On the Fly (23 page)

Jim had told me there would be
skating, but I hadn’t thought too much about how I would be able to
help my kids to do it. “No,” I said after a minute. “There wasn’t
much opportunity for ice-skating in Texas.” There were a few rinks
but none very close to us. And they had cost money I couldn’t
justify spending back then. Even taking them roller skating had
been something I had to pass up, more often than not.

“
Babs and his brothers can
help Tuck. They all play hockey, too. That’s what kids do in
Canada. And I called my sister this morning. Dana skates better
than half the guys on the team. She’ll be happy to help Maddie
skate today, if that’s okay.”

His sister. The one who’d been raped.
If there was anyone who would understand what Maddie was going
through, it would be her. I blinked back tears, but I couldn’t say
anything without potentially crying again. After I’d blubbered all
over him last night and then told him I didn’t think I could push
him away anymore, I wasn’t sure how things would be between us.
Apparently he didn’t have any intention of letting me go back to
the way it was before.

“
And if she doesn’t want to
skate, we can pull her around on a sled or something. She can still
have fun.”

I hadn’t quite told him I’d go out
with him. Not in so many words. But I was losing the will to keep
him at a distance. The way he’d thought to look after Maddie like
this today pretty much dissolved any internal arguments I might
have had left against him. I already knew she liked him because he
took care of me—but now he was melting me, because he was taking
care of my little girl in ways I never could have
imagined.

“
Thank you,” I whispered
just as we got back to my door.

I opened it, and Maddie tossed Pumpkin
inside. We closed it again quickly, before he could make another
effort at escape, and I dug my key out of my pocket and locked
it.

When I turned around, I burst out
laughing. Tuck was up on Jamie’s shoulders, a red cape hanging down
from his shoulders, some silly eye mask haphazardly obscuring his
eyes, and both fists raised in the air while the boys chanted,
“Ginger Ninja! Ginger Ninja!”

They’d officially made him a
superhero. He’d never be just a little boy again.

As soon as
we arrived at the practice facility, Tuck jumped
out of Brenden’s SUV and raced over to where Jamie and his brothers
were all piling out of his car and his parents’ rented van, his
cape flying out behind him. I didn’t try to stop him. There wasn’t
much hope of containing his exuberance on a day like
this.

Instead, I took Maddie’s hand when she
climbed down from the backseat. I could feel her nerves coming
through in the way she held onto me. There were going to be a lot
of strangers here today. I hoped she’d be able to settle down a
little once we got inside and she saw a few more people she’d at
least met before.

Tuck and the Babcock boys flooded into
the building like a crashing wave, with Jamie’s parents following a
bit more sedately behind them.

Brenden smiled as he came around from
the other side of the SUV, and it was nearly enough to steal my
breath. He had a gym bag slung over one shoulder as he reached for
my other hand.

I hesitated for just a minute before
taking it because we were going into my place of work—and his, too.
Holding his hand going in there made it seem like we were taking
things to the next level, almost like we were announcing to the
world that we were… What were we? A couple? I wasn’t quite
sure.

All of that kept racing through my
mind as we walked hand in hand into the building, but however
confused I might be, I didn’t let it stop me from connecting with
him in this way. It felt good, his strong hand closed around mine.
For now, that would have to be reason enough for me to allow it. I
could analyze it all later, sometime when I was alone and the kids
were asleep—some night when I was lying in my bed trying to sort
out my life.

We’d almost made it inside when
Brenden’s name was shouted from the parking garage behind us. The
three of us turned around to see his sister and Eric Zellinger
jogging our way to catch up.

“
Hi, Rachel,” Dana said.
She wasn’t even winded. I nodded, but her attention was already
leaving me. “Hey, Maddie. Brenden told me you’ve never been skating
before. He wants to be the one to teach you, but girls don’t need
boys to teach us anything, right? So I wondered if maybe you’d
skate with me today. We can leave the boys in our dust.”

I swallowed hard, a little overcome
with emotion because she’d thought to make it seem like she really
wanted to do it. Like it could be girl-bonding time—something
Maddie hadn’t really ever done much of.

“
I’m the better skater,
Maddie,” Brenden said. “Don’t be fooled by my sister’s bragging. If
you want to learn from the best, you need to learn from
me.”

“
Now he’s lying to you,”
Eric said. “Dana’s been flying past him for years.”

Maddie blushed from all the attention,
but a shy smile was trying to peek through. Then she looked up at
me. “Can I, Mommy? Skate with Miss Dana?”

Brenden staggered and clutched a hand
to his heart, making a sound like she’d mortally wounded him.
Maddie giggled.

I nodded, a little bit amazed. I
hadn’t heard my daughter giggle like that in months—maybe years.
She had only met Dana once before. It wasn’t like her to trust so
soon—but maybe some of that was because of me. “Go have fun,” I
said, once I found my voice again.

Just like that, she let go
of my hand and took the one Dana held out to her, and they went on
ahead of us. “I’ll have to see if my parents can find one of
my
old jerseys for you,
since I’m the better skater,” Dana said as they left.

“
You play hockey, too?” The
awe in Maddie’s voice echoed through the parking garage. “I thought
it was a boy’s game.”

Brenden squeezed my hand, like he knew
the myriad emotions racing through me at the moment. And maybe he
did. “You all right?” he asked.

I wasn’t even close to all right. I
was shocked and scared and proud and hopeful and a warring jumble
of a thousand other things all at once. But I said,
“Yeah.”

“
Liar.” He laughed while he
said it, though. “One of these days you’re going to learn that I
can see right through you.”

He started walking toward the doors
Maddie and Dana had just disappeared through, so I forced myself to
move my feet and keep up with him.

Eric started moving beside us, but
then he stopped all of a sudden. “Soupy? I need a
favor.”

Brenden’s hand tensed in mine, but he
stopped. “Yeah?”

“
Actually from both of
you,” Eric said, looking at me.

I couldn’t think of any sort of favor
I could do for him, unless he needed something from Jim. I nodded,
encouraging him to go on, especially because his brow was furrowed
and he looked as conflicted as I felt watching Maddie go off with
Dana. Add to that the fact that a tic had started up in Brenden’s
jaw, and the three of us were all a mess.

“
I, uh…” Eric looked down
at his feet and kicked a rock. “I was planning to ask Dana to marry
me today. Out on the ice. But I wasn’t counting on having Maddie
standing there while I did it.”

With every word out of Eric’s mouth,
Brenden got tenser, more distant. It couldn’t be easy for him,
considering all of Dana’s past, to think about her getting
married…even if it was his best friend who was asking her. I
couldn’t even begin to think about how I would handle it when
Maddie was older, around the age when girls would start to date.
I’d had my first boyfriend when I was fourteen. I was with Jason
when I was fifteen, and we hadn’t been together long by the time
he’d convinced me to sleep with him. Maddie was already eight—it
was hard to imagine she was only a few years younger than I had
been for all of that. She was still my baby girl.

But baby girls do grow up, and Dana
Campbell definitely had.

“
I’ll go get her,” I said.
“I’ll tell her I need—”

“
Let her have some fun,
Rachel,” Brenden interrupted.

“
I don’t want you to go get
her now,” Eric said. He smiled at me. He had a ready smile,
natural. It was easy to see why he and Brenden had been friends for
so long, even if it was equally easy to understand how things might
be strained between them these days. “This will be good for her.
Just maybe after a while you could find a reason to need her for
something…”

I wondered briefly how he knew it
would be good for Maddie, if he knew what had happened to her, but
it didn’t really matter. “Of course I will.”

“
What if I don’t want to
give you that chance?” Brenden asked.

Would he really try to stop Eric from
proposing? I hadn’t known either Dana or Eric very long, and I
definitely didn’t know them well, but even I could see how happy
she was, how much they loved each other.

Eric pierced Brenden with a stare I
would never want to be on the receiving end of. “Then I’ll ask her
tonight, after we go home. Or I’ll wait until your parents get here
on Monday and ask her at the airport when we pick them up. Or I’ll
wake her up with a ring on Christmas morning and ask her to marry
me. I’m going to fucking ask her whether you’re happy about it or
not.” Then he looked over at me sheepishly. “Sorry. I shouldn’t
have cursed in front of you.”

I shook my head, ready to tell him not
to worry about it, but Brenden’s voice cut me off.

“
Damn right, you’re going
to fucking ask her. We’ll distract Maddie in about an hour. It
better be a real fucking ring this time.”

I hadn’t even begun to process all of
that when Brenden spun around and took off walking, and I had to
hurry to keep up with him. We passed Nicky Ericsson at the
entrance, but I barely had a chance to wave hello because Brenden
seemed like he was trying to put as much distance between himself
and Eric as he possibly could.

“
Took him fucking long
enough,” he muttered beneath his breath once we got into the
practice arena.

I started laughing, and I couldn’t
seem to make myself stop even when he gave me a halfhearted
glare.

By the time we got to the rink, about
half the team and the coaches were already out on the ice, along
with kids and wives and girlfriends. Martha was in a pair of jeans
and a Rudolph sweatshirt on a bench at the opposite end, helping to
lace up the skates of a boy who must be one of her grandkids. A few
of the team executives were out there, too, and I saw a big man in
a suit sitting up in the stands, far away from all the fun. I
figured that must be Mr. Engels. Who else would be here in a suit
instead of something more casual? Even if he wasn’t going to skate,
he could have made himself more comfortable. Laughter and shouts
rang out in the cavernous space, echoing off the high ceiling and
walls, and I quickly forgot to worry about Mr. Engels and his odd
clothing choice.

Brenden led me to a bench near the
ice, a little ways off from where Dana was lacing up a pair of
skates for Maddie. Jim had asked me about our sizes one day last
week to be sure the kids wouldn’t be left out. I’d given him the
kids’ sizes readily, but he’d insisted on having skates available
for me even though I assured him I had no intention of getting out
on a sheet of ice. Martha wasn’t going out there, either. She’d
told me so. I figured that once she got her grandkids all situated,
she and I could sit and talk.