Calling the Shots

CHAPTER THREE

BRYAN TRIED TO TALK to Allie over breakfast but she studied her bowl of Frosted Mini-Wheats cereal with complete concentration and refused to answer his questions. He followed her down the hall when she went to the shower but stopped when she closed the bathroom door in his face. He knocked.

“I’m getting ready for school, Dad.”

Not that long ago, “getting ready for school” meant scrambling into her boots and snowpants before she ran to the bus. Now it meant an hour in the bathroom doing God knew what. Actually, Erin would have known what she was doing. Would have been able to help her with it. He hated feeling so useless.

“I can’t pretend nothing happened, Allie.”

She turned the shower on.

He spun around, but there wasn’t anything handy for him to kick. She was so good at avoiding him, but that was how they’d gotten into this mess. He didn’t know what was going on with her and based on what Clare had said, he’d already missed a lot. The trouble was, she wasn’t going to talk to him about it. Not voluntarily, anyway.

She stayed in the bathroom until about forty-five seconds before the bus pulled up out front. He’d retreated to the kitchen, leaving the hallway empty, letting her think she had a clear shot at escape. When she got to the entryway, he waylaid her, positioning himself between her and the door as she stepped into her sneakers, shrugged on her backpack and flipped her braid over her shoulder. Even though he was squarely blocking the door, she did an excellent job of pretending she was alone, not even glancing at him when she accidentally stepped on his foot.

“You’re grounded,” he said abruptly. “Come home straight after school.”

Finally she looked up, her mouth open. “Grounded until when?”

“Until you sit down and tell me what’s going on.”

She closed her mouth. He prayed he wouldn’t cave. The bus beeped. He willed her out the door. She didn’t move. The bus door groaned as it closed and she flicked a glance over his shoulder to the road.

“Fine,” she said. “Fine. It’s not like I have anywhere to go, anyway.”

The bus beeped again. The driver wouldn’t wait much longer.

“Can I go to school, or am I grounded from that, too?”

He stepped aside and she pushed the door open. Snow swirled in around their feet. The storm door closed behind her with a snap, cutting the cold air off.

He stood watching her, but the glass fogged as she climbed onto the bus and he lost track of her. “Have a good day,” he said, knowing it was inane but wishing there was some way she could hear him.

He slammed the inside door closed and smacked it with his palm.

You’re grounded? He’d never grounded anyone before. Where had that come from?

In the kitchen, his cell phone lay next to his laptop on the table. He called Erin. Screw her if it was only 5:00 in the morning in L.A. Her fault for moving so damn far away from her kid.

She didn’t answer, and he left a short message to call him. She probably wouldn’t. It usually took about three tries before he could contact her and it was a rare day when she actually called him back anytime during daylight hours.

She was busy, she’d say.

Bryan picked up Allie’s bowl and took it to the dishwasher. He put the box of cereal back in the cupboard and wiped off the table. Erin was busy all right.

Busy leading her new life. The divorce last year hadn’t exactly been a surprise. They hadn’t been close since before Allie went to kindergarten. When they slept together it had been about physical release, not love. But she’d been a good mom to Allie. They hadn’t been girlfriends like some of the moms and kids he saw on TV, but their relationship was decent. He thought it was, anyway. Who could tell, though?

During the course of their divorce, he’d learned exactly how much Erin had hidden from him. She’d had an affair with some guy she met at karaoke night at the Holiday Inn. She’d claimed she was restless, but the affair hadn’t satisfied her any more than being married to him had.

So she’d given up men and started taking classes and entering hairstyling competitions. She’d flown out to Los Angeles for a weeklong workshop and shortly after she got back she’d filed for divorce.

He hadn’t fought her on custody because it had never occurred to him that she would want to leave Twin Falls. It made sense that he’d get an apartment, he’d keep his travel schedule and he’d see Allie on the weekends.

He’d had no idea Erin was looking for more than a release from him until she’d blindsided him and Allie again at the beginning of the summer. She tried out for and was cast on a reality show following the U.S. tour of the girl band Lush. The show hired stylists and a hair-and-makeup crew to travel with the band for six months.

When Erin left on the tour in September, he’d cut a deal with his boss to scale back his traveling, and arranged for his sister to watch Allie when he was away. But he’d been pitifully unprepared to face their new reality. He used to have two jobs: earn the money and deal with Allie’s hockey. Since Erin left them, he’d encountered a whole world of unfamiliar challenges—and even the two things he’d always done well were messed up. His sales numbers were off and with this fight, Allie was in danger of losing hockey. He’d never expected to be a single dad and now, all signs indicated he was screwing it up.

Bryan picked up the dishcloth and wet it, running the water hot and then wringing the cloth out. He wiped the table, lifting the place mat from Allie’s place and then his, and shifting the stack of school papers she’d unloaded from her backpack.

Her grades were slipping. There was a science test buried in the stack with a red note on the top that read, “See me.” He wondered if Allie had followed through. Should he call the teacher and find out?

He turned the test over and glanced at the questions, but then dropped it back on the table and shifted a pile of other papers on top of it. He backed up a step. Nothing, not the night he wrecked his knee, not losing his scholarship, not even the day he’d crawled to Danny for a job after he flunked out of college, had knocked him on his butt as hard as failing Allie.

“Damn it, Erin.” He banged his fist on the table and then threw the dishcloth at the sink. It landed with a splat and slid down to settle in a cereal bowl half-full of water. He hated feeling incompetent.

Bryan turned his back on the kitchen, grabbed his keys and his skate bag, and headed for the rink. The locker room was empty when he got there. He sat on the uneven green bench and carefully buckled his knee brace over his jeans before strapping on his skates.

Fifteen minutes after he pulled into the lot, he was on the ice. He pushed himself hard, ignoring the protests from his knee, as he powered through lap after lap.

He was the only one skating. Danny had open-ice times most mornings but other than a moms-and-toddlers group that came on Thursday mornings, not many people got out here on weekdays. He was glad to be alone. Glad he didn’t have to see anyone and could let the ice and the speed and the cold air fill his mind with nothing but white and the rhythmic pattern of red and blue lines rushing under his skates.

This was what he knew how to do. He didn’t have to think, his muscles were trained and his body did the work. At the center line, he forced a full stop, spraying ice off his blades. Pushing off in the opposite direction, he savored the pull in his muscles when he dug deep on the crossovers.

He’d almost been one of the lucky ones, the guys who got to make a living playing sports. He could have put his body to work for Erin and Allie. Instead, he’d thrown that chance away on a drunken stunt.

He understood now that getting drafted, getting his scholarship, hadn’t meant much. They were merely steps on the long road to the NHL, but at the time, he and Erin both felt he’d gotten his ticket. They hadn’t counted on him wrecking his knee at the end of his sophomore season. After the surgeries, he’d worked at his rehab harder than he’d ever worked at anything, but the knee never came back to what it was and his future in the NHL was gone before he’d even had a taste.

It didn’t take him long to flunk out of school, losing his chance at a degree and a job with a future.

He and Erin wound up living in Twin Falls in the apartment over his sister’s garage. Erin rented a chair in a local salon and got pregnant a few weeks later. Danny gave him a reference and he got a small territory as a sales rep for Dutton Skates, a company that made hockey equipment and team gear, which he’d gradually expanded until he was making a decent living and they’d been able to buy their own house. He’d tried to make it enough, but the weight of disappointments and regret had crushed their family, he thought, almost from the start.

Bryan pushed harder, trying to get himself to the place where he could stop worrying and just be. The ice swept under him, the boards flashed past. But every time he almost got himself to the zone, he’d see Allie the way she’d looked last night in the car. Defeated. Alone. Scared.

He pulled up short again, giving his knee another excuse to complain, and bent over, gripping his thighs, trying to catch his breath and wondering if he’d ever be able to breathe right again.

Someone banged on the glass and he looked over his shoulder. Danny. He kept his head down for another minute until he was sure he had himself under control and then skated to the door and let himself out.

“Figured you’d be here,” Danny said. “How’s Allie?”

Bryan shrugged. “How would you be if you were her?”

“Did Clare call Lila Sykes?”

Bryan pushed the sleeves back on his fleece. “Who’s Lila Sykes?”

“She’s the mediator, Bry.” Danny frowned.

“I haven’t heard from anyone yet.”

“Well, if you haven’t heard from the police, maybe that means she’s not going that route.”

Bryan should be grateful, but he wasn’t. Clare was scared, he got that. Heck, he was scared, too, and with more reason since by all accounts it was Allie who was running wild. But knowing what Clare might be dealing with didn’t make him feel any more charitable toward her.

“I almost wish she had called the police. Can you imagine a cop actually filling out a report for a kids’ fistfight?”

He expected Danny to agree with him, but the other man responded quietly, “You weren’t there.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means—” Danny stopped. He tucked his shirt in nervously. He wasn’t going to say whatever he’d started with. “It just means Allie could stand to talk to someone. She’s been through a lot and she seems…angry. Not the Allie I’m used to.”

“But won’t forcing them together drag it out? Why is it a good idea to make her spend time with the kid she’s got a beef with?”

“Because they would get the beef resolved. She could start to move on.”

Move on from whatever was bugging her about Tim or from all the other stuff that had to be bugging her? Bryan didn’t want to get into any of that.

“Who is that Tim kid, anyway?” he asked. “I never saw him around.”

“They moved here right before the season started.” Danny’s phone rang and he looked at the screen. “Wait one sec. It’s John Langenforth.”

Bryan rocked back on the heel of his right skate, trying to stretch some of the tightness out of the muscles around his knee. He shouldn’t have pushed it that hard.

Danny gave him a thumbs-up as he ended the call. “John’s trying to set up a meeting for you and Tim’s mom.”

“Only the mom?” Bryan asked.

“I haven’t seen a dad.”

“Is she divorced? What’s the kid’s sign-up sheet say?”

Danny bent and tugged at a worn piece of sealant on one of the rubber floor tiles. “That’s confidential. I can’t discuss it with someone who’s not on the league board.”

“Quit trying to recruit me for the board.”

“You know damn well I’m really trying to recruit you to coach.”

When a client wanted to cancel an order or make a return after the contract date and Bryan had no intention of either pissing the client off or letting them go, he had a special voice he used. It was equal parts empathy and firmness. I hear you, but you’re out of luck. He tried it on Danny. “I understand the shortage of qualified coaches, but I don’t have the time to take on an additional responsibility.”

“Bullshit,” Danny said. “Don’t give me that salesman crap. You never miss her games. You could work it out—get a decent assistant coach and you’d be all set.”

He couldn’t believe Danny was bugging him about coaching. It was so obvious he was doing a bang-up job as a dad, why not give him another dozen or so kids he could mold and shape? He could squeeze the disciplinary hearings with the board in around practice.

“I had the pleasure of playing for my dad, Danny. I’m not going to inflict that on Allie.”

“You’re not your father,” Danny said. “And Allie’s not you.”

“Forget it. She loves playing. I’m not bringing any of that James Family professional hockey crap out there and polluting her game.”

He connected with Allie over hockey and at this point in their lives, that was it. He wasn’t going to risk messing that up.

“You seriously think you’d ruin the fun for her? You’d be a good coach precisely because you know how wrong it can turn out.”

“It’s not going to happen,” Bryan said, hoping to end the conversation. “What’s the mom’s name again?”

“Clare,” Danny said. “Clare Sampson. She does some thing with computers.”

That seemed to fit with the little he’d seen of her. Last night she’d been controlled, maybe cold. No…not cold. Tough. She’d been ready to take him on, her pointed chin and sleek hair contrasting with big brown eyes she hid behind those smart-lady glasses.

“She wasn’t backing down last night, was she?”

“She doesn’t seem like the backing-down type.”

Would she be willing to meet him? His pulse kicked up again almost as hard as it had been going when he was on the ice. What the hell? He recognized the feeling—the anticipation of looking forward to seeing a hot woman—but he hadn’t felt this way in years.

He shouldn’t be feeling that way now because there was no way he thought Clare was hot. Haughty, more likely. Aloof. Convinced his kid was some kind of thug. Nowhere in that package was there room for anticipation.

Except he’d really liked the way her hair shone, so perfectly smooth and silky where it swept her neck. And there’d been something about how she looked at Tim that made him imagine if she might know what he was talking about if he shared his worries about Allie.

The glass doors from the lobby opened and John Langenforth walked in.

“Bryan,” he said. “Danny.”

Bryan had grown up with John. He’d been the instigator of more locker room shenanigans than any two kids combined, and was still the only player in the history of the Twin Falls League to draw a penalty for mooning a ref while the puck was in play. After college, he’d come home and worked himself up to afternoon deejay for the local classic-rock station. John was also the president of the Twin Falls Youth Hockey board.

Three minutes ago, Bryan would have taken an oath that John was incapable of being serious. Judging by the expression on the other man’s face now, he’d have been wrong.

John unzipped his Twin Falls Hockey parka. “I guess you know why I’m looking for you.”

Bryan nodded.

“I’m sorry we’re in the middle of this mess, Bryan. But now that the fight’s been reported, the board has to address it. The national organization has a bullying policy and we could lose our standing. I want you to know we’ll do everything we can to help Allie.”

Bryan nodded, more than uncomfortable with his friend’s implication. “I understand.”

And he did, too well. John’s son was on Allie’s team and he wasn’t the only parent counting on her to get the team to the state tournament. He still remembered John’s delight when he found out Allie wouldn’t be able to play on the select travel team this season. The supposedly blind draft had somehow landed Allie on a team with John’s kid and the sons of two other board members.

Antibullying policy or not, there was little chance John was going to drop Allie from the roster. This kind of blatant favoritism was one of the reasons Bryan had wanted her on the select team in the first place. She’d have been one of the better kids on that team, but she wouldn’t have been the big fish she was in the Twin Falls pond. He couldn’t have her cultivating unrealistic ideas about her talent. That was what led him straight to the end of his playing days.

“Danny told me he suggested mediation and the board talked it over this morning. We agreed that if Allie and Tim complete mediation, she can stay on the team.” John wasn’t able to meet his eye when he added, “If they don’t go for the mediation, we’ll have no choice but to deactivate Allie’s membership in the league.”

Kick her out was what he meant. John couldn’t bring himself to say the words so clearly, but that was what he meant.

“But no reason to consider that,” John said. “Allie will manage this if she has to, right?”

Suddenly, he couldn’t take them looking at him.

“Call me when you have the meeting set. I’ll be there.” He made a show of checking the scoreboard clock. “I have to head out. Appointments.”

John cleared his throat. “Actually, Tim’s mom is on her way here. Danny told me you were on the ice so when she said she had time, I figured we might as well lock it down. We can reschedule if we have to, but Allie can’t practice until this is settled.”

Bryan looked out the doors toward the lobby. Of course Clare wasn’t here yet. She couldn’t have gotten here so fast.

He wished he’d had time to plan what to say, but maybe this was better. Clare was brand-new territory for him. He could keep lying to himself or he could admit that he found her attractive. She was different from the other women he knew, self-contained and a little fierce. With the divorce finally sinking in those instincts he’d buried for so long were waking up again. It didn’t matter why he was attracted. He had to ignore it, end of story.

The important point was that Allie could play hockey if Clare went along with mediation. Persuasion was familiar ground at least; he was more than used to sales. Needing her cooperation and wanting her complicated the situation. Next time Allie decided to pick on someone, he certainly hoped the kid’s mom wasn’t cute.

“I’ll go change.” He lifted his hand, nodded at the other two and turned away. He felt their eyes on him as he walked around the edge of the ice to the locker room door. He’d come to the rink to leave his frustrations on the ice and instead everything and everyone had come crowding in with him.

He unbuckled his knee brace and let it slide to the floor while he rested against the cinder-block wall behind him. Digging in his pocket, he pulled out his cell phone. He typed in Allie’s number. She’d been the one who taught him to text, laughing at the typos his big fingers made on the tiny keypad.

“You okay?” he typed and then pressed Send. She wasn’t supposed to text in class, wasn’t even supposed to have her phone on, so there was a good chance she wouldn’t answer even if she wanted to. He set the phone next to his gloves on the bench. He waited but it sat silent.

If Allie texted him back before he got his skates off, he decided, that was the sign that Clare was going to be reasonable. He bent and untied the knot on his right skate. He didn’t dawdle, it wasn’t fair to try to manipulate a sign, but he couldn’t help noticing moisture on the skate blade which meant an extra careful wipe dry before he stowed the skate in his bag. He’d just tugged the lace out of the top set of holes on his left skate when the phone buzzed. He grabbed it, flipping the screen open. She’d texted back, “OK.”

He dropped the phone on the bench and tugged his skate off quickly. OK. He snorted. The two of them didn’t have a single conversational skill to split between them. Still, short and unsatisfying as OK was, she’d replied. He zipped his bag and wished he still believed in luck.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE HOCKEY LEAGUE BOARD must have been up before dawn, Clare thought, if they’d had time to meet and still call her before Tim left for school. Fanatics were always so…fanatical.

She’d agreed to meet mostly just to get off the phone because she’d wanted to talk to Tim. But before she had a chance, he’d shouted that he was leaving and slammed the front door. She called his cell. When he answered, he said it was too cold to talk while he was walking.

She took a quick shower and then was lucky enough to get Lila Sykes, the mediator, on the phone, but that conversation hadn’t gone well, either. Lila had homed in on the fact that they moved a lot and most of her suggestions were aimed at making Tim feel at home in Twin Falls. Every time she said “settle” or “connect,” Clare felt more sure mediation was the wrong move for them at this time. Sure, she wanted Tim to enjoy himself while he was here, but they weren’t staying and there was no sense getting involved in a program that would make it harder to leave when her contract redesigning the data security for the Twin Falls Savings bank was up.