Page 130 of The Nanny Goal

It would be one thing for Alexei and me to announce that we’re together in a few months, once I’m well into my training.

But right now?

I can already hear my mother suggesting that I shouldn’t go, because Alexei can just take care of me. And it’s so hard on the players when their wives are gone.

“Arghhh,” I say out loud.

Inessa looks up from where she’s taking snapshots on a stuffed hippopotamus. “Argh?”

“I will never expect you to follow in anyone’s footsteps, or be anyone else’s cheerleader,” I promise her. “You get to be your very own person, always.”

And then I burst into tears, because for the next six months, I won’t actually be here to keep that vow.

“Emmy?” She drops her stick and runs over.

I slide down the side of the kitchen island and fold my knees up, accepting her concerned tackle.

She wraps her arms around my neck and I take a deep breath.

“I’m okay, baby girl.”

She pats my cheek. “My Emmy.”

“I am. I always will be, I promise.” I stroke her curls off her cherubic face. “I’m going away for work. It’s going to be really hard. But then I’ll come back.”

“No work,” she says. “Play hockey.”

I laugh weakly. “I’m going to tell you a secret I’ve never told anyone else. There was a time when all I wanted to do was play hockey. When I was a bit bigger than you, I thought I was going to play in the NHL. And I was good. I was amazing, actually.

“But one day my mom told me that I couldn’t play in the NHL, and I don’t think she meant to hurt me. She was just telling me the truth, as she saw it. She knew there was pressure from other parents on my team, and league official, to get me off the boys’ team I was playing on.

“It wounded me thatshewas the one who told me, and I’ve never gotten over the way she told me, like I should just accept that I would never be in the NHL. That didn’t seem fair, and it didn’t make sense.

“I was a Granger. Of course I could play in the NHL. My dad did. By then, my oldest brother was already there, and my other brothers were being scouted and in development. And the very next tournament I was in, my parents couldn’t come to watch because my brother was in the playoffs in his first year.”

I swallow hard.

You understand, don’t you, Emery?

Except I hadn’t.

And they never again prioritized any of my non-Olympics games over my brothers’ games.

“To this day, I think the only reason they came to the Olympics was because it wasn’t at the same time as the playoffs,” I mutter.

Inessa has stopped listening. I mean, she wasn’t listening to any of it, really.

I kiss her head. “Anyway, I don’t want to play hockey anymore. I want to be able to walk away from something I’m good at, because that’s not all I am, and it causes me this weird, quiet stress. Except when I’m playing you, of course. And playing your dad was fun too, I?—”

“Noooooo.” She sighs dramatically, done with my monologue. “Nessa play hockey.”

“Ooooh. Of course. If you want to play hockey, I love that.”

She runs back to her game, and I pick myself up off the floor.

If there was ever a sign I should call my parents before they hear about this from anyone else, that confession to myself was it.

I pop downstairs and ask Sergei if he could take Inessa to the park. Maria is feeling well enough to go with them, and I promise to catch up as soon as I’ve finished the phone call I need to make.

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