Page 20 of Pipe Dreams
It took him a minute to realize his error. “I meantyet, Lauren. Unless our future child is a prodigy, we don’t need to do the school shuffle for years.”
“I knew exactly what you meant. I was just thinking what a tough transition it must be for these Long Island moms who are moving to Brooklyn.”
“Not all of them are doing it,” he pointed out. “Some players will commute from Long Island. Chancy’s wife said ‘no way, no how’ to moving.”
“He’ll be retired in a couple of years, anyway,” Lauren pointed out. “Looks like Coach is trying to deepen the bench on the left wing to get ready.”
“Yeah. This kid Castro is gonna be good.”
“Agreed.”
Their pillow talk frequently involved shop talk. Whenhe was with Shelly, she used to complain if he talked about hockey to her, but Lauren didn’t mind at all.It’s who you are, she’d said once.And I love who you are.
“I have to get up,” he said, and then didn’t.
“I know,” she agreed, and then didn’t slide off him.
“I love coming home to you,” he whispered.
She kissed his neck in agreement.
He wrapped his arms around her to draw out the perfect moment of quiet just a little longer.
•••
The drive from his rental house to his old one took about four minutes.
Although he’d moved out a year and a half ago, it was still a little weird to drive up like a guest to the house he’d bought with Shelly. He parked his car at the curb instead of pulling into the garage like he used to.
Same car. Same driveway. New routine.
A few times during the past eighteen months, Lauren had come along when he spent time with Elsa. But it wasn’t easy. Even after all these months, he and Elsa were still trying to settle in to the daddy-doesn’t-live-here-anymore routine. And he’d never say this out loud but Elsa did not exactly crave Lauren’s company. His daughter was tight-lipped and brittle whenever his girlfriend was around. At eleven, she understood what Lauren and Mike were to one another, and she didn’t like it.
Lauren had noticed it too, and it made everyone feel bad. So he’d stopped including her in these pizza outings. And Lauren made herself scarce whenever he had Elsa overnight. Like last Thursday—Shelly had gone to see a specialist in Baltimore. They’d told Elsa that Shelly was having a girls’ night out with friends. But it was really some kind of biopsy.
He hadn’t told Lauren the truth, either. In the first place, Shelly had specifically asked him not to talk about her health with anyone.
Lauren could keep a secret. But there was another reason he hadn’t told her. He felt superstitious about it. If he said “something terrible is happening,” then it would.
The possibilities were too awful to contemplate. He hoped that in a year this would all just seem like a bump in the road. Maybe the doctors in Baltimore were about to give Shelly some good news.Somebodywould. She was young and healthy.
Uneasy, Mike sat there behind the wheel of his car, watching his (former) house for movement. But Elsa didn’t appear. Since he’d rather not sit in his car all day, he got out and walked up to knock on the door.
Knocking on his own door felt pretty weird, too.
Shelly answered, but it took her a good long time. “Michael,” she said, her voice rough. “Elsa won’t come out. I’m sorry.”
“What do you mean?” He leaned on the doorframe and looked past her. “She’s not ready?”
Shelly slowly shook her head, biting her lip. He was momentarily distracted by the fact that she looked exhausted. “Elsa says she won’t go. I’ve been working on her, but she won’t come out of her room.”
“Why?” Elsa was always happy to see him.
Shelly looked up the stairs, as if the answer lay up there. “You could try to talk to her.”
Irritated now, he stalked past her and went upstairs, taking them two at a time. The familiarity of the carpet under his feet tugged at his gut. And his old house smelled the same—like Shelly’s favorite hand soap. Every time he’d taken a lengthy road trip with the team, coming back had been just a little weird. His family’s lives happened out of his sight a great deal of the time. He’d felt like an intruder sometimes.
As he reached the second floor, the last stair tread squeaked. As it always had. Annoyance flared in his chest. Elsa could have spared him this awkward little trip down memory lane.
