Page 96 of The Fall
“Have you?”
“He—” Blair’s voice catches. “He’s throwing everything away.Everything. If Cody had half—no, even aquarterof his talent?—”
Then there’s silence. Like the whole room dies.
I know that name. How? How do I know that name?
“So that’s what this is about.”
Blair snaps. “Don’t.”
“Blair—”
“Stop.” Blair’s voice is vibrating dangerously close to shattering. “Don’t go there.”
“Calle... Torey Kendrick isn’t Cody.”
The silence that follows is worse than any scream could be. There’s movement—footsteps pacing, the scratch of fabric against cinderblock.
“Cody would have killed for half of what Kendrick throws away. Half the ice time. Half the chances?—”
“That’s not fair to either of them,” Hayes says.
“Nothing about life is fair.” Blair’s voice is hollowed-out and scraped clean. “Kendrick is marking time until he’s sent-down and shipped-out. He knows it. We all know it. Don’t waste your breath, or your time.”
Sent down. Shipped out. Hockey was always something borrowed, wasn’t it?
Hayes doesn’t let it go. “What are you going to do to change that, Captain?”
Don’t breathe,Torey,don’t breathe?—
“I learned my lesson about trying to save people from themselves.”
I’m halfway down the hall and running before I know it. My sneakers squeak, the sound bouncing off cinderblock walls that feel like they’re closing in. I take a turn, then another, putting distance between me and those voices until I can’t hear anything but my own ragged breathing.
Cody. I know that name. I’ve heard it. I know it. The edges of something massive are lighting up in my brain. I’ve heard Blair say that name before. But when? Where? Not in this life.
I stop somewhere deep in the rink’s belly, far from Blair and Hayes. The walls down here are painted industrial-green, a color that makes it seem sickly and underwater. My hands are shaking. There’s too much adrenaline flooding through me, and my fingers are clumsy as I pull out my phone. It slips, kisses concrete, skitters. “Shit.” I scoop it up, nearly drop it again.
My thumbs go feral. Google opens.
Cody Blair Callahan.
The search takes seconds, but those seconds stretch like dripping oil.
The first result is an obituary, and it reads like a closed door.Cody Callahan, twenty-two, beloved brother, passed away...There’s only a few lines, a funeral home link, and a list of those left behind.
My legs give out. I slide down the wall until I’m flat on my ass, my phone trembling in my hands.
Blair’s younger brother. Dead at twenty-two.
It was an overdose.
Cody played hockey too. He never reached the NHL, but he bounced around European leagues, and then—nothing.
The pieces are slamming together in my head now. Last October, Blair took that sudden leave of absence. Four months gone, no explanation. October. The same month his brother died.
There’s an image trying to surface in my mind—a photograph on a refrigerator door, a young guy grinning at the camera with Blair’s same jawline, same eyes.
