“Darling, I love you very much. But if you think I am the person to ask about achieving balance between your career and your personal life, you might want to reconsider.”
Aubrey flopped back against the couch, wincing. “Point taken.”
“Since we’re on the subject.” His mother cleared her throat. “I want to tell you something. When you were little, your father and I desperately wanted to have another baby.”
Aubrey was glad he was already sitting down, because that would have about knocked him over. “What?”
“We were so determined, but we just—we couldn’t get pregnant. So we started traveling to see fertility specialists. We flew to Toronto, New York, Switzerland…. Anywhere with an experimental new treatment, we went. We’d be gone for weeks at a time, hoping for a miracle.”
He remembered being eight, ten, twelve years old, wondering why his parents kept leaving him. Remembered too the way his parents had latched on to Rachel, showering her with love, and how jealous he’d been as an eight-year-old to see a toddler getting that kind of attention.
It had hurt him. But now he understood that his parents had been hurting too.
“Mom.”
“Just let me get this out, all right?” He thought she might be trying to sound tough, but in truth, he could hear the edge of tears. “We loved you so much. It wasn’t that you weren’t enough. We wanted a bigger family to expand on the love you brought into our lives. But we were so focused on it that that we abandoned you when you needed us the most.”
Aubrey swallowed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t… I had no idea.” How different might he have been if he’d had a younger sibling to look after? Sure, it would have further divided his parents’ attention. But he’d have had someone to tease, someone to look up to him. He’d maybe have learned some of the balance his therapist had spent the past few months teaching him. He couldn’t help thinking he might have been better off.
“That’s the way your father and I wanted it. No one knew. We kept our grief very private. The process wrung us so dry that by the time we gave up, we were too burned out to consider adoption.”
He could certainly understand that. But… “Why tell me now?”
“Because, sweetheart, I want you to consider the lesson I learned twenty years too late.”
He waited.
“Just be careful while you’re chasing your dream that you don’t sacrifice the blessings you already have.”
Aubrey sat quietly with the weight of that advice for a few moments, wanting to give it the consideration it deserved. “I will,” he said at length. “Thanks, Mom.”
He knew what he had to do.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“DUDE,” CALEYsaid, jostling Nate’s shoulder at the top of the circle, where he’d just sent a puck blistering over the goaltender’s shoulder. “You’reangrytonight. No celly?”
Nate gave a weak attempt at a smile. It was his second goal this game; they were halfway through the second. But he didn’t feel much like celebrating.
“All right, all right.” She shook her head. “Just try not to run anyone else over, okay?”
He winced. They didn’t have a no-checking rule, but the unwritten code was you pulled your hits, since they didn’t have medical staff on site. Nate… could have pulled his hits a little more.
“Point,” he acknowledged.
She clapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s go, line change.”
By the time they took a break after the second period, he’d mostly managed to sublimate his work stress. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Paul. He just wasn’t Aubrey, and the new vision ESBN had for the show felt a lot more Barstool Sports than the show Jess had spent so much time creating. It didn’t make any sense.
“I just can’t help thinking, ‘You know who would really like this show? John Plum,’” Nate said gloomily.
Caley dropped her head to the half wall and bounced her helmet off it a few times. Nate realized he might be harping.
“Sorry.” He took a deep breath and shook his head. “It’ll get better. I just need to try harder and stop sulking.”
Caley patted him on the back, and he resolved to wait out the rest of their intermission in silence and let it go. Deep breaths. In, out. He was here to lose himself in physical activity, not bring the office to work with him.
“Hey.” This was from Jordan, a defenseman who’d played most of his career in Europe before returning home to his Chicago roots. “What ever happened with those figure skaters?” He was talking to Brigitte, who was sitting on his other side. “The ones who used to have the ice before us. Man, I miss watching them skate.”
