They also don’t quit.Not really.Not the way normal people quit.
My father won the Cup twice.My brothers have been chasing that same dream like it’s a religion.And my best friends Cally and Monty—well.They’re fighting for it too, even if they pretend their fight is only with the league, and not with each other, and not with the history they keep pretending doesn’t exist.
“Ves,” Dad says, and my nickname hits like fingers at the back of my neck.“I hate to ask for this, but ...I need you to come home.”
My breath catches hard enough that I almost cough.
Home.
My apartment in New York comes to mind first—laundry piled on a chair, camera batteries charging on my kitchen counter, the coffee maker I never clean.
“Well, lucky for you, I’m on the way to New York,” I say automatically, because logistics are easier than fear.“I’m flying out in?—”
“Not your apartment.”His voice drags, low and rough around the edges.“Camp.Juniper Ridge.”
The words hit like a punch I don’t see coming.My world narrows to my dad’s breathing on the other end of the line.
Juniper Ridge.
My throat closes up on the name.
My hand tightens around the phone until my knuckles sting.“Are you—” I swallow hard.“Is everything okay?”
Another careful breath before I lose my shit and start crying.
“Listen,” he says, and my father never sayslistenunless he’s bracing for impact.“I’m not ...I’m not great.”
The confession is so unlike him that it makes my eyes sting immediately.My father is a man who will pull his own stitches out if it means he gets back on the ice faster.He’s the guy who tells kids to walk it off while he’s bleeding through his sock.
“I’m not great,” from him, is practically an alarm—sirens, red lights, the whole emergency broadcast system cutting into whatever I thought my day was.It’s the sentence that means stop what you’re doing, because something has already gone wrong, and it’s moving faster than you are.
“Dad.”My voice cracks around the word, and I hate myself for it.I blink fast, stare hard at my screen like I can force my eyes dry.“What happened?”
“It’s ...I’m not sure.Just need you to stay for the summer,” he says, trying to package it up neatly.Trying to keep it small.“Just ...a couple of months.”
Just for the summer is not a couple of months.I want to tell him that it’s only the beginning of March.Staying until the end of summer would mean almost six months of Juniper Ridge.He always talks as if bodies behave on schedules.As if problems respect calendar pages.As if August can wrap its arms around him and fix whatever is wrong.
“But what is it?”I have to ask.
My dad’s voice threads through my ears and drags me back to Gate C12.
“I had a ...spell,” he admits.
“A spell?”I repeat, because if I mirror his words, maybe my hands will stop trembling.“Like you joined a coven?Are we doing witchcraft as a family now?”
A beat, and I feel him try for humor.“Dizzy.Fell.Scared the hell out of Margaret.”
Margaret.The camp nurse who has patched up every kid within a fifty-mile radius for the last twenty years and has never once apologized for telling the truth.
If Margaret is scared, something is wrong.Not a “take it easy” wrong.Not a “we’ll keep an eye on it” wrong.Wrong in a way that makes your life split into before and after.
Because that’s exactly how it happened with Mom.
One day she was fine—bossy and bright, running the camp like nothing could touch her.The next, Margaret dragged her to the hospital.There was a diagnosis that sounded like a foreign language.A calendar suddenly filled with appointments and later that year, she was gone.
There were no big warnings.No gentle slope into acceptance.Just ...poof.
No more Mom.
