Page 128 of My Merry Mistake
Finn
She pulls her legs up under her and watches as I push a slice of pizza around on my plate.
“So, I’m pretty bad with emotions,” she says.
“No. You?” I tease.
“Shocking, I know,” she muses. “But I’ve known you for a while, and I’ve never heard you talk about Hunter.”
I nod. “Yeah. Like I said before—it brings the mood down. And I don’t want to be the guy who lost a brother. People look at you differently when they know.” And it’s true. I want to be the guy who leaves every place a little better than how he found it.
What I don’t say is that I don’t like the way it feels when I talk about it. I don’t like to feel the anger that’s stirred up, or the way it mixes with grief. I can’t change it. I can’t go back and fix it.
What I can do is live my life like he would’ve, and never ever miss an opportunity to be grateful. For the big things and the little things.
But then Raya asks, “Do you . . . need to? Talk about him, I mean.”
Do I? Do I want to go there? Do I need to go there?
“No pressure,” she says. “I won’t be offended if you’d rather not.”
I really don’t like revisiting this. But part of me wants Raya to know. It’s the only way she’ll ever know Hunter and how amazing he was—the only way for me to introduce my brother to this incredible woman.
“No, it’s okay,” I say. “It’s hard because—well, it’s just hard.” I set my plate on the coffee table and think about the brother I lost.
“Hunter was two years older than me,” I say, thinking it’s best to start with the facts, but also aware that apart from that day she picked up his photo in my apartment, it’s been a really long time since I’ve said his name out loud. “He was obsessed with hockey.
“He’d talk about professional players nonstop. Knew all of their stats, who was getting traded to which team, even who was coming out of high school or college and was going to make a huge noise in the league.
“He was going to enter the draft.” I pause. “He would’ve gotten picked up too—he just had a gift. Dozens of letters and emails telling him he was a ‘rare talent.’” “A kid with crazy natural talent paired with the work ethic of a rancher? Unstoppable,” I laugh just thinking about it. So many chores. And so early in the morning.
Who would’ve thought eventually I’d be grateful for it?
I scoot back, settling into the couch, and look at Raya, grateful to find her eyes kind and curious.
“Everyone thought he was crazy, you know, because he was such a loudmouth, even at age twelve, about the fact that one day he was going to play pro hockey. He talked about it like he had no doubt he could do it. Nobody from our small town had ever done anything like that. He may as well’ve told people he was going to be an astronaut,” I laugh, remembering how the guys would tease him. He never backed down.
“My pop isn’t the best with words—he thinks actions are louder, so he built an ice rink in the backyard. His way of showing support, I think.” I pull out my phone and scroll through my photos until I find one of me on the rink with my brothers, taken last Christmas. “This is it.” I hand it to her, and she looks at it, pinching the screen to make it bigger.
“You all look so much alike,” she says.
“Right?” I take the phone back and scan my brothers’ faces. “Bunch of knuckleheads.” I laugh.
I pull in a slow, deep breath. This is the hard part. The part I don’t like to remember. I’ve found that if I say it quick, it hurts less. But only a little bit.
“So, one night,” I say, “on the way home from a game, Hunter came up over a hill and there was a car on his side of the road. In his lane. Head-on collision. The woman driving walked away without a scratch. Hunter didn’t . . . uh . . . he didn’t . . .” A ball of anger forms in my chest, replacing the sadness that’s always there when I think about the life my brother didn’t get to live.
“Hunter didn’t walk away at all.”
Raya goes still. She knew the ending, but it’s still jarring. The kind of tragedy that should never, ever happen. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers.
Somehow, her words don’t sound empty. Or pitying. They just sound honest and heartfelt.
“You know, as awful as it was, I do think losing Hunter taught me—my whole family, really—a lot about living in the moment,” he says. “I know better than to waste a single day.”
“Says the guy who spends his days off playing video games.” She shoots me a look.
It breaks the tension a bit, and I’m grateful. I turn mock-serious. “Hey. That is not a waste. That—is a very fun distraction.”
