Page 147 of Skate the Line

I wonder if that’s why Rhodes is so quiet.

Ellie digests this for a long time. She remains silent while I get her dressed in one of Rhodes’s Blue Devils shirts and even as I pull the brush through her long, damp strands.

“Come on, you.” I nod to her dad’s bedroom, and she grins. She hops onto the bed and sits cross-legged in front of me, head tilted back, ready for a braid.

For a five-year-old, she’s pretty crafty with the TV. She manages to turn it to the correct channel, and there on the screen are the Blue Devils warming up. I’m sure, just like me, she spots number 87 right away.

Butterflies fill my stomach, and my fingers stop weaving the strands of her hair.

“Sunny?”

“Huh?” I shake my head. “I mean, yes?”

“Do you have a mom?”

I pull my attention from the TV and stare at the back of her head. “Why do you ask?”

Her little shoulders rise and then fall a moment later.

I finish her braid in record time and pull her up toward the headboard beside me. She peers over at me with those same green eyes that her father has.

“Everyone has a mom,” I say. “But like you, my mom passed away when I was a baby.”

Ellie’s eyebrows rise, and it’s clear she has never met someone that shares the same type of grief. “Really?”

I nod. “But I don’t know that I would say I don’t have a mom.”

The commentators start talking on the TV, predicting that the Blue Devils will lose the game because they’re on the road. They go on to talk about Emory, the unstoppable goalie, and they bring up Rhodes too—about how he’s become more focused in the last several games, which could work in their favor of coming out on top.

As soon as they’re done, Ellie gives me her attention again. “What do you mean?”

My nana’s weathered face pops into my head, and a dose of warmth moves to my heart. I pull out my phone and show Ellie a photo. “This is who I consider to be my mom.”

“Who is that?”

“This ismybabushka, though I call her Nana.”

Ellie lets out a little laugh.

“She is the one who stepped in to raise me. She and my gramps.”

“Oh.” Ellie stares at the photo for a long time before she swings her sleepy face toward me again. “Kind of like you and my daddy?”

Um, wait, what?

I start to panic.

What if she tells Rhodes that I said I was her mom?

Oh god.

“Uh, well...”

Her face falls.

“You don’t want to be my mom?” She turns away from me, and my heart crashes from the flinch of hurt moving over her features.

I grab onto her hand and give it a squeeze. “It’s not that.”

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