by RJ Scott
I skated over to the crowd, pulled on the back of Mills’ sweater, and managed to get him off Adler. He took a swing at me. Connor jumped in, and before I knew it I was on my back, head ringing.
Whistles were blowing, and our head trainer was hovering over me as I pushed Mills off and, slow and steady, got to my skates.
“I’m good, I’m fine,” I chanted over and over, but I was still led off the ice and into a dark room. Which, yeah, given my head issues, was the right call but still…
Jared appeared in the doorway ten or so minutes later.
“Hey,” he said as I sat there sipping ginger ale and singing the state capitals song a la Wakko from Animaniac’s fame.
“He’s good,” the team doctor said to my husband. “Just remember that if you start to feel any symptoms—”
“Yep, I’ll shout,” I replied, feeling like a fool. Once it was just Jared and me in the medical office, I gave him a weak smile. “First thing, I am really okay. It was just a bump so you can stop looking at me that way.”
He rubbed his face and when he was done he did look less tight. “Sorry, but every time I see you go down and your head hits the ice…”
I leaned in to steal a quick kiss. “I know. So hey, instead of worrying about me, call home and see how Charlotte is.”
“She’s fine. Jean is an old hand with new babies,” he said while staring at me as if I was about to drop over.
“Stop it, I’m fine.” I waved at his narrowed eyes. “I think we should call.”
“You know how coach is about cell phone use during a game,” he replied, easing back a bit to allow me to slip down from the exam table. “Plus we have to learn to manage the worry in a productive way. We can’t be calling home every twenty minutes; it’ll drive the nanny nuts and make us paranoid.”
“Yeah, right, I know I just…man this parental concern stuff is rough.”
“You have no clue. Just wait until she learns to drive.”
“Oh God above…”
The following day was a rare day off. No game or morning skate. The cold winds of early November were blowing, a cold front roaring in over Pennsylvania from Canada. The perfect day to whittle down the fifteen candidates from four top-notch nanny organizations in Harrisburg. Mom, Jared, and I spent the whole day interviewing people, men and women, for the position. When dinner time rolled around we were seated in the living room, with pizza and soda, staring blankly at each other.
“I just didn’t see anyone in that batch that reflects the type of woman I want to see taking care of Charlotte,” Jared stated, while giving our daughter a bottle. She was a voracious eater, which helped to put us at ease.
“So it has to be a woman?” I enquired then took a massive bite of the slice of pizza I’d guided to my mouth.
“Well, no…” Jared floundered a bit as Charlotte sucked noisily on her special preemie nipple. Mom chuckled at his discomfort while nibbling on a crust she’d swiped off my plate. “Okay, maybe. Yes, I know, I’m being sexist but I just feel better with a woman taking care of her. An older woman, say in her sixties, who dresses modestly and cooks well.”
“Mm, so you want Mrs. Doubtfire?” I tossed out and got a dark look from my husband.
“If you add British to that list we could possibly call Mary Poppins, although she’s younger and comes with chimney sweeps and dancing penguins, which is something to consider,” Mom said glibly.
I snorted so hard my sinuses vibrated.
Jared huffed, placed the half empty bottle to his thigh, and eased Charlotte up to his shoulder. He really was a natural. I always felt so clumsy and ham-fisted when I was holding her, but Jared was just so at ease. Maybe that came with experience.
“You’re both hilarious. I see where you get your sarcasm gene, Tennant.” Mom inclined her head. “Now that you mention it our chimney could use a good sweeping.”
“Well, just for the record, Ryker tells me that Colorado has a male nanny and he’s great with his baby,” I threw out then took another bite of pizza. I’d have to do double the miles on the treadmill tomorrow but it would be worth it.
“Colorado is sleeping with his male nanny,” Jared pointed out right as Charlotte burped a tiny little “Eep” of a burp that made me feel all fuzzy inside. It was like hearing a kitten burp. Damn, she was cute!
“I promise I won’t sleep with the male nanny if we choose him,” I said with a wink.
Jared tossed me a look. “I’ll make the same vow if we hire a woman, which I think we should.”
“Tsk, tsk, your antiquated gender norms are showing,” I replied around the food in my mouth.
“Tennant, don’t speak with your mouth full,” Mom chided then sighed. “Why don’t we focus less on the sex of the applicants and more on their credentials? Give me another slice. No, a skinny one. That one there with the extra pepperoni.” She pointed. I gave Mom a raised eyebrow. “You sound like your father. I won’t have heartburn.” She held out her plate, so I gave her the skinny slice.
“We could sleep on it for a few days,” Jared offered then eased Charlotte down to see if she wanted more bottle. She did and latched on as if she’d not eaten in a week. I loved how they looked together, Charlotte resting in the crook of his arm in her Elvis jumpsuit sleeper, courtesy of Stan’s boxes of clothes. It was a little big on her, obviously, but he’d asked if we’d found it so we’d dressed her in it and sent pictures. The Russian was so moved he’d gotten teary. “Give it some time to simmer and reconvene.”
“No, Jared, we don’t have time to dick around. Sorry, Mom.” She flicked my ear and gave me a firm tsking. “We’re leaving for a Canadian road trip in three days. We have to pick one now. Give them time to get here and moved into the guest room. Mom will chill with them for a week or two, to supervise, and then when we come home we’ll make it full-time if all goes well.”
Jared mulled over that in silence, his gaze resting on Charlotte who had fallen asleep while eating. Mom and I looked at each other as he ruminated.
“I really liked Candace,” Mom said when it looked as if we might’ve been sitting there all night. “She was older, had a child, has taken all the required courses, and had a delightful sense of humor.”
“I second Candace,” I said then lifted a crust into the air to make the seconding official. “She’s perfect. Widowed…” Mom flicked my ear again. “Ouch! Shit. Sorry, crap. I didn’t mean being widowed was perfect, that was tragic, but she’s not married and her son is grown. I think fifty is a good age for a nanny. She’s not going to be dating all the time and her grandma nurturing emotions will be…what?”
“You make it sound like a woman of fifty is ready for the nursing home,” Mom scolded.
I looked to Jared for help but he wasn’t offering any.
“Your ageist bias is showing,” he whispered then sniggered as my mother chewed me out for saying a woman over forty was old and worn out, which I totally had not said but man, she sure heard it that way.
“Okay, okay, I take it back! She’s not old and ready to be a grandma. She’s vibrant and sexual. Cripes, I just meant that she was a good choice because she’s mature and settled.”
Mom glowered at me for a few seconds then flicked my ear for good measure.
“Jared, what do you think about Candace Perales?” Mom asked.
“She was fine, I just…” He pushed to his feet. “I’m going to put her down for the night.”
“You mean for two hours,” I teased and got a mealy smile from Jared before he climbed the stairs. Mom and I exchanged confused looks.
“Why don’t you go talk to him and I’ll clean up,” she said as we watched him disappear into the shadows at the top of the stairs.
“Okay.” I got up and followed Jared’s steps into the nursery. He was pulling the rails up on the crib when I stepped up beside him. We stood there in silence watching our daughter sleep, my pinkie finger finding then curling around his.
“I hate the thought of leaving her alone. It�
�s like Ryker all over again, only this time my child is going to be with a stranger. It was bad enough leaving my wife to take care of an infant alone, at least I knew and trusted her, but now I’m off again and entrusting someone I don’t know to raise my child. All that old guilt is right here.” He thumped his chest with his left hand. “Only compounded.”
“So what are you saying? That you want to quit hockey and stay home with Charlotte? That I should quit and stay home with her?”
He shook his head, his jaw set, his blue eyes melancholy. “No, of course not, you can’t quit. The team needs you.”
“It needs you too.” I let my weight shift to the left so my head would drop to his shoulder. The nightlight by the crib shone softly on Charlotte snoozing away. “We knew this was part of it when we decided to have her. The guilt, you even warned me about it.”
“I know, it’s just harder than I thought it would be. I assumed because I’d run this race before I’d be stronger. I was wrong. It’s just as hard if not more so because this will be my last chance to do it right.”
“Not necessarily, we could have another baby in a few years. And even if we don’t, Jared, you’re a fantastic father. Ryker loves you. He gets it, he understands that hockey is what we do.”
“Yes, because he’s a hockey player.”
Yeah, that had some merit. “True, that helps, but who knows, maybe Charlotte will grow up and want to play hockey. Maybe she’ll be the first woman hockey player who also serves on the SCOTUS! Don’t laugh, I totally see her doing all kinds of incredibly impressive shit. Stuff. My mouth, honestly.” I reached up to flick my own ear. Jared smiled over at me. “Honestly, we’re going to fu—screw things up along the way because no one is a perfect parent but we love her so much. She’ll know it, she’ll feel it, and when we’re gone she’ll have that love all stored up inside, like a bank deposit vault that she can withdraw then fill back up when we’re home.”
“I didn’t realize that love could be hidden away for later,” he whispered, reaching down to trail his fingers along her cheek. “I like thinking of it that way.”
I nodded then snuggled into his side. “I’m fucking eloquent. Shit! Damn! Crap. Sorry, Lottie. Ignore your father’s foul hockey mouth.”
He pressed a kiss to my hair. “I like Candace too. Let’s call the agency and tell them we’d like her to come out for a few weeks on a trial basis.”
“Cool. You go call. I have to wash my mouth out with soap.”
Chapter Nine
Jared
November
“Is it just me, or does she seem a bit warm?” Ten cradled Lottie protectively, as if Doctor Grierson was about to whisk her away and never give her back.
The doc rechecked the paperwork that Ten had thrust at her in the hallway. “Her temperature is perfectly fine,” she reassured him with a soft smile.
“I think maybe we should let Doctor Grierson go now.” I tugged on Ten’s arm to indicate that we needed to leave this poor woman alone, but he was Ten, and if Ten was one thing it was persistent, on and off the ice. We’d seen the healthcare specialist, spoken about weight and height and feeding and everything else on the list they went through. One month after leaving the hospital she was thriving and doing everything a baby should had it been born at full-term. Yes, Charlotte was on the fifteenth percentile on the charts, but she was sticking to that line like a statistician’s dream.
We were leaving, everything was good, she’d passed with flying colors, and we were heading home for the rest of our day, which for me was off to the arena, and for Ten, conditioning in the home gym. We were so close to getting away but with the exit in sight that was the moment Ten spotted poor Doctor Grierson and just seeing her appeared to open the floodgates to every single worry Ten had been holding inside.
“Last week she wouldn’t take her bottle, we tried everything, but she just batted it away as if she didn’t want it, and she was fussy. We burped her, and then I walked her around the house for a while, and then she took the bottle, but what was that all about? Should we be worried?”
When Ten said he’d walked, he meant it, up and around the house, out into the big yard, complete circles, talking to Charlotte the entire time, and he didn’t let me take over once, as if he was taking this entire childcare thing on his own shoulders. I was alternating between feeling as if Charlotte was going to be daddy’s little princess, and worrying that Ten was losing his shit.
Case in point, accosting the esteemed childbirth expert to discuss an issue with feeding.
“It’s okay, Doctor, she was fine,” I told her as if she needed to know.
“Then she wouldn’t sleep and I thought that maybe it was something I did. Should I not take her for a walk? Am I holding her wrong? She was due a feed at four, but she slept right through it, and it was four twenty-three before she woke up.”
“Ten, she’s fine,” I reassured him.
Doctor Grierson checked her watch, and I cringed inside. I didn’t want to take up her time; there could’ve been a baby that needed her help, and we shouldn’t have been holding her back.
“Do you have five minutes to talk?” Doc asked.
Ten latched onto that with fear in his expression. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Doc smiled. “Follow me.” Like chicks after a momma hen we followed her into a room with her name on the door, and she waited until we were inside before she closed it shut. “Can I see?” She held out her hands for Charlotte and Ten passed her over without hesitation. “I bet hockey is a hard game,” she said, as if she wasn’t holding a baby. Did she want an answer?
“It is,” I answered, and Ten shot me a look of disbelief that I was continuing a conversation about hockey when Charlotte was supposed to be the focus.
Doc held Charlotte up and bussed a kiss to her belly, then sat on the couch, bouncing our tiny daughter gently on her knees. “All those men on sharp blades going at whatever miles an hour, hitting that plastic disc into a net.”
“Rubber, vulcanized rubber,” I corrected, and got another one of Ten’s looks.
“It must take discipline, am I right? To learn to skate? Discipline, repetition and practice, but eventually it’s second nature, I guess.”
Ten nodded, but he was staring at Charlotte who made this small squeaky sound and clenched her tiny fist in Doc’s hair.
“What’s the best ever goal you’ve ever scored, Ten?” Doc lifted Charlotte high. “You’re so beautiful you sweet thing, look at you all cute and tiny. So yes, the best goal, Ten?”
The second time she worded the question it was more of a demand.
Ten snapped back. “Boston, March nineteen, up against my brother, he dropped his guard, I took a chance, and managed to hit the net.”
“Is that right, Jared? Is that Ten’s best goal?”
“Yeah, for sure. He was out of position, Brady was in his face, and Ten corralled the puck on his skate, kicked it through Brady’s skates, collected it again, deked, passed by the other D, big guy, then avoided two forwards, before batting it out of the air and into the net.”
“Did you practice that?” she asked, and unpeeled Charlotte’s fingers from her hair with a chuckle.
“You can’t,” Ten murmured, and glanced up at me. “You can learn the individual parts, that’s the repetition, but sometimes things just fall in place.”
“Do your practices sometimes run over?”
“Why? Is that causing—?”
“Yes, they do,” I interrupted before Ten got any paler.
“Is Charlotte okay?” Ten insisted.
Doc bounced her again. “Oh she’s perfect, a tiny little miracle and a happy accident of genetics that made her. Just like you with hockey, her body is learning all the repetitions. The feeding, the sleeping, the way her muscles strengthen, and she sees the blur of shapes, it’s all repetition. Sometimes it might not be perfect, but maybe she needed that extra twenty minutes’ sleep because she was busy learning to see something in a dream. Or
maybe her brain was processing a voice, or a scent. A baby doesn’t do things on their daddies’ say so.”
“Oh,” Ten murmured, and dipped his head. “You’re saying that she’s having to work hard, and I should stop worrying.”
“It’s the hardest thing in the world being a parent, and you have the added complication that you didn’t carry your daughter. There is a disassociation that is there, but the best thing you can do for Charlotte is to love her the way you do, and keep loving her, until she’s practiced enough in life, and then her future can be full of all kinds of miracles.”
I leaned into Ten who pressed back. “Sorry,” he murmured. “I’m being stupid—”
“You’re not at all,” Doc spoke with authority and Ten straightened. “Every parent is scared, it’s nothing new, but Charlotte is thriving, and has two dads who love her so much that one of them is freaking out, and the other is pretending not to freak out.”
She had me there. I’d spent so long balancing out Ten that all my fears and worries were buried deep.
Ten and I glanced at each other, and I sent him a rueful smile that he returned.
“I have to go,” she said, but stole another kiss to Charlotte’s cheek before she handed her back to Ten. “Be kind to yourselves.” She showed us out, and locked her room behind her. “One thing though,” she said, and patted my arm. “Watch out for Dallas next week, they’re scrappy and gunning for Ten.”
Then she sauntered away, ponytail bobbing, and it was just me and Ten in the hallway.
“We should give her a season ticket,” I said.
“Two.”
I tugged Ten in for a sideways hug, with Charlotte between us. “Let’s go home.”