sweden to Portland. Trepidation crept up my spine. I left my bag in the trunk and headed around to the other side of the van to open the door. Nils, the youngest of the three kids at seven—and the one who looked most like their deceased father, Gabriel Larsson—leaped out into my arms the second I opened the door. I hugged him to me, but then shock raced through me.

A man I didn’t recognize unfolded himself from the vehicle, his staid expression betraying nothing. Was Emma finally dating someone, then? To my knowledge, she hadn’t been on a date since Gabe had been killed in duty while serving in Afghanistan nearly three years ago.

Gabe had been tall and fit, his soldier’s body similar to that of an athlete. This man had a build much more akin to someone who spent his days behind a desk. “Nick,” he said, holding out a hand for me to shake.

It didn’t surprise me that he knew who I was, whoever he might be. I shifted my nephew to my left side so I could get my right hand free. Then I took his, gripping it tight. “Yes. And you are?” It was curiosity coloring my words, but he blanched as though they’d been an accusation.

“Henrik Anders.” No explanation of what he or any of them were doing here. Nothing beyond his name. He just moved to the grass next to the van so the other two kids could clamber down and for my sister to come through.

Emma didn’t climb out like the rest of them had, though. She moved a motorized wheelchair into the hydraulic lift the cab had been outfitted with and the driver lowered her down, and my entire world imploded.

My hand started shaking, and the tremors quickly traveled through the rest of my body, so intensely that Henrik reached to take Nils from my arms and set him on the ground. I wanted a fucking pill. I wanted a whole fucking bottle of pills, and a keg to wash it down with, and even that wouldn’t be enough. That all-too-familiar itch was burning through me so fast it was all I could do to keep my feet on the ground, to not climb back into my car and do whatever it would take to get my fix.

“No,” was all I could say. It came out as a sob. Or a scream. Or a prayer. I didn’t know how it sounded to anyone else’s ears, only how it scratched against the throb of my own pulse pounding through my brain. It was all those things at once, all the things I couldn’t say and had never wanted to even let myself think.

She couldn’t have it, too. She couldn’t be this far into the disease without me knowing. Yes, we had known since not long after Nils was born that Emma had the genetic makeup for ALS and that she might end up with it just like Dad had, but not now. Not so soon. Not so young. She was only thirty-three, four years older than me.

My sister looked at me with soft eyes, a silent plea for forgiveness, and little Elin came over and took my hand, reaching up to brush a tear from my cheek that I hadn’t realized had fallen.

“She didn’t want you to know,” Elin said. “She didn’t want you to worry when you couldn’t do anything anyway. She didn’t want you to have to watch it go on like with Grandpapa.”

This wasn’t going to be like with my father, though. This was going to be so much worse because I didn’t have any time to adjust, no time to prepare myself. Because she was all I had left.

“How long have you known?” I forced out through my tears. I wanted to be angry with Emma, with the kids, but that wouldn’t make any difference. Anger wouldn’t help. Nothing could help.

“It started before your father died,” Henrik said, stone-faced. “Emma hired me full time about six months ago to help care for her, once it was getting to be too much for the kids.”

Before Dad died. Too damn long. She’d needed full-time care for six months. Her body was shutting down. I knew all too well what was likely happening. She was losing her ability to use her muscles. She couldn’t move on her own. She probably couldn’t eat on her own, needing to be spoonfed or possibly fed through a tube. And the fact that they were all answering for Emma, that she wasn’t answering me herself, that she hadn’t said a single goddamned word…

Oh God.

I needed time.

Time was fleeting, though, and there would never be enough. I looked at my sister, but it was dry, brown, crumbling,
dead
cherry blossom leaves littering the ground that filled my vision, not my sister’s face.

“NO, THIS IS
definitely something that we want to be involved with,” I said into the phone, cradling it between my ear and my shoulder so I could take notes on the computer. “When can we meet to discuss the details?”

Carter Wilson made a humming sound on the other end of the line. “Tomorrow afternoon? I could fit you in at two.” Carter was a local custom home builder, and he wanted to partner with Light the Lamp to build a home for a family of four who’d lost theirs recently as a result of a neighbor’s meth production gone horribly wrong. Thank God none of the Thurstons had been home when everything had gone up in flames, but they’d lost everything.