Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 129323 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 647(@200wpm)___ 517(@250wpm)___ 431(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 129323 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 647(@200wpm)___ 517(@250wpm)___ 431(@300wpm)
I hardly remember completing my rituals. They were done in record time, and a little over an hour later, I’m home and in bed with Cassidy.
We’ve been lying here quietly for the past ten minutes. I haven’t broached the topic because I’ve been trying to work out how to do it. I can’t even think of what to say. There’s no way for me to bring this up that won’t allude to my snooping.
Finally, I can’t take it anymore, and I break the silence. “How did you end up in Birmingham?”
She turns toward me, peering into the side of my head. My eyes are trained on the ceiling.
“Well, technically, I wasn’t in Birmingham for very long. After I graduated, I ran as far as I could from my dad without leaving the state.” She shifts onto her back, looking up at the ceiling with me. “I ended up in Detroit. Figured two hours was a safe distance from that man.” She laughs, but it lacks humor.
I wonder what she’s thinking at this moment. I want to ask, but she continues.
“After college, a friend I met in Detroit got a job at a hotel in Birmingham. She lived in an apartment a few blocks away. That’s where I was staying before you.”
My head turns to look at her.
“This same friend is how I ended up at your hotel room,” she says, smiling at me.
“I still can’t believe you stayed in Michigan,” I say, remembering our conversations back in the day. We used to say how, when we could, we’d both go as far away as we could manage.
“Not all of us had the luxury of a hockey contract.”
There’s no trace of malice in her tone, and that settles me a bit.
“True, but if not for that contract, I would’ve chased a team in any other state,” I say, recalling the part of me that needed to get as far away from Michigan as I could.
It was the one thing I really had hoped wouldn’t be my lot. I wanted out. Wanted away.
I take a deep breath, hoping this isn’t going in a bad direction. I need to refocus the conversation to when she was still living at home with her dad. “Do you ever speak to him?”
“Who?” she responds, sounding truly confused.
“Your father.”
“No.”
One word, full of so much emotion. Anger. Resolution.
My brow rises. “Not at all?”
“He moved after I graduated,” she says, but I already knew this.
Hence why finding her was even harder. The man became a ghost. No records. No forwarding address. And like him, she also disappeared. Her name wasn’t what I believed it to be all those years. Her dad, on the other hand, could be dead for all I know.
“Was it bad? Did he get worse?”
I know immediately that question is going to get me nowhere. Her shoulders stiffen and her face transforms into a stone fortress.
“Aiden.” She leans up to look at me. “Let’s not do this. I left that life behind for a reason. Please don’t make me go back there.”
Her voice is so soft but decisive, I know I won’t get anything from her.
So I drop it, a new plan forming in my head. It’s not a plan I necessarily want to enact, but if she’s not going to give me the answers I need, I know someone who will.
I’m up early and in my car. Two hours and forty minutes later, I’m pulling up to a place I had hoped I’d never go to again.
My mother’s house.
I throw the car in park and start heading to the door, determination the only fuel pushing me forward.
“Aiden, is that you?”
I turn over my shoulder and see Mrs. Matthews waving at me from her makeshift porch. I’m shocked to see her. Mrs. Matthews was always so much older, and now, after all these years, she must be near ninety.
Apart from Pip, she was one of the only people who cared.
Before Pip arrived, Mrs. Matthews and her husband would make sure I was fed. Would give me shelter if I was kicked out of my house for whatever reason. Or even if I just needed an escape.
“I knew it was you. Henry!” she calls out to her husband. “Look who’s here.”
Henry, her husband, walks out of the trailer door and toward his wife. “Why if it isn’t our famous hockey player.”
My lips turn up into a smile.
They always helped me—always tried to, at least. I really should’ve thought more about them when I left.
Yet more people I deserted to chase my dreams and thrive, while they’re here, struggling to make ends meet. The rickety stairs look like a death trap for Mrs. Matthews’s frail form. How the hell does she even get down them?
Sadness sweeps through me. I have the means to help, and after everything they did for me, I should’ve a long time ago. I won’t leave this town before making some visits to secure help for them.