Page 77 of The Grumpy Defenseman
“And the offer’s gone.”
She studied me with the same merciless tenderness she had used when I was sixteen and pretending I did not care that Dad had missed another game.
“I didn’t let it go,” I said. “I hesitated. The window closed.”
“Same thing.”
“It’s not the same thing.”
“Evan.” She set the dish towel on the counter with the precision of a woman who had been waiting years tosay the next sentence. “You don’t hesitate. You decided to play hockey at four. You decided to go pro at seventeen. You’ve stayed here for nine years because you decided to stay. Every single thing you’ve ever done has been a decision.”
The kitchen went quiet around us.
“So when you tell me you hesitated on almost ninety million dollars, I don’t hear indecision,” she said. “I hear a man who finally wanted something more than hockey and didn’t know what to do with it.”
I looked down at Ranger.
He leaned harder against my leg.
“Did you want it?” Lena asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Try again.”
Of course she said that. Everyone I loved had apparently entered into a private agreement to stop accepting my first answer.
I breathed out.
“I wanted what it meant,” I said. “Security. Proof. The number. What Dad would have thought of the number.”
“But did you want Seattle?”
The question was clean enough to hurt.
I shook my head once.
“No.”
Lena nodded like she had already known and had only been waiting for me to catch up.
“I let it close,” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “You did.”
“I could have said yes.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No,” I said. “I didn’t.”
“Then you didn’t lose a life,” she said. “You lost a version of yourself you thought you were supposed to want.”
I closed my eyes.
The house smelled like garlic and laundry soap. Tommy was in the living room arguing with a cartoon. Ranger leaned harder into my leg.
My sister stood in front of me with her dish towel and her practical shoes and the kind of love that did not let me lie just because lying wouldbe easier.
