Loved Twice by the Hockey Star novel · Chapter 10 of 32

Chapter 10: Uncle

Erik put himself between his brother and the glass.

"You've got thirty seconds to tell me why you're here."

"It's Christmas," Nils said.

"You called her mother a drunk on the radio five days ago."

"I know what I did."

"Then go home."

Nils didn't move.

He looked past Erik's shoulder at the bed.

Ingrid was looking right back at him with her head tilted.

She pressed the call button.

The charge nurse came, sighing.

"Who's that?" Ingrid asked her through the intercom, loud enough for the whole hall.

"That's your uncle, honey. Apparently."

Ingrid's eyes went enormous.

"I have an uncle?"

Erik closed his eyes.

I looked at Nils.

At the badly wrapped present in his hands.

At his face, which was trying very hard to be nothing at all.

"Ten minutes," I said. "Mask on. Hands washed. If you say one word about me or that night in front of her, I'll throw you out myself."

Erik turned to me.

"Britta."

"She's never had an uncle," I said. "She's never had anybody but me and Jodie."

Nils washed his hands at the sink outside the door for a long time.

Then he went in.

He sat in the chair by the bed and held out the present.

Ingrid tore into it.

It was a book of hockey cards in plastic sleeves.

Erik's rookie card was on the first page.

"That's Daddy!"

"He was uglier then."

"He's still kind of ugly," Ingrid said.

Nils laughed.

It was a real laugh.

It cracked something in his face, and for a second he was nineteen again at our kitchen table, stealing my pancakes.

Then Ingrid pointed at his leg.

"Why do you walk like that?"

Erik took a step toward the door.

I caught his sleeve.

Nils looked down at his jeans.

He pulled up the left leg an inch so she could see the metal at his ankle.

"I had an accident a long time ago," he said. "They had to take part of my leg. So now I've got this one."

"Is it a robot leg?"

"Sort of."

"Can it kick?"

"Pretty hard."

"Can it fly?"

"Not yet. I'm saving up."

Ingrid grabbed her crayons and the back of the hockey card book and drew for five minutes with her tongue sticking out.

Then she tore out the page and gave it to him.

It was a stick man with a big silver leg shooting fire out the bottom.

He was flying over a hockey rink.

"That's you," she said. "When you save up."

Nils looked at the drawing for a long time.

He folded it into quarters very carefully and put it in his inside pocket.

He didn't look up again until he was outside the door.

I followed him into the hall.

Erik stayed with Ingrid, watching us through the glass.

"Thank you," I said. "She'll talk about that for a week."

Nils pulled down his mask.

His eyes were wet.

His voice wasn't.

"Plead guilty," he said.

I stared at him.

"Dad's lawyer can get you a deal. Probation, maybe. Plead and be done with it. Do it for her."

"Do it for her," I said, "or do it for you?"

"What's the difference?"

"I don't remember the road, Nils. I'm not pleading guilty to a thing I don't remember."

"You were at the wheel."

"That's what your dad says."

"It's what everybody says."

"Then tell me," I said. "You were there. You were awake. What do you remember?"

He looked at me for a long moment.

Something moved under his face again.

"Everything," he said.

He put his mask back on and walked to the elevator.

I stood in the hall with my arms folded tight across my stomach.

Erik came out of 614.

"What did he want?"

"He wants me to plead guilty."

Erik swore under his breath.

"He remembers everything," I said. "He told me. Every second."

Erik looked down the hall at the closed elevator doors.

"Then why does he look like that every time he sees you?"

I didn't have an answer.

Jodie came back with two cups of eggnog and took one look at us.

"Go home," she said. "Both of you. It's Christmas Eve. Go home and do something about your faces."

"Jodie."

"I've got her. Go."

His house was dark and cold.

He lit a fire in the living room fireplace with his coat still on.

I stood at the big windows watching the snow come down over the lake.

He came and stood behind me.

He didn't touch me.

"I keep thinking about him in that chair," he said. "Laughing with her. Like nothing ever happened."

"I know."

"I don't know what to do with it."

"Then don't do anything with it tonight."

I turned around.

He was looking at me in the firelight.

I put my hands on his chest.

"It's Christmas Eve," I said. "You owe me seven Christmases."

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