Page 29 of Holiday Hostilities

So, the best thing I can do is to continue staying away from Brandi. It’s the only surefire way to avoid giving her any little morsel of a story that she can pass off to the media.

Which means that she cannot, in any circumstance, “win me” at the auction.

I have to throw it. Get someone else to bid on me—using my own money, of course—and keep on bidding until Brandi gives up.

It might not be a long-term solution, but it’s the only one I can think of. For now.

Extinguish one fire at a time.

With that conclusion, I finally feel somewhat at ease.

I skate until there’s sweat pouring down my face and my body feels loose and warm, as it always does after a good session on the ice. I make my way to the edge of the rink to grab my Gatorade and check my phone to see that there are twelve missed Facetime calls from my mom.

Normally, twelve missed calls from your mother would be alarming, but in my family, silence is the only thing worth worrying over. I once came back from an all-day training camp to twenty-one missed calls from Mom—turned out she'd run into the mother of my first girlfriend at the grocery store and was struggling to remember her name.

With a chuckle, I call her back, and within seconds, my mom’s and my nonna’s faces both fill the screen.

“Hi, baby!” Mom greets me. No matter how old—or successful—I get, I’m stillbabyto her. “Happy belated Thanksgiving.”

“Hey, Mom. Happy Thanksgiving to you, too. You look great.”

And she does. Smiling and happy and relaxed. I love to see it.

“Sorry I didn’t get a chance to call you yesterday. Your uncle Dino had a very unfortunate accident involving the crabs he was planning on cooking.”

“Is he okay?” I ask, picturing a pot of boiling water upending.

“His butt is out of commission for at least a week!” Nonna pipes up from behind my mother, her lined face pulled into a grimace.

“Excuse me?”

“Kylie and Sasha took one of the crabs from the bucket and put it on Dino’s chair,” Mom explains, chuckling. “Long story short, he did not see it.”

“The darn thing pinched him so hard, he ended up at the emergency room. Four stitches,” Nonna declares.

The mental image is so good, I have to laugh. “Sounds like an eventful Thanksgiving.”

“Assolutamente!” Nonna clucks her tongue. “Your uncle Sal decided that the crab deserved to live after putting up such a fight, so he made a detour on the way driving Dino to the hospital. He wanted to go to the docks to set it free in the ocean. He took my car, and there was such bad traffic on the highway that the detour took over an hour and Dino’s butt blood got all over my new upholstery!”

At this point, I’m shaking with laughter. “Man, I wish I’d been there,” I say as I wipe a tear from my eye.

I take a seat on the bench, feeling a pang of missing my family.

We’re a close-knit, rowdy bunch. Always have been.

When I lost my dad to a long battle with MS when I was nineteen years old, my uncles, aunts and cousins wasted no time stepping in and helping us through the dark days. Words cannot express how much that meant, especially as I was playing for Atlanta by then, living a thousand miles away from Mom and Nonna. I’m grateful to know that they have a solid support system back in New Jersey.

My dad was my hero, and I miss him like crazy to this day.

He ran a business with my uncles that had him working long hours, but he always made time for me and came to every game he could. My family made a lot of sacrifices for me growing up, letting my crazy hockey schedule pretty much dictate all of our plans.

I so badly wish that he could have lived to see me become captain of the Cyclones.

Makes me even more determined to make his memory proud.

“Did you do anything nice yesterday, honey?” Mom asks. “After the game, I mean. We watched it on TV while we cooked.”

“Just took it easy. Had some pie. The team is having dinner together later today at my place.”

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