Page 8 of The Rest of the Story
A slow, terrible shake of his head. “No.” He mouthed the word more than spoke it. “And now, how can I? I can’t even be here when he wakes up. I can’t look him in the eyes—”
“Why?”
“Because—” One great heave shuddered through him. “Because I swore I’d protect him, and…”
His eyes were shattered diamonds when he looked at me, bleeding electric raindrops down his cheeks. “The first day Brody arrived, he was like the fucking sun.” Lawson’s expression crumpled. “I was here for two years before you arrived, Moogs. This was my first NHL team. My first shot, and, I thought, my only shot. I was just a kid. I let a lot of things happen, and I let a lot of things go. I was just…” His chin wavered, and he struggled to breathe. “Coates ground every fucking thing out of me. But seeing Brody? Seeing his smile? Hearing his laugh? Being around him, the way he is when he’s happy? For the first time in, God, forever, there was something good in the world again.” He was staring past me, into his memories. “IsworeI wouldn’t let Coates do what he’d done to us to Brody, or to any of the new kids. So I got everyone together, and I told them we had todosomething. Gavin, he was thinking the same thing, and he said he had a plan.”
That plan had been me.
“I told them Coates would have to kill me before he hurt Brody. But…” The pain in Lawson’s voice was so deep it seemed like a hole had opened inside him and he was plunging into it, falling forever.
I’ve seen the medical records. Lawson finished last season with four cracked ribs, shaped like he’d been hit from behind with a full-swing whack from a thick goalie stick. By the time Brody and the others got off the bus for Coates’ little training camp, Lawson was just starting to move without hobbling, and each breath must have felt like he’d surgically implanted a cheese grater inside his lungs. Coming back from that was a feat of strength on its own. Coming back from that and vowing to protect Brody? To gather the others and make them swear that things would change?
And then, to see Brody stumble beneath Coates.
All this time, all these months, Lawson thought he knew the worst of it, that Coates had played his mental mind games and spun cat cradles out of the rookies’ psyches.
To find out now that he’d been wrong, wrong in the most horrific way—
I thought of my mother, howling on the other side of the locked bathroom door, imagining all of her worst nightmares as my dad and I went at each other in that hallway.
“He showed me these.” Lawson pulled two folded pieces of paper from his jeans pocket. They were ragged and water stained in spots—tearstained, I realized—and the folds were soft, as if someone had opened and refolded them many times. I opened them up, scanned each first line.
Dear Mom and Dad, I’m so sorry that you’re reading this—
Dear Shea, Please don’t be upset. This isn’t your fault—
I folded both and handed them back to Lawson. I wasn’t going to read that. I wasn’t ever going to read that.
“I should go clean my house for Brody’s parents,” he mumbled.
Lawson was one of the neater guys in the dressing room. I’d hang my hat on his house being picked up and put away. “I’ll do it. Can I have your keys?”
“Moogs—”
“You need to stay here. You need to be with him.” I jerked my chin to Brody, sleeping like a baby with his cheek on Lawson’s thigh. His lips were parted, and delicate snores tumbled out of him. “You belong here, man. You need to be here when he opens his eyes.”
“I can’t tell him.” Lawson was on the edge of something. His free hand dug into the couch cushion, fingers denting the leather and his arm shaking so badly I felt the tremors reverberate through the frame.
“That’s your choice. You don’t have to tell him you’reinlove with him, but you still need to love him. He needs you more than ever. You can’t abandon him now.”
“I wouldn’t—”
“Thenbehere. Be here when he opens his eyes, and when he texts, and when he calls you on the phone. Be here, because you didn’t fail him, Lawson. You didn’t. You made a plan, and you made it happen. You fought back. And youdidsave him. Brody is here. He’s alive, and he’s alive today because of what you guys put in motion. You got me?”
His eyes were pinpoint bright, and his voice had thinned and fractured. “Morgan…”
I repeated what my mom told me. “Hold on to each other, and you bothwillheal. Day by day. Moment by moment. It will get better, if you’re here for him.”
His fingers uncurled from the edge of the couch and found mine. He squeezed, so tight and so hard I thought we’d fuse together. I held on as long as he needed, until the breath he was holding finally let out, until his eyes closed and then opened, and the tears that fell down his cheeks weren’t so boiling with shame and anguish.
When I stood, he sent me a tiny, shaking smile and passed me his keys.
* * *
I was right—Lawson’s house was shipshape, and all I needed to do was put fresh sheets on the guest beds and make a list of groceries to have delivered. Then I was back at the rookie house and waiting, sitting on my rear bumper as Brody’s mom and dad drove through Boulder and found our neighborhood.
They were driving an old farm truck, a mud-splattered Chevy with duallies, and Owen and Hazel were out of the front cab and rushing up the driveway before they’d turned off the engine. “Brody,” Owen choked out. “Where’s my boy?”
