I grab everything she asked for, folding the blanket tight, tucking Flopsy under my arm, and scooping up the shoes from beneath the bed. The night light is still plugged in. The sparkly sweater was draped over a chair, as if she planned to wear it again.
“You ain’t takin’ that kid,” Grandma calls after me. “She’s your mama’s baby.”
I stop in the doorway, pulse roaring in my ears.
“She’s not safe here,” I say quietly.
Grandma laughs, ugly and wet. “You came from the same place, and you turned out fine.”
Fine.
I look around the trailer in full daylight now. The ashtray overflowing. Beer bottles lined up like decoration. Unpaid bills stacked on the counter next to Lucy’s coloring book.
“I turned out better than fine because I left,” I tell her. “Lucy will do the same.”
She mutters something I don’t catch as I walk out with Lucy’s bag, morning air hitting my lungs sharp and cold, carrying her things away from the place that almost swallowed me whole.
“You did amazing,” Erin says quietly.
Chapter 5
New Roomies
Lenzin
The Puck Pad smells like lemon cleaner and pine, like the cleaners we hired tried to Febreze away years of bad decisions. The place needed a good scrub down and they did it while we were at practice. I glance at the ghost outline of where Dash’s coffee table used to live. Apparently, his sister Briar split her head open on one when they were kids and needed stitches, so the table is a hazard and now is dead to us.
“What are you doing?” I ask Koa, who’s pacing the room like a nervous dad, snapping caps onto the outlets.
He looks at me like I’ve just confessed to a crime. “She could get electrocuted.”
“Is this child actively trying to die?” I ask.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Aleks mutters as he passes behind me, arms full of boxes.
“What’s wrong with me?” I say, hoisting a box that contains at least a third of Dash’s Paul Bronski shrine. “I’m not the oneassuming a toddler wakes up and thinks, you know what’d slap today? Electricution.”
“Says the man from a place with no outlets in the bathrooms,” Hank says, grinning.
“Inaccurate information,” I fire back. “That’s the UK. We absolutely have outlets in our bathrooms.”
Dash laughs. “Don’t you also have to pay a quarter to piss in a public restroom?”
“As one should,” I say, genuinely offended as I carry the box to the pile by the door. “Have you been to a bathroom in Times Square? That’s a crime scene. Charging admission to keep it clean would be a smart move for the city.”
I carry the box to the growing collection stacked at the entrance and set it down with the others, a shrine to men who never expected scrutiny. Then I turn back and do another sweep of the place.
No toys. No kids’ things. Just the remnants of adult men who lived as if they’d never have to explain themselves to a social worker, which would be accurate until now.
For a month, that’s exactly what Hank and I will be doing.
To be fair, it’s our longest away stretch of the season. We only play eight home games. More time on the ice, more time in the gym, fewer distractions. On paper, it’s perfect. The kind of setup that keeps you locked in and sitting comfortably in the number one spot.
Hank holds up a pillow between two fingers like it might bite him. “We are not putting that on a bed.”
“No,” Dash says immediately. “Absolutely not.”
Koa snorts. “Nalani already said they’re washing everything they grabbed.”
