Page 6 of The Rest of the Story
Tears were sliding down my cheeks, faster than I could wipe them away. “He’s in surgery. His leg is broken. It’s all fucked, but that’s it. He’s not— There’s nothing else—” My eyes closed.Don’t think about it.
“Baby, how did this happen?”
“Mom, Jesus…” My hand clapped over my mouth again, too late to catch my heaving sob. “Mom—”
Somehow, I blubbered through it. Every bit, the whole damn thing, from when I got the call in Winnipeg telling me I’d been traded to when I sent Coates facedown into the ice. Deciding to stay or go, stay or go, and then throwing my every goddamn thing into this place. Shea, Brody, and Kathy, and the whole team, every single one of them. Coates was a nightmare we’d left behind, I’d thought, something from our past. He had court orders to stay away.
He’d probably driven over those orders on his way to the arena to kill Shea.
As I laid it all out—Coates, the car, Shea trapped against the busted Pizza Hut counter, Brody, Jesus Christ, Brody—in between racking breaths and wet sniffs, I heard my mom slide open her patio door, and then the rhythmic crashing of waves breaking against the beach. She kept me going, murmuring into the phone when I’d freeze up, when my words would die, when my throat would close and my tears tried to drown me. She was there, the sound of her, the feel of her, so close to me it was like I could reach out and touch her soft skin or lean into her belly as she laid her arms around my shoulders.
“Mom,” I finally said, “I don’t know what to do.”
“Yes, you do, baby,” she said, without even a beat. “You always know what to do.”
“I don’t, I don’t fucking know—”
“What do they need? What do they all need right now?”
Big, big bags of weed, Tahitian vacations, psychs, docs, head shrinkers. Friends. Family. A whole lot of love.
“They needyou, baby. They’ve always needed you, and you’ve always been there for them, right from the first minute you showed up. That’s what you do. You aretherefor the people you love. Like you were there for me that night.”
My breath dragged in so sharply it burned my lungs. We’d never spoken about that. Never, not once.
“You saved my life, and then you took care of me. You took care of me for a long time. There’s a lot of things I regret, and I know I should have been a better mother to you. But how you turned out, and the man you are today, is never one of my regrets. I should have done so many things differently, but when I start thinking down that road, I terrify myself that any change I’d have made would have turned you into a different man. You are perfect, and you are exactly—exactly—what these boys need.”
“Mom—”
“You are not responsible for what happened. You hear me? You’re not. You don’t have a shred of responsibility in that man’s actions. What you are responsible for is what you do now. I know you, baby, and I know exactly what you’re going to do: you’re going to love them through it, good and hard and right, like you did for me, and like you’ve done for them.”
“Mom—” I was weeping again, full-on sobs, my face in my hand, crying so hard my chest ached.
“You’ve talked a lot about Shea and Brody and everything they need, but what about you? What do you need, baby?” A wave came in behind my mother, broke and crashed.
“I—” I could barely fucking speak. “I need them to be okay. I need them all to be okay.”
“They will be. Love your way through this. Prosecute that fuck until he’s rotting in prison. Then hold on tight to each other. You all will heal, day by day. Moment by moment. It gets better. You get better. I promise you that, baby. Life gets better.”
If anyone had the authority to speak about holding on, healing, gathering strength day by day and life getting better, it was my mother.
She started singing me a lullaby from when I was a fussy child and refused to be left alone to fall asleep. She’d have to sing to me five, six times before I was drowsy enough not to pitch a fit when she closed my bedroom door. It felt the same now, like I needed her to sing to me one more time before I could hang up the phone.
I sat alone for hours after our call.
I had update texts coming in steadily from Kathy, letting me know the guys had made it back to the rookie house and that the wives were there, that everyone was huddling up together, that the league was pushing the next game out. Around 11:00 p.m., my phone started going wild with texts from Amelia, saying she and John had landed and were on their way.
I met them both outside the front doors. Half a cross-country flight is a long time for a momma to think. She could have realized I’d failed her son, that I’d broken my promises, that I’d let Shea down. I didn’t know if Amelia would slap me as soon as she saw me, scream at me, demand an explanation for how I’d let this happen.
Amelia launched herself into my arms as soon as she was out of the taxi. “Morgan.” She’d been crying. I could hear it in her voice. “Morgan, are you all right? Are you okay?”
I shook my head. No, I wasn’t okay. Not at all.
John appeared behind her, pale and sick with worry. “How much longer until Shea is out of surgery?”
“They said about two more hours.” Amelia took my arm and looped it through hers, then steered us toward the hospital doors. I didn’t know which of us was holding each other up more.
I told them everything, the same as I told my mom, once we were parked in the surgical waiting room and ignored by the nurse again. By the end of it, Amelia had her elbows on her knees and her face to the ground, hands fisted tight in her hair, and John—sweet, gentle John, who I’d only ever seen argue about the correct date of the discovery of the North Pole, and even that, he did with a laugh and a smile—was pacing hard and cursing, his hands clenched into fists that shook with rage.
