I’m just standing in the middle of the room, staring at all the work I’ve done, and the colors and tiling Lara picked out, when my phone starts to buzz in my pocket.
I pull it out, thinking it might be her, and already feeling bad about leaving like I did.
But it’s not Lara.
“Hello?” I say into the phone.
“Great news!” a female voice says, the happiness in her voice jarring my reality.
When I say nothing in response, she goes on, sounding like she’s just won the lottery.
“Jake, it’s Abbie. Your manager. Did you forget all about me while you were out living in the middle of nowhere?”
For the first time in my life, I have the urge to defend Wildfern Ridge. But there’s enough other shit going on in my head that I don’t even have the capacity for it.
“I didn’t forget about you.”
“So, I’m assuming you’ve seen the news about Labowski?”
“What? No.”
She laughs. “Oh boy, well, Merry Christmas to you, Bradson. Someone caught Labowski on camera admitting that he was going for your ankles when he ‘fell’to the ice. It’s switchedthe whole thing around and made you look like the superhero defender here.”
“It… has?”
“Yes. And you’ll need to check your email pronto. I just sent you a link to the official re-sign offer from the Kings!”
I blink against the sun coming in through the living room blinds, and when a beat passes, Abbie laughs, clears her throat, and starts again.
“Are you drunk or something? I’m sensing no enthusiasm over this line, Jake.”
Three kids. Another on the way. With the endorsements I did in college, and the money I made my rookie year, I have a pretty sizable savings account, but will that be enough? Can I support four children in the way they deserve with that kind of money?
If I stayed in Wildfern Ridge, what would I do? Coachhigh school hockey? That’s not going to give those kids the life they deserve.
Even if it means I’m not in the picture, it will be better that I have something to send home. Obviously, Lara has been able to do a great job without me.
“I’ll sign it,” I hear myself say. Abbie gives me some congratulations, says she’ll get someone to book me a flight home, and asks if there’s anything I need from her. Then we’re hanging up, and I’m walking numbly up the stairs.
Once again, my feet are carrying me without my input, and I end up in my old bedroom, staring at the closet door. I know it would be best for me to leave without ever looking at those stupidjournals, but if it’s time to sell the house and move back to Los Angeles, I can’t just leave them here.
I heft them up and out of the closet, fully intending to take them to the dumpster outside, but I accidentally knock the box against the doorjamb, and several of the journals fall out.
Sighing, I bend down to pick them up.
Then I pause, running my thumb over the cover, closing my eyes, and taking a seat in the hallway. I cracking the notebook open without thinking about chronology or where I’m at in my father’s story.
Heather came by the shop today while I was working. Impossible to look away from her in that little blue dress, and she knew it.
Told Law about us today. He said it looked like love to him. I socked him for it.
But he might be right.
Time passes imperceptibly as I sit in the hallway, and I realize my mother was my dad’s Lara. That losing her was the worst thing that ever happened to him. I miss her and grieve her in almost an abstract way, the shape of a mother missing from my life, but he really knew her.
He lived in this town with her, graduated high school with her. Shared a summer with her, just like I did with Lara.
And then he lost her to cancer.
