My fingers gripping the wheel hard enough to bend as I floor the gas before I do something ridiculous like stay out here the whole night. Because I do have that urge.
I have it the whole way home.
That night it isn’t her eyes haunting me. I wake up to the sound of her voice calling out my name, every letter rolling off her tongue as if she was born to say it. As if it belongs there. And I know I’m in deep fucking trouble.
AURORA
I eye the mini army of teddy bears neatly seated in a row on theother side of Emett. I haven’t stopped eyeing it since I opened the front door this morning and saw the distinct white and blue cartoon boxes in shapes of a house from the fancy Build-A-Bear store.
Five of them, to be exact. Five.
My initial thought was that the delivery person mixed up addresses and delivered these to the wrong house. I was just about to hide them so Emett didn’t accidentally see them and got all excited when we had to give them away when I caught a name written on the closest box in a neat, careful handwriting.
Kevin the police bear.
My breath caught in my throat.
It couldn’t be. No, no, no.
It has to be a mistake. Has. To. Be.
Severin wouldn’t go to trouble buying these bears for my son. Why would he?
While I stood frozen at our doorstep, my mouth still gaping, Emett flew down the hall and came up behind me. He knew exactly what was inside those fancy boxes because they were his wish for his next birthday.
The squeal that came out of him at the sight in front, clued me into the fact that we were not giving these bears away, even if this was indeed some kind of mix-up.
But I knew deep in my heart there was no mix up. I didn’t want to accept it. Didn’t understand the why, but I knew it.
Emett seemed to know it as well because he’s been begging to go see Exton so he could call Mr. Brick to say thank you.
“Minaev! Goddamn it! Are you a (beep) cheesecloth today? It’s not the (beep) Halloween; you’re not supposed to be a ghost!” The expressive shouting coming from the TV pulls my attention from those bears, and I wince. What a day to be mic’d up.
“Mommy? Why does Coach Hill’s voice keeps getting beeped like that?” Emett asks, his little forehead scrunched up in confusion.
“It beeps every time he’s particularly unhappy with something,” I tell him, figuring this is the best way to explain all of the excessive cursing that is happening at the game tonight.
I’m almost terrified to think how bad it is at the arena itself.
Come to think of it, in all the times I’ve watched the games with Emett, I’ve never once heard coaches going off like that.
“Ohh, he must be very angry at Mr. Brick then. I think he needs some luck at this point.”
“I don’t know if luck will cut it, bud,” my dad supplies, chuckling from his wheelchair. I was worried his mind would be fragile after yesterday’s events, but Dad seems to be in good spirits this morning, which means he doesn’t remember his son’s visit.
All the better.
“Yeah, that must be it.” Emett nods to himself as if that’s the only plausible explanation for the spectacularly bad game.
Half of the game has been played already. Over thirty minutes in and it almost feels like about the same number of pucks have gone in Severin’s net.
I’m not always home to watch these games with Emett, but today I picked up the lunch shift instead of evening, terrified to leave Emett and Dad alone in the house when Aaron’s still around. I missed the whole first period, too busy coming up with excuses for the army of bears other than those toys coming from Severin, and I was coming up short. Nearly twelve hours after that discovery I’m still questioning why he’d do something like that.
It’s obvious Emett knew where the bears came from. Severin was the only one he mentioned losing Kevin to, and if myson had hearts in his eyes for his favorite goalie before, it was nothing on the happiness he sparkled with now.
Severin was making my son fall in love with him, and I hated him for that. I hated him already for the day Emett realized it wasn’t real. A day Severin would break his little heart because that’s what people like him do.
Because he would. I knew it. I knew he would.
