Breeding My Stepsister on the Ice novel · Chapter 20 of 32

Chapter 20: The Backyard Rink

"A year," Tate said.

He said it to the windshield, the way he'd said "Zero" in Chicago.

"A year where he still sees patients," I said. "Kids with sprained wrists. Moms with bad knees."

"And he still has my father's number."

I pulled over in front of a gas station, because I couldn't drive and be that angry at the same time.

We sat there with the engine running.

Then my phone rang again.

Mom.

"Lainey, honey. Are you with Tate?"

"I'm with Tate."

"Put me on speaker." She was breathing like she'd been crying and stopped on purpose. "The twins won't come out of their rooms. Your brother says he's never going back to school. Your sister says she hates hockey."

"Bug said that?" Tate said.

"She said it twice."

He closed his eyes.

"The weather says it's going down to sixteen on Friday night," Mom said. "Last cold snap of the year. The rink's still up. It's gray and full of leaves, but it's up."

Tate opened his eyes.

"Doug's in Florida with the owner until Monday," Mom said. "Would you flood it, sweetheart? One more time. For them."

Tate looked at his sling. Then at me.

"I can't hold a hose, Mom."

"I can," I said.

On Friday night I stood in Mom's backyard in my old paramedic parka and Tate's work gloves with a garden hose in both hands.

Tate stood at the boards in his sling, with a headlamp on his forehead, coaching.

"Lower. Lower. You're watering petunias. You're not watering petunias."

"I'm flooding a rink."

"You're flooding the left side. The right side's a desert."

"Then come do it."

"I would love to come do it, Lainey. The surgeon would love to staple me to a wall."

The twins watched from the kitchen window in their pajamas, faces pressed flat against the glass.

By eleven the whole thing shone black under the floodlights.

By morning it was ice.

Not great ice. Thin and bumpy, with a frozen leaf near center that my sister claimed and named.

But ice.

On Saturday afternoon the twins skated until their lips went blue.

Mom skated too, in my old figure skates from the basement, clinging to the boards and screaming every time she let go.

"I haven't done this since your father," she said to me, laughing, on her fourth lap.

Tate couldn't skate. The surgeon had made him promise.

So he sat on the bench by the boards in a camp chair, wrapped in a blanket, and coached.

"Bug. Knees. You're skating like a fork."

"What does that mean?" my sister yelled.

"It means bend your knees."

She bent her knees. She fell. She got up.

"That's one," Tate called.

She fell again.

"Two."

By the time she'd fallen eleven times, she was laughing so hard she couldn't stand up, and Tate was standing at the boards with his good hand over his mouth.

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