Page 130 of Changing the Playbook
Relax.
Neither of us has managed that since I caged him with my fear. But he nods anyway—always nodding now, always agreeing—and forces his mouth into something that might resemble a smile if you squinted.
As he starts to clean up, I practically sprint to my car, cranking the music loud enough to drown my conscience, which sounds suspiciously like Mom telling me that fear makes terrible decisions.
Twenty minutes later, I’m at my parents’ kitchen table, theoretically helping Hazel paint Jupiter while actually creating abstract art titled “Woman Destroys Everything She Touches.”
“Sophie, you’re getting orange on Saturn.” Hazel’s eight-year-old exasperation cuts through my spiral. “Saturn isnotorange.”
“Sorry, bug.” I try focusing on the styrofoam ball, but my hand trembles, sending orange across the newspaper.
She sets down her brush with judicial solemnity. “Why are you being weird and sad?”
Trust a third-grader to diagnose my entire emotional state in six words. But silence isn’t an option, so I sigh. “I’m not sad.”
She dips her brush in yellow paint with surgical precision. “You look like someone took away your favorite thing.”
Like I took away his.
Dad materializes in the doorway—perfect timing for emotional crises—takes one look at my face, and sends Hazel to wash brushes. She goes, deploying her most dramatic eye roll and a look that saysadults are so completely lame.
“Coffee?” Dad’s already moving to the machine, giving me the option to talk or bolt.
I nod, and while I marinate in guilt, the coffee maker gurgles. Outside, the neighbor’s dog launches his daily crusade against invisible threats, while inside, silence stretches until it snaps.
“I really fucked up, Dad.” The words emerge coated in self-loathing. “I think I broke Mike.”
Dad sets a mug in front of me—the one with “World’s Okayest Daughter” in faded letters that used to be ironic. “Broke him how?”
“I asked him to give up the NHL. For me. To stay here.” Each word tastes more pathetic than the last. “And he just… agreed. Like I’d asked him to pick up milk instead of abandon his entire life’s dream. And since then, he’s been… not him.”
Dad’s eyebrows climb toward what remains of his hairline. “That’s…” He recalibrates. “Not what I expected.”
“Mom had just been in hospital, and I panicked. I needed to know he wouldn’t vanish when things got hard. That he wouldn’t be in Vancouver or Toronto or wherever when she…” The possibility sits in my chest, stone-heavy.
“No need to think about that right now,” he says. “But Mike, he agreed immediately?”
“Without even blinking.” My laugh tastes acidic. “Didn’t negotiate, didn’t argue, didn’t even ask why. Just ‘OK, Sophie, whatever you need.’”
Dad leans against the counter, studying me with eyes that caught every tell when I lied about homework or boys or why I came home at 2:00 a.m. instead of the agreed upon curfew. “You know, when your mom got diagnosed, everyone assumed she made me leave Michigan.”
My head snaps up.
“She didn’t. She actually fought me on it. She said we could handle the distance, and that her treatment wasn’t worth me giving up a program I’d built from nothing.” He takes a thoughtful sip, and I notice new lines around his eyes, carved by watching Mom fight a new enemy. “But I knew where I was needed.”
The parallel lands, bullseye.
“The choice was mine,” he continues, voice gentle but firm. “She gave me that dignity. That agency. And even on the worst days—when she can’t get out of bed, when the treatment makes her sick, when we both know it’s getting worse—I’ve never resented it. How could I? It wasmychoice.”
Tears arrive hot and sudden, streaming down my face faster than I can wipe them away. “But what if he chooses hockey? What if I’m alone when?—”
“When Mom gets worse?” Dad’s directness surprises me. We usually tiptoe around the progression. “Sophie, her illness doesn’t follow our schedules.”
“But—”
“No buts, Sophie.” He cuts me off. “There’ll be good years and terrible days and everything in between. But she’s got me here, and the last thingeitherof us wants to do is for you to live your life in fear—or, worse,notlive your life—because of what ifs.”
“That’s why you were telling me to back off?” I say, the realization hitting me like a brick to the head.
