Fresh Ice (25 page)

“Saturday.” She took a bite of casserole.

“Well I’ll be back Saturday afternoon late. Would you like me to come along?”

“No. that’s not necessary. This is something I have to do.”

“Okay.”

She set down her fork. “You know what, Quinn? I’m so sorry. I’m exhausted. Can you just take me home, please?”

Quinn chewed the inside of his cheek. “Of course.”

***

He drove her home without much conversation. She huddled in the corner of the car, an empty shell of the cheery woman she usually was. For the hundredth time in the short drive, Quinn cursed Collier for even putting an unpleasant thought into Izzy’s head. Then he cursed himself for arguing with her.

They pulled up to Silver Screen and Izzy climbed out of the car without waiting for him to open the door. He met her on the sidewalk. “Hey, are you okay?”

She nodded, but there was a shadow darkening her eyes. “I will be. I guess I didn’t realize how much I’m dreading it, you know?”

Relief flooded him. “Believe me. Dreading family stuff is one thing I know very well.” He wrapped his arms around her. “I’m really, really sorry I questioned you. Are you sure you don’t want me to come along?”

“No,” her denial was muffled into his chest. “This is really something Jenna and I have to do. We have to see.”

“Jenna’s on board with it?”

Izzy rested her head against his chest and wiped her eyes. “I’m not sure what she thinks this is going to be. I’m hoping she’s not disappointed.”

“Well,” Quinn tightened his embrace, “from what I’ve seen of your daughter, she’s a very strong, sensible lady, a lot like you. Whatever happens, you have each other, you have friends. You have me.”

Her arms around his waist tightened very slightly, but it was enough.
I could live on that quick hug for months.

She leaned away from his body for a moment. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” He kissed the top of her head.

“So, when’s our first practice?”

“I’m still pounding out the details on that. I was thinking Saturday, but clearly you’re going to be busy, so I can shoot for Sunday if you’d like.”
Maybe by Sunday I’ll get permission from someone to get into the building.

“Sounds great.” She took a step away and smiled at him. “I’ll see you Sunday.”

It wasn’t until Quinn had driven a few blocks that he realized he’d kissed her on the head.
Just like Singer Guy.

Damn.

Trying to ignore the thought, he adjusted the rearview mirror. A white car was a block behind him.
That looks like Serena’s car.

What the…

The white car turned away and stopped following him.

I’m imagining thing, obviously.

Izzy unbuckled her seat belt and sighed. Her frosty breath formed a film of steam on the steering wheel.

“Mom?”

The house looks exactly the same. Twenty years and not one thing has changed.

“Mom?”

What if nothing has changed? Am I strong enough to take it?

Am I strong enough to shield Jenna from it?

Stupid Collier. If he hadn’t said anything, I wouldn’t be sitting here, staring at my old front door, wishing I was anyplace else in the world but here.

“Mom.” Jenna poked her. “I think we need to get out of the car.”

“Why?”

“Because I just saw the curtains move. I’m pretty sure they know we’re here, or at least that someone is in their driveway.”

Izzy inhaled deeply. “You’re right. Let’s go meet your grandparents.” She climbed out of the car and slammed the door with a bit too much power.

Her feet grew heavy on the short walk to the front door.
Maybe they aren’t home. Maybe the doorbell doesn’t work.

Jenna rang the doorbell, the sound taking Izzy back to her girlhood.

Damn.

There was a long pause, long enough, Izzy felt, that anyone in the house would have had plenty time to reach the door and open it, had there been anyone in the house. “They must not be home.”

“I see someone,” Jenna kept a firm hand on her shoulder. “They’re in there.”

“I’m not sure, Jens…” Izzy tensed, ready to turn and run, just as the door opened.

“Hello?”

Izzy blinked at the white haired woman standing behind the screen door.
Not one thing has changed.
“Hello, Mother.”

***

The polite thing, the Southern thing to do, Izzy knew, was to let them in and have them sit in the front room and offer them sweet tea.

And that is exactly what Gwendolyn “Dollie” Landry did for her long lost daughter and grand-daughter. She invited them in, had them sit in the front room and offered them sweet tea, which Jenna accepted and Izzy did not.

We could be strangers
for all the effort she’s putting out.

Dollie fussed with the glasses for a few minutes until Izzy could no longer stand the tedium. “Mother!”

Had Izzy thrown ice water in her face, Dollie probably could not have looked more shocked. “Yes, Dear?”

“Mother, look at this young woman…this is your grand-daughter. This is Jenna. She is my daughter. You’ve never met her. Take a moment and look at her instead of just making sure your manners are perfectly perfect.”

Dollie sat down, crumpled was a better word, as if the air had gone out of her.
Without the support of good manners, she’s nothing to say or do.

Heavy footsteps in the doorway broke the delicate silence.

“Who’s this?”

Izzy glanced up at her father, William Landry. There was more white in his dark hair, but his posture was as rigid as she remembered and so, Izzy guessed from the set of his jaw, was his opinion of her.

“Well Bill, look who’s come to visit. It’s Isabella and…and…I’m sorry, dear, what’s your name?”

“My name is Jenna.” Jenna stood and held out her hand to shake her grandfather’s hand. “Pleased to meet you
, Grandpa.”

“I’m not your Grandpa.”

“Daddy.”

William whirled his dark blue eyes on Izzy. “Don’t you, ‘Daddy,’ me. I told you the day you left never to come back, that you were not welcome here.”

“Daddy it’s been twenty years.”

“Twenty years of shame. Twenty years of ruin. Twenty years of waste.”

Izzy’s eyes watered with rage. “You are telling me that you’re still shutting me out because I made the mistake of sleeping with my skating partner twenty years ago?”

“That wasn’t the mistake you made, Dear.”

Dollie’s thin, watery voice stilled the room, but not the tension. Izzy stared at her mother. “What do you mean that wasn’t the mistake I made?”

“Dollie, be still.”

Izzy glared at her mother, then her father.
What sort of weird, sick game is this?

“No
, you remember. You didn’t care about them sleeping together. Well, I mean you cared, it was a little unseemly since Jason was so much older than you, Dear, but it wasn’t that...”

“Dollie…” William’s voice was a low, warning growl.

“No Daddy, I’d really like to hear what Mother has to say.”

“Isabella, you have no idea what went on back then. You were a child.”

“Well I’m an adult now, so why don’t you enlighten me? Because from where I’m standing right now it sounds like my father, my parents, were totally okay with me sleeping with a guy way older than I was…and I think I’d like to know if that wasn’t the huge mistake, what was.”

“There’s no point in talking about it.” William looked up, in Jenna’s general direction, for the first time.

This is all about the fact that I gave up skating instead of getting an abortion.
“You know, Jenna is your grand-daughter, Daddy. Most guys would like to meet their grandchildren.”

“You know our opinion. You had no reason to come here.”

“Isabella, it’s just that it was so very much money.”

“Dollie!” William’s voice was sharp, startling the older woman.

Izzy bit the inside of her cheek, “Why Jason, Mother? There must have been a million skaters out there. Why did it have to be Jason, if he was so very, very expensive?”

“Well, he did guarantee us a gold medal, didn’t he?”

“Dollie!”

“Well, maybe he didn’t guarantee it, but he almost did. See, Jason’s other partner was demanding money from Jason, something about a baby. Anyway, Jason said he’d bring home the gold medal for us, but he needed to cover himself because he had all these expenses, with that other girl you know. He also said he’d have to work so much harder to get the gold with such a weak partner.”

Izzy closed her eyes.
You really had no confidence in me as a skater, did you?
“I’m still not seeing how we got from there to this place where you won’t even look at me or your grand-daughter.”

“You were never supposed to get pregnant!” William barked. “If we didn’t win it that year, you were young enough to get in the next time around. But you got yourself pregnant. And you insisted on keeping the thing, so we never got the return on our investment.”

Izzy staggered back, as if slapped. “That thing, you’re referring to, Daddy, is my daughter. She is a person. She is a lovely wonderful woman. There is nothing, no amount of money I would trade for having her. And you, the two of you, are the losers for not getting to know her.”

“We don’t need to listen to this.”

“No I’ve waited and wondered for a long time. We’re going to finish this conversation and then never speak again. I was a thing to you, a trained dog or something. You talk about never getting a return on an investment because I didn’t win a gold medal at the Olympics? You’re shutting out your only family because of money?”

“You weren’t supposed to have a baby!” William’s rage burst out of him like a gunshot. “You were supposed to listen to us, do what we say. But no, instead, you and Jason took every dime we had and lived the high life.”

“The high life?” Izzy’s let out a shocked laugh. “High life? What high life was I supposed to be living? You chased us out of here. We had nothing.”

“Jason had more than fifty thousand dollars. Even if he paid all the bills he said he had, there was still plenty left over.”

We lived on a shoestring budget for years, and we had nothing when Jason died.

Where did that money go, Jason? What did you do with it?

William stared at her, his face softening into something of a smile. “Apparently, Jason must not have felt the need to invest in you either.”

Izzy’s hand flew forward on its own accord. She wasn’t even aware of the motion until she made contact with her father’s face. “You son of a bitch,” she hissed as she grabbed Jenna by the hand, and fled the house.

It wasn’t until they were a mile away from the house that Izzy even realized she was driving. Then, shaking violently, she pulled over to the side of the road.

“Are you okay, Mom?”

Izzy turned bleary eyes to her daughter. “Jens, I’m so sorry. If I’d known it was going to be anything like that…”

“Mom, it’s done. I’m fine. They were strangers to me before this morning, and they’re strangers now.”

Izzy eased the car back onto the road. “You know what? I don’t think I’m ready to go back just yet.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Well, I did promise you I’d take you to my old training place.”

Jenna nodded. “That sounds great.”

***

Izzy found the rink without much trouble. What troubled her was how dilapidated it looked. She eased the car up the rutted drive to the ratty, cracked parking lot. There were few cars parked around the building.

“This is where you trained?”

Izzy shared Jenna’s doubt. “Yes, this is the place. I guess when Coach died, Collier sold it or something. Coach would hate how it looks.”

They got out of the car and walked into the cavernous building. Once inside, memories, good memories, flooded Izzy. The feeling was as powerful as the emptiness at her childhood home had been.
Now I’m home.

On the ice, a few children, possibly stragglers from a recently ended birthday party, slid around on wobbly legs. Izzy led Jenna to the boards where they both leaned against the worn wood and stared at the children.

“So that’s how you started?”

Izzy shook her head. “No, I started out much younger. There were no parties here then, nothing like that. My parents put me into training on the ice and ballet classes off it. Every day, six days a week.”

“That sounds horrible.”

A tear welled in Izzy’s eye as she glanced toward the door that led to Coach’s office. She wiped her eyes and smiled at Jenna. “I loved it. I loved being here. This is where I belonged and I rarely felt I was missing out on a real life.”

“How could you not hate it?”