Comeback (24 page)

The rest of the night went pretty much as expected. We had dinner together, watched a little TV, got the kids into the bathtub, and put them in bed. Elin was starting to sleep in her own bed again, at least to start. Usually, she ended up in the boys’ room sometime in the middle of the night. And while I had a room of my own at Nicky’s house, I’d spent every night in his bed with him. He wasn’t sleeping much, but he seemed to at least rest better if I was there.

I was starting to feel increasingly awkward staying with them when he would read their bedtime story at night. They tended to switch back and forth between English and Swedish when they would speak, and I wasn’t sure if they were intentionally leaving me out or if it was just more natural to them to speak that way. So when it was story time, I headed into the boys’ room and took up a seat by the window, as was becoming my custom.

Tonight, Nicky read them a book written in Swedish, making me feel even more like I was invading their private family moment. It was called
Adjö, herr Muffin
, not that I had the first clue what that meant. I sat in my chair, itching to leave and watching the children as they listened to their uncle. I’d seen Bergy hand this book and one other to Nicky today, and I’d been curious ever since.

The boys sniffled a few times as he read, and Nicky’s voice cracked several times, but he kept reading until he got to the very end. Elin was the one who drew most of my attention, though. A steady stream of tears had started falling down her cheeks partway through the story, and they didn’t stop even after her uncle had closed the book.

“
Precis som Mama?”
Nils asked.

“
Ja, precis som Mama,”
Nicky replied.

I didn’t know what that meant, but I couldn’t sit there any longer. As quietly as I could, I got up and left the room, going back to the living room so they could be together without my prying eyes. A few minutes later, the door opened and closed again. No one came out to join me, so I was fairly certain it was Elin padding her way down the hall to her own bedroom. The next time the door opened, Nicky emerged and came to join me.

“Why did you leave?” he asked, sitting next to me on the couch.

I shook my head and shrugged. “I just felt like I didn’t belong. Like I was invading something meant to be shared just between the four of you.”

“You belong,” he said. He put his big, warm hand over mine, brushing the top of my thigh with his thumb. “Was it because we were speaking in Swedish? I just wanted—”

“You don’t need to explain to me why you read to them and spoke in their native language.” I shook my head. “It had nothing to do with that. You’re the only family they have left, and I think sometimes you need to have time alone with them. Some things should be just family.”

He fell into silence for a moment, with a tic starting up in his cheek, and I worried that he would withdraw again. Today had been an incredibly difficult day.

“What was the book about?” I asked in an effort to keep him from drifting too far away from me.

“It’s called
Goodbye, Mr. Muffin
. It’s about a family’s pet guinea pig that gets old and dies. Bergy thought it would help them understand about death.”

“That was really thoughtful of him to give you that.”

“He gave me another by the same author—
All the Dear Little Animals
. We’ll read it tomorrow night.”

“Is that one in Swedish, too?”

“Yes. I could translate it for you, though. The kids wouldn’t mind.”

“It’s not necessary.” I squeezed his hand to reassure him, or maybe to reassure myself. He wanted me to feel like I belonged, but I wasn’t sure I ever really would, and that had little to nothing to do with the fact that they all spoke a language that I couldn’t even begin to understand. “Is Elin all right?”

He laughed. “Are any of us all right? I mean
really
all right?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do.” He sighed. “I don’t know what’s going on with her, honestly. Every time I try to get her to talk to me, she tries to turn it around and get
me
to talk.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said. Maybe she needed a woman to talk to. It was worth a try, at least. “I think being around Maddie has helped.”

“They’re in the same class. They were already getting to be friends, but I worry that Elin might push her away. Maddie doesn’t seem ready to let that happen, though.” Nicky quirked a grin at me. “I told them they had to go back to school tomorrow.”

“Actually, I was going to talk to you about that.”

“You probably need to get back to work, too, don’t you?”

“I do. I can bring some of it here—”

“You’d work from home? You don’t just leave it at the office?” He sounded indignant about that.

“Sometimes,” I said, shrugging. “There aren’t always enough hours in the day. It’s not a big deal.”

“It is a big deal. It means you’re working too hard already, and now you’re adding more work to your already-full plate by helping me.”

“I’ll make it work.”

He frowned, but he left it alone. “I need to get back to practice, too. I can’t keep putting it off.”

“You don’t sound very enthusiastic about it,” I noted.

“I just haven’t figured out how life is supposed to go on when I feel like time already came to a stop.”

Time hadn’t stopped, though. It was still trucking along, moving at the same pace it always had. I got the sense that it would be up to me to find a way for all of us to keep up with it, at least for the time being.

NICKY AND I
worked out a schedule for getting back into the day-to-day, for moving on with life. I dropped the kids off at school before heading in to the office. He went to practice, film sessions, team meetings, and all the other things the team required of him, and then he picked the kids up after school. He spent the afternoons with them, and we would all spend the evenings together after I got home from work.

There were some definite flaws with our basic plan, though.

For one thing, it only accounted for days that weren’t game days. When Nicky had a game, he tended to take an afternoon pre-game nap right around the time he’d need to pick the kids up from school. I told him not to worry, that I’d slip out of the office briefly and bring them home before going back in. He would be taking his nap when we returned to the house, though, and I didn’t feel good about just leaving the kids unsupervised until he got up, even if Elin was very responsible and could possibly be trusted to watch her brothers for a couple of hours. Instead, I started setting aside work that could be done at home so I could take it with me on game days and work while watching them. We’d all sit around the dining room table, the children doing their homework and me doing mine.

For another thing, our plan didn’t take into account the fact that Nicky would be leaving for games on the road at some point in the not-too-distant future, so he wouldn’t be around to help with them at all. Not only would I be taking them to school and picking them up on those days but I would have to do all the parenting, get them into the bath and then bed, dole out any discipline that might be necessary… The thought of it was more than just a little daunting, considering that not only was I not their mother but I wasn’t even related to these children at all. Why should they listen to me when I told them to do something? Why should they come to me when they had a problem and needed an adult? Were they comfortable enough to trust me with the issues they might run into at school or to talk about what they were feeling in terms of their grief? I didn’t have the first clue how long it might take us to get to that point, or if we would ever get there.

I was fairly certain both Nicky and I were actively attempting to avoid thinking of all of that. I wasn’t sure how the kids and I would get along without him, and although his teammates would be with him when they were gone, I worried he would start to shut down emotionally without having us there to draw him out.

Today was the Storm’s Christmas party, though, an event that provided the perfect excuse to avoid thinking about any and all of that. We’d hardly pulled up at the team’s practice facility before Tuck was racing over to pull open the minivan’s sliding door.

“Did you bring your skates?” he demanded of Nils and Hugo, his freckled face as red as his hair from his excitement. “We get to play hockey today!”

The boys piled out of the van and ran into the building in a crashing wave of shouts and racing feet, slinging their bags of gear over their shoulders like old pros. Nicky, Elin, and I followed them in with only slightly less enthusiasm.

Maddie was sitting on one of the low bleachers, tying her skates. She grinned when she saw us and waved Elin over.

“Go on,” Nicky told her when she gave him a questioning look. He winked. “Jessica and I will be just fine without you supervising.”

She gave him a sheepish grin and took off to join her friend.

“Are you sure about that?” I asked him.

“Are you being cheeky with me?”

“I suppose I am.” It felt good to flirt. There hadn’t been much time for that lately, to just be together without having to deal with the everyday creeping in to interrupt things.

“You’re here!” Mia Quincey said, coming around the corner. She grinned at me, taking my arm. “Just the person I’ve been looking for. I’ve been working on some ideas for where we could do the Light the Lamp shoot, and I wanted to run some of them by you.”

She was a photographer, and I’d been talking to her about shooting some spots we could use on marketing materials. We definitely needed to get together about these things, but I hadn’t been planning on working today.

“Oh, but…” I looked back at Nicky for help. I’d been looking forward to spending the day with him.

“Go on,” Nicky said, shooing me. “I need to find Soupy, anyway.”

Without getting any assistance from that corner, I didn’t see much point trying to avoid the inevitable. I let Mia lead me off to the buffet table. We filled a couple of plates with finger foods and headed for a bleacher on the opposite side of the rink.

“My first thought is the New Year’s Eve event,” she started. “We might have to get your celebrity drivers to sign off on using their likenesses, of course, so there’s a bit of a hiccup in terms of using that event, but I think it could be great.”

The drivers weren’t exactly designated drivers, as the event was drug-and-alcohol free. It was a big party for addicts or anyone who didn’t want to be out with a bunch of people drinking for whatever reason. To make it more enticing for them to come, we got as many celebrities as we could arrange for to come out. They would mix and mingle all night, and then when it was over, they acted as drivers to be sure everyone got home safely, along with an autograph or two. We’d been doing it for a few years, and it had proven to be a big hit within the community.

Immediately, my brain started churning through all the extra work something like that would mean for me. No guys from the team meant I wouldn’t have to deal with the NHL and the Players’ Association, but I had a couple dozen local celebrities who were going to be involved. That was a lot of waivers to have signed. I didn’t even want to go there right now. I crunched on a baby carrot. “And your other ideas? What else do you have?”

“Well, I could definitely come by the jobsite. Mitch said you’ve got some volunteers helping build a house? Kind of like a Habitat for Humanity sort of thing?”

“Something like that.” At least with this project, I wouldn’t have to get it approved by the NHL—as long as none of the players were included in the shots Mia took. “I can run that by Carter and see what he thinks. I bet he’d give the go-ahead.” I’d have to be careful about which volunteers were in the images. Some of them were very careful about protecting their privacy. They didn’t want the whole world to know they were addicts.

“Of course, we can take some photographs at the dinner and auction, but I think it would be better to get action shots. We want to show the world what Light the Lamp does.”

“Getting some pics of Liam at the dinner event would be fine,” I murmured, mulling it over while watching everyone out on the ice.

Nicky had insisted I needed to bring skates with me today, even though I’d told him I had no intention of getting out there and looking like an idiot. Unlike the guys, I hadn’t started skating as soon as I could walk. There was little in the world that made me feel as clumsy as skating, particularly when I was surrounded by so many people who were so much better than me. At the moment, my gaze fell on Hugo, Nils, and Tuck. The three of them were zooming around on the ice as if they’d been born with skates on their feet.

Some of the guys were starting to head out there with their kids, and Dana Zellinger and Julianne d’Aragon were on the ice. But that didn’t mean I needed to be. Dana was a former hockey player and current hockey coach, and Julianne grew up in a family of speed skaters and figure skaters. They weren’t going to make idiots of themselves like I would. Dana had baby Ryan in a Baby-Björn, and Julianne was holding on to Emily’s hands. The d’Aragon kids were all older and able to skate on their own, the lot of them joining Tuck and our boys.

Our boys.

I wasn’t sure where that had come from. I wasn’t ready to analyze it, either.

“I don’t really think we want much else from the auction,” I finally said, desperate to move away from the thought that had struck me unbidden and stolen my ability to think for a moment. “No more than a shot or two with Liam. You’re right; I want this campaign to show what we do, not how we raise money.”

“Do you have any other events in the works?” Mia asked.

Most of what we did was on a small scale. Other businesses and charitable organizations let me know what sort of help they needed, and I did my best to match them with a volunteer who could fill their needs. Sometimes I would organize a small group of them to take on larger projects. We’d never done anything on the scale of the Thurstons’ home before.