The Hockey Star's Forgotten Baby Mama novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Family Skate

At the season's family skate Johnny finds Lulu as he promised and wobbles around the ice with her while Kinsley films, then notices the child has his father's chin and asks how old she is.

Lulu watched me read it with her hands folded under her chin.

"He's going to find me," she said. "He promised. It's in writing."

"I see that."

"Saturday is the family skate. Aunt Stevie said."

Stevie raised both hands from the doorway. "I said it exists. I didn't say anything else."

I looked at the twelve pucks lined up on my kitchen table.

A man I'd spent five years not thinking about had written to my daughter every month for a year.

He'd told her about his father dying.

He'd told her he was coming.

"Okay," I said. "We'll go."

Lulu screamed so loud the neighbor banged on the wall.

On Saturday the Glacier Center smelled like popcorn, Zamboni exhaust and wet mittens.

The family skate opened every season. Two thousand kids and parents on the main ice, players handing out pucks, the organ playing pop songs badly.

Lulu wore her jersey down to her knees and a helmet with stickers on it.

She held my hand at the boards and scanned every player who skated past.

"Not him. Not him. That's the big one with no teeth. Not him."

"Maybe he's busy, bug."

"He's not busy. He's late."

Stevie was on skates beside us in her trainer jacket, ready to catch any child who went down.

"He'll come," she muttered to me. "Or I'll tape his ankles to the bench."

Then the crowd near the tunnel started to buzz.

Johnny Castelli came out onto the ice in jeans and his game jersey, no helmet.

He stopped in the center circle and turned in a slow circle, looking.

He was looking for someone.

Lulu let go of my hand.

"NUMBER TWENTY-SEVEN," she bellowed. "I'M OVER HERE. I'M THE GOALIE."

Two thousand people heard her.

Johnny's head snapped around.

He skated straight to us and stopped in a spray of ice that made Lulu shriek with joy.

"Found you," he said.

"You took forever."

"I know. I'm sorry. I had to sign four hundred hats."

She considered this. "That's a lot of hats."

"My hand is very tired."

He looked up at me over her helmet.

He didn't smile. He waited.

I could have said no again. I could have taken her home.

Lulu was holding her breath.

"One lap," I said. "Holding her hand the whole time."

"Yes, ma'am."

He was terrible at it.

Not the skating. The skating was beautiful, even backward, even slow.

But he didn't know how to bend down to a four-year-old.

He held her hand way up by his shoulder, so she was half dangling.

Lulu didn't care.

She wobbled and shuffled and told him everything.

Her school. Her best friend, who ate glue. The goalie she liked on TV, who wasn't him, sorry.

He laughed out loud, and the whole rink turned to look.

Kinsley turned to look too.

She was standing at the glass in a white puffer jacket with her phone on a little stick, filming.

She had been filming since Johnny came out of the tunnel.

Now she swung the phone toward me.

I stepped in front of the shot.

She smiled and stepped around me.

"Stevie," I said.

Stevie skated over to the glass, planted herself in front of Kinsley's lens and started stretching her quads.

"Excuse me," Kinsley said.

"Hamstring," said Stevie. "Very tight. Team protocol."

The organ stopped.

The PA crackled, and Kinsley's voice came through the speakers instead of the usual announcer.

She'd recorded it.

"Glaciers fans! Big news for our new era. This season we're upgrading the family experience."

The parents around us cheered.

"Family Tuesdays at fifteen dollars are retired, effective this season. Our new premium family package starts at one-ninety-nine."

The cheering stopped.

A dad next to me with two kids on his shoulders said a word I hoped Lulu missed.

"And the free kids' clinics are moving to a members-only model."

Somebody booed.

Then a lot of people booed.

I'd fed those clinic kids for three years.

Granola bars and orange slices and chocolate milk after every session. Some of them didn't eat breakfast anywhere else.

Johnny brought Lulu back to the boards.

His face had changed.

"Did you know about that?" he asked me quietly.

"No."

"He told me the community stuff was the whole reason he bought the team."

"He tells people what they want to hear. Then he sends them a bill."

He looked at me harder.

"You talk like you know him."

"Everyone in this building is about to know him."

Lulu tugged his sleeve.

"Again," she ordered. "And this time hold my hand lower. Down here. I'm not a balloon."

He blinked at her.

Then he crouched, all the way down, and held her hand at her level.

"Better?"

"Much better."

They went around again.

This time she let go halfway and skated three whole strides on her own before she sat down hard on the ice.

She didn't cry.

She stuck her chin out, scowled at the ice like it had cheated, and got back up.

Johnny stopped skating.

He stood in the middle of the family skate and stared at her.

At the scowl. At the chin.

He looked like someone had dropped him into cold water.

He skated the last few yards back to the boards slowly, with Lulu clinging to his fingers.

He handed her over the boards to Stevie.

Then he looked at me.

His voice was very low and very calm.

"She has my father's chin."

My heart went still.

Johnny didn't take his eyes off me.

"How old is she, Leighton? Exactly?"

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