The Pieces Of Us (The Firebird Trilogy Book 3) Read online

  Anya

  “A rare day off, huh? I never see you outside of school anymore.”

  Anya pushed her toe against the black rubber mulch beneath the swing, the rusty metal chains groaning. A toddler playing catch with his father lost his balance, tumbled over, and shrieked as though he’d been shot. She rolled her eyes. Wait until he had real problems to cry about. The little bastard probably had a mother to go home to. “We’re visiting a college tomorrow.”

  “I thought your dad already decided you’re going to Boston.”

  “He needs me here. He’s just too stubborn to admit it.” She chiseled at the peeling white paint on the bars until she chipped a piece off. Noah was watching her, oblivious to the fact that eyes were always speaking when the mouth was not. Unable to register the obvious fact she had no time for relationships, even when he’d just acknowledged her lack of time. They’d been best friends for so long he’d developed certain beliefs about their inevitability as a couple. Read too many YA novels.

  “What about Mike?”

  “Ugh. What about him? At least he admitted I intimidate him.”

  Noah’s gray eyes glinted, hyena-like. The swollen cadaver of Anya’s relationship with a fellow hockey player proved too delicious not to feed on. “I think it’s your dad who intimidates people.”

  “He’s a total teddy bear.”

  “Hey, I love the guy. I’m just saying he’s a little overprotective of you. Especially since…”

  “Yeah.” She bounced her foot on the rubber. Dad was right; some pain didn’t end. You just built a tolerance to it. Dad had become Herculean in his ability to keep going.

  “Do you want to stay in Buffalo?”

  “I know I want to play hockey, and I want to make my dad proud. Beyond that, I have no idea.” Anya swayed forward and back as she picked at a hangnail. Kids chased each other and shouted at their parents chatting on benches or into their cell phones to watch them. They were giving her a headache. “I don’t want him to be alone. He doesn’t want me to screw up my future. I don’t know what to do, honestly.” She let out an anxious laugh to dispel the queasiness in her stomach and scrunched her hands up in her lap.

  Noah twisted the swing’s chains so he was facing her. He set a hand on her knee, pinched a little.

  “Noah—” She flicked him away like a bug. Whether to comfort to her or as an entry to the love he’d determined himself entitled to, the touch was unwelcome. “Don’t.”

  His face crumpled. He scuffed his shoe on the rubber. “Didn’t think you were even that into Mike.”

  “I wasn’t. I’m not. But you’re like a brother to me, and—Noah, it’s not even about how ‘into’ anyone I am. Hockey is my life. I don’t need a boyfriend right now. I don’t have time for one.”

  Noah, avoiding eye contact, hopped off the swing. His cheeks blazed with the shame of rejection. “I forgot I have a thing tonight. See you later.”

  “Noah!”

  He shoved his hands into his pockets and, shoulders still hunched, trudged away.

  If she had learned anything from her mother, it was that she didn’t owe anyone her time or, more importantly, her affection. Love wasn’t an obligation; it wasn’t contracts and invisible shackles. It was a vow to help each other become your best selves. It was sickness more than health, worse more than better, because darkness held the power to reveal your true nature.

  ***

  Now and then, she caught Dad swaying to certain songs on the radio while he prepared dinner, and she almost saw Mom in his arms again. A wistful smile lit up his face; then he returned to the present as a sad sigh escaped like air from a balloon, and he brushed away a tear. According to Mom, he’d been quite the dancer before his injury. But like his smile, his laugh, and his spirit, his love of music had faded with Mom’s passing. He was dissolving before Anya’s eyes. Indecision marked each gesture, as though upon further scrutiny he found them not worth completing. When he did, it was with a reluctance that hurt her to watch. An automaton powered down to its rudimentary functions, pointless until it received a new directive.

  She set her backpack on the table. Dad flinched and spun around.

  “Zdravstvuy, milaya.” Twenty-six years in the US, his English still peppered with Russian and boasting a heavy accent. No doubt because Mom had found it sexy.

  “Sorry I’m late. I was hanging out with Noah, but I’m pretty sure he hates me now, so…”

  “Why? What happened?”

  Anya slouched over the counter, arms folded. “I know he likes me—that way—but I just don’t want a boyfriend right now, and not him of all people.”

  The crease at the bridge of Dad’s nose hollowed out with each word.

  “What?”

  “Sorry. This was your mother’s area of expertise. I never wanted you to have boyfriends at all.”

  Anya giggled and opened the refrigerator. They kept few treats more scandalous than yogurt in the house; Dad occasionally smuggled in some zefir, the chocolate-coated kind for which Mom had developed a taste.

  “Don’t spoil your dinner.”

  “There’s nothing in here to spoil it with. Come on, Dad, live a little. Have a pie or something.”

  “We had cake for your birthday. That’s all the chocolate I need for the year.” Dad dropped premade beef pelmeni, the Russian counterpart to pierogi, into a pot of boiling water. At least he was cooking. Sort of. “Ready for tomorrow?”

  “I know you’re looking at this school just to humor me, but thanks.”

  “I’m doing it because your mother wanted you to get an education more than she wanted you to play hockey. I never went to university.” Dad scooped sour cream into a serving dish.

  “You didn’t need to.”

  “I was lucky. Believe me, I know. Even Zdeno Chara had a career to fall back on when he retired. And it’s going to be ten times harder for you to prove yourself in the first place, so I want to make sure we’ve covered all your bases.”

  “Do you think I’ll get drafted? Be honest.”

  Dad drained the pelmeni and spooned equal amounts onto two plates. Anya assumed her usual spot at one end of the table while Dad set out the food and two glasses of water. He sat down and steepled his fingers. “You should be drafted, but I don’t know if you will be, and that’s no reflection on your skill. The sports world is slow to embrace change. It took decades for gay athletes to be accepted and to feel comfortable being out. For women…”

  “We’re still not actual people.” Anya smirked and stabbed at the dumplings.

  “It’s not that, just—”

  “What? We’re too weak? Fragile? Sensitive? What do we have to do to be taken seriously? What more can we do that we haven’t already done?”

  Dad chose the path of least resistance, diverting from the topic altogether. “You don’t have to be drafted to become a successful player anyway. Look at Martin St. Louis. And”—the corner of his mouth twitched—“you’re bigger than him.”

  Anya snickered and popped a dumpling into her mouth. Sour cream moderated the spiciness of too much garlic, onion, and black pepper on the inside. She’d have pelmeni breath for days.

  “I want you to be happy, Anya.”

  “I know.”

  “And I’m sorry for this.” Dad waved over the table. “We’ll go somewhere nice tomorrow.”

  “I never expected you to suddenly learn how to cook. It’s not like Mom knew how either.”

  “Well, I better figure it out soon. I can’t eat spaghetti and frozen Russian food for the rest of my life.”

  “You make a pretty mean grilled cheese.”

  Dad, his cheeks dimpling, blotted his mouth on a napkin. “So what’s this business with Noah? You’ve known each other since preschool.”

  “That’s the problem. I see him, and I think of Mom and Uncle Matt.”

  “He’s an improvement over”—Dad curled his lip and dipped a pelmen into the sour cream—“Michael.”

  Anya bit the inside o
f her cheek to keep from laughing at the way Dad spewed his name, as though he’d swallowed a fly. “I don’t want anyone right now. I have bigger things to worry about.”

  “That’s my girl. You have a lot going for you.”

  Don’t screw it up, said the silence and the furrowed brow. No worries there; Mike had wanted to, but they never slept together. She’d gotten it out of the way with someone else, semi-drunk at a party the beginning of last school year, on the host’s parents’ bed. A basketball player. Or was it the captain of the baseball team? Either way, robbing Noah of what he surely believed had been his birthright. Her school was big enough that no one but him cared once the rumor mill disseminated the story, and neither did she.

  Dad’s green eyes were communicating something else, not the sadness over Mom or of the solitude he faced less than a year from now if he got his way with Boston. Another loss, but of what, Anya couldn’t imagine.

  “Dad? Are you okay?”

  Whatever it was, he shook it off, but the smile he offered didn’t light the windows. “I’m fine, baby girl. Don’t worry so much.”

  “Dad. Please don’t lie to me.”

  He plopped some more fat-free sour cream onto his plate and tossed it with the remaining pelmeni. “How was school? I can’t believe you’re a senior already.”

  Avoidance, her father’s drug of choice. She lowered her gaze to the table. “Fine,” she mumbled, and said nothing else for the duration of dinner.

  ***

  Alex

  He dreaded night most of all. Stephanie lived in his dreams, the one place he could find her, but not the Stephanie he wanted to remember. Alex had locked up the master bedroom a year ago and relocated to the guest room, aware he’d created less a memorial than a mausoleum, and he the weeping angel standing eternal guard over her grave. Her things untouched, the bed where she had died a mess. It would stink of cancer in there, of old vomit and urine, of the stranger who had requisitioned a once vibrant and ambitious woman’s body. At night, he battled that diseased imposter for the memory it vowed to supplant and delete so he no longer saw his wife but the hollow-eyed pretender with tufts of wispy blond hair lying on Stephanie’s side of the bed.

  His cries begging her to stay bounded around the inside of his skull, his mind a canyon in which his echoing pleas carried on forever. Let me die at home, she’d said when it was clear no amount of chemo was going to reward them with more of her life. At that point, it became a puzzle of pain mitigation the doctors never quite solved. Alex made her as comfortable as possible. He fed her soup and read her favorite books aloud, and she fell asleep in his arms, the fevers she could no longer fight off raging through her depleted body.

  The morning she was unable to summon the strength to open her eyes, he knew their story had reached the ending they’d battled so hard to rewrite. He hadn’t intended to let Anya see her mother so near death but, rather than distressing Stephanie, her incessant banging on the door and shouting made her laugh.

  Stephanie had smiled one last, perceptive smile and murmured, “You’ve got your hands full.” Anya was just like her, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. But there was no disguising the fear. She was embarking on the most private of journeys—her time as a guest on Earth over, his invitation to walk beside her revoked.

  It happened quickly and quietly; one moment she was there, her breaths shallow but steady, and the next he was cradling a husk, Stephanie’s animating spark extinguished. He had tried to keep her talking, to give her a reason to breathe again. He sent Anya out of the room once he knew Stephanie was gone. She didn’t need to witness her father’s unqualified breakdown, the sobbing and bargaining, the cursing, the shaking of an already fragile form.

  He hadn’t cleared out his clothing, or his toiletries from the en suite, and had not set foot in the room since the mortuary picked up her body.

  The guest room, however, was not a welcoming space and over time, he felt less the house’s owner than an uninvited guest. In those frequent bouts of insomnia during the past year, and given the looming reality of Anya’s leaving, he’d arrived at the inevitable: it was time to sell the house. What did a widower with a grown daughter need with a five-bedroom house?

  Part of him dug in, of course. He and Stephanie had shaped most of their life together here, had raised Anya here. But Stephanie had passed away here too. As much as he wished to linger, sorting through the good memories, her absence glowed like the afterimage of a camera flash, all the time she had spent on Earth. Let someone else paint over that tragedy, banish the ghost with milestones of their own. Restore the house to its original purpose as someone’s dream home, a place meant for love and laughter. Not an extension of someone’s grave.

  Somehow, he’d have to break the news to Anya.

  ***

  Alex didn’t push his sullen daughter to talk on their way to the tour, and the jamming of earbuds into her ears signaled she was not inclined to do so. Only when they pulled into a lot near the administration building did she stuff them into her backpack before scurrying out of the car.

  “Anya.” He closed the door and folded his arms on the BMW’s roof. Anya, halfway up the walk to the entrance, turned to him. “I’m not trying to hide things from you. I just don’t want you to grow up too fast like I did. Your mother did too, and trust me, adulthood is not all it’s cracked up to be. So cut me a break, ladno? I’m your father; sue me for not wanting you to grow up just yet.”

  She flipped her black bangs away from her forehead. Gave him the little smile that was a reflection of his own. “Come on, Dad. We don’t want to be late for the tour.”

  The school ambassador led them through a mix of hundred-year-old English Gothic and modern glass-and-steel buildings. They traversed a manicured quad, in the center of which stood a bronze Canterbury street clock, to reach the Arts and Sciences building. Anya met with the Slavic Studies program director to discuss the curriculum and her goals. Another stroll across the campus to the professional-size hockey rink to chat with the team’s assistant coach. Metal benches instead of seats, but the rest of the place had been upgraded, down to the state-of-the-art scoreboard at center ice.

  “Hi there! You must be Anya.” A young woman, her ash-brown hair tugged into a bouncy ponytail, strode toward them wearing a track suit in the school’s white and forest green color scheme. A pale scar bisected her upper lip at an angle—hit with a stick, maybe. It did little to distract from a bright smile and a wholesome, natural face whose only makeup was a bit of black eyeliner. Less even than Anya, enamored with the cat-eye, wore.

  Alex’s cheeks heated up. His acknowledgement that the rest of the female sex still existed betrayed Stephanie’s memory. Finding a woman attractive was akin to pissing on her grave.

  “I’m Madison Chalmers. Sorry our head coach couldn’t make it today, but I’ll be happy to answer any questions you have about the program.” She extended a hand to Alex. Nice grip. Knew how to keep hold of a stick. “Mr. Volynsky, it’s an honor to meet you. I remember watching you when I was a little girl.”

  Anya rolled her eyes like marbles across a floor.

  “Call me Sasha. And thank you.”

  They walked the circumference of the rink and visited the new workout facility as Madison described the team’s history, punctuated by Anya’s questions and observations. A team once without home ice had climbed all the way into Division I competition. An all-American story.

  “How many players have gone pro?” Alex asked.

  “Three from this past season’s men’s team signed pro contracts last month.”

  Good spin, but he’d done his homework. One was on a two-way with Toronto, destined to spend his days in the AHL. The other two were buried in the ECHL. Not a single player in the team’s history had been drafted. “I see. Well, Anya and I have a lot to discuss, but we’ll be in touch. Thank you for taking the time to talk to us.”

  “My pleasure. It’s not every day we get celebrities stopping by.” Madison�
�s brown eyes sparkled as she shook his hand again. “I’ll look forward to hearing from you and Anya.”

  “Oh my God, Dad,” Anya groaned as they retraced their steps across the quad to the lot where they’d parked.

  “What?”

  “Seriously? You didn’t notice the way she was ogling you?”

  “Honey, you know people get a little weird around me sometimes, especially Gladiators fans—”

  “No, she was staring at you. Like you were a piece of meat.” Anya buckled her seatbelt and bundled her arms over her chest. “It was totally gross, and you are totally oblivious.”

  “And I am totally sorry.” Alex turned the key in the ignition as his phone jingled. Gladiators’ front office, speak of the devil. He glanced at Anya.

  “Answer it.”

  He stuck out his tongue at her, then pressed Accept. “Zdravstvuyte?”

  “Sasha, it’s Bill Allen. How are you?”

  “Doing well, thanks. What can I do for you?”

  “I’m calling to let you know you’re being inducted into the Gladiators’ Hall of Fame in November. What you did for this club both on and off the ice can’t be overstated, so it was an easy choice for everyone. Congratulations!”

  Alex sank back and blew out a breath. Anya was mouthing, “What? What?” and gesticulating. He held up a finger.

  “Thank you. I guess I’d better get started on my speech.” Which Stephanie would have helped me with. The wave came roaring in. He squeezed his eyes shut.

  “We’re looking forward to it. Take care, Sasha. We’ll talk soon.”

  “Spasibo. Take care.” Alex disconnected. The goddamned unfairness of Stephanie’s absence shattered his joy with sledgehammer force. Another achievement she’d miss, an empty chair beside Anya inhabited by his wife’s memory. He gripped the steering wheel and dug his teeth into his lip.

  “Dad?”

  “They’re inducting me into the Gladiators’ Hall of Fame.”

  “Oh my God, Dad!” Anya threw her arms around him, but he was already trembling, already imagining the vacant chair behind him while he stood at the podium and told the world he owed everything to the person who should have been sitting there. “And even more reason she’d be so proud of you.”