Chapter Nineteen

Some people only see what they want to see.”

Matt paused the video, then replayed Stephanie’s words from the audio file alone. He closed his eyes in the dark room. What was he missing?

Frustrated, he stood up and paced away from the desk. He knew this was part of the process; every film was a puzzle that had to be painstakingly assembled.

He opened the closet and felt around in the dark for the backpack on the floor. He pulled out a stack of blank index cards and a Sharpie. His stomach rumbled; he couldn’t remember if he’d had lunch and it would be a long time before he gave any thought to dinner. He turned on his bedside lamp and spread the index cards out on the floor. He scrolled through a few photos on his phone until he found the shot of his storyboard from the office. He’d taken it before he left New York just for reference, thinking it would be enough to get him through a week in Longport. Now, feeling the film slipping away from him, he wrote on an index card, Opening Image: Rory soaring toward the net, Kings vs. Flyers. On the second card, Entrance to LM, motto, coach VO.

When he finished writing his notes on the fifty or so index cards, the board was re-created on the floor next to the bed. He’d make a quick trip to the convenience store, the one called Wawa, for Scotch tape to get them all up on the wall. And while he was out, he might as well stop into Robert’s for a liquid dinner.

And if he ran into Stephanie Adelman? Well, that would just be a bonus.

  

Lauren waited until her parents had gone into their bedroom for the night before climbing the stairs to the attic.

She had tried telling herself to just go to sleep, not to give in to the pull of the memories. But there was no putting the genie back in the bottle. She had been so disciplined the past four years, never thinking about the boxes, never even tempted to look inside. Her mother accused her of not moving forward with her life, but truly, she had. Never looking back was her progress. At first, she felt like an alcoholic struggling not to take a drink; every day the effort not to wallow in her grief and her memories was as fresh and agonizing as if it were the first. But gradually, her tunnel vision, her focus on only the day in front of her, became easier, and eventually it was second nature.

But the time for tunnel vision was over. With Matt poking around in the past, it was impossible not to think about the truth. About the story buried in these boxes.

Lauren wrestled with the packing tape and heard something solid sliding along the bottom of the box, something small but weighty. Emboldened by the silence of the house, and by having come this far dipping a toe into the past, she reached inside and pulled out the first thing she touched. It was a paper napkin; Lauren handled it as carefully as if she were capturing a butterfly. Holding her breath, she smoothed it out on the floor. And Rory’s words, in stark black ink, a note intended for his older brother, Emerson, greeted her like a kiss: She’s my girlfriend. She stays.

How could a simple note last longer than their marriage? Longer than Rory himself?

In the beginning, after the night on the beach, things had grown slowly between them. She’d never planned for their relationship to be a big secret. But with everyone away for the summer—or, at the very least, not congregating every day at school—it was easy to fly under the radar.

Lauren and Rory had a routine. They went to a movie or ate lunch at Boston Style Pizza. They talked about everything—her family, his family. Rory had been a surprise, born when Kay Kincaid turned forty. His father, a Vietnam veteran and a police officer, died of a heart attack when Rory was four. His older brother, Emerson, fifteen years his senior, was an instructor at West Point. Rory said, more than once, that Emerson was the closest thing to a father that he had, aside from his coaches. It was Emerson who had drilled into his mind the imperative to excel. Rory told her, “I don’t think I’d be happy if I wasn’t good at something. Great at something.”

The week Emerson visited that summer, she didn’t get to see Rory at all. It hurt her feelings that he didn’t want to introduce her, but Rory told her it was for her own good. “He can be tough,” Rory said. “He wouldn’t approve of me being serious about a girl. I should be focusing on school and hockey right now.”

All she’d heard was serious about a girl…

And besides, she wasn’t exactly rushing to make things public in her own household. It shouldn’t matter about Stephanie—it couldn’t. That was so long ago. And it had been nothing, really. Still, she kept quiet. She snuck around. And with her parents working at the store long hours every day and Stephanie at their grandparents’ beach house for the summer, it was easy to be invisible.

But then school started.

The first hockey game of the new school year fell on a Thursday in late October. It was home ice, and Lauren, with her newly earned driver’s license, drove herself and a few friends to the game. Rory’s mother and Emerson in the stands, and being invisible to them felt terrible.

The Skatium was unusually crowded that night. The hockey team had gotten so close to states the previous year that there was a surge in community interest in them. And it didn’t hurt that a month or so ago, the Philadelphia Inquirer had published an article about the best local high-school athletes. They ran a photo of Rory from the final game of last year. He was crouched in position for a face-off, his expression intensely focused. It was a gorgeous picture, even in the grainy black-and-white of newsprint. She bought three copies of the paper and put them on a shelf in the back of her closet.

Lauren had watched him practice a few times over the summer, but this was the first game she’d been to since they’d become a couple. When he skated out onto the ice in the first moments of play, she felt a swell of pride that made her chest almost physically ache. It was strange to be surrounded by all those people watching him, hundreds of eyes on the boy she’d come to know so well.

The crowd jumped to its feet. One minute and fifty seconds of play, and Rory had scored his first goal of the season. He made his signature gesture—lifted both hands into the air, then pulled his left arm in sharply at the elbow, his hand a fist. Score!

She settled back in her seat and someone yanked on her ponytail. Hard.

She whirled around to confront the offender and was surprised to see Stephanie.

“Oh, hey! I didn’t know you were coming,” she said, naively interpreting the hair-tug as a playful greeting. Stephanie was all decked out in Seven jeans and a top that made her look like she’d stepped out of a scene from The OC (her favorite show). Her hair was loose and as golden as the oversize hoops in her ears.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” she snapped.

With a sinking feeling in her stomach, Lauren looked around nervously. “About what?” She noticed Mindy Levy standing next to Stephanie, arms crossed.

“Rory Kincaid,” Stephanie said.

She looked electrically beautiful in her rage, and it was hard in that moment for Lauren to believe that anyone would choose her over Stephanie. But it was clear that Stephanie realized that someone had.

“Let’s go outside,” Lauren said.

“Do you want me to come?” Mindy asked Stephanie.

Stephanie ignored her—seemed to be ignoring both of them—and stalked out of the rink. Lauren didn’t know if she was simply leaving or if she was agreeing to continue the conversation outside. Reluctantly, she followed her, just steps behind. Stephanie didn’t turn around, and the heavy doors to the rink almost slammed on Lauren before she caught them. Behind her, she heard the roar of the crowd, and she wondered if she’d missed one of Rory’s plays.

The hallway was ten degrees warmer than inside the rink, and perspiration immediately made her layers of clothes feel suffocating. Stephanie kept walking, still not glancing back, until she was gone from the Skatium. Lauren followed her outside.

“Stephanie, stop!” Lauren yelled. Her sister whirled around, and even in the darkness, Lauren could see the glisten of tears in her eyes.

“I can’t believe you,” Stephanie said. “How could you lie to me like this?”

“I didn’t l-lie to you,” Lauren stammered. “I just didn’t want to talk about it.”

“Oh, now you didn’t want to talk? We talk about everything else. And I felt bad for you. I invited you to everything because I didn’t want you to be a loser, and this is how you pay me back?”

“Stephanie, I don’t really get why you’re upset. You never, ever mentioned him to me.”

“You know we hooked up!”

Lauren couldn’t believe it. “Yeah, and I asked if you were dating and you said this wasn’t 1985 or something like that. As if it were the dumbest question in the world. And then you never mentioned him again, and the next time I brought him up, you said he was an asshole. So what do you care if I’m…hanging out with him?”

“Hanging out with him? You mean fucking him.”

Lauren felt herself turn white. Was that what she’d heard? “I’m not…fucking him,” she said, the words catching in her throat.

“Well, then I guess this whole thing should be over soon.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Stephanie smiled an odd smile. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you when he realizes he’s wasting his time with you. You’re on your own.”

She turned and walked briskly to the parking lot. Lauren trotted behind her.

“Fine, I should have told you. I’m sorry. It was wrong for me to let you hear it from someone else.” She resisted the urge to ask who had told her. “But why do you care about some guy you hung out with last year?”

“Some guy I hung out with? What do you think we were doing in my room that night, Lauren? Playing Monopoly? Maybe that’s what you do, but we fucked. And it’s the girl code—no, forget that, the sister code—not to sleep with guys your sister already slept with!”

Lauren reeled back as if she had been slapped. That’s what it felt like, a physical blow. In all the months she’d been with Rory, she had not thought about—had not allowed herself to think about—the extent to which he had hooked up with Stephanie.

She realized, standing alone in the dark, long after her sister had peeled off in her car, that she had been living in denial. And fine, maybe Stephanie had sex with a lot of people. And she acted like it never meant anything, and maybe it didn’t. But that didn’t change the fact that what was going on between herself and Rory merited a conversation with her sister. Deep down, on a level Lauren didn’t want to acknowledge, she had known this all along.

I’m going to fix this, she told herself, hugging her arms tight around her torso. I’m going to make things right with Stephanie. Even if it means ending things with Rory.

Lauren walked slowly back to her seat, feeling sick.

Watching the game was now the exact opposite experience she’d had before the argument with Stephanie. Whereas then she couldn’t keep her eyes off Rory, now she couldn’t stand to look at him.

That’s why she missed the freak accident.

Later, she would read all about it—how Rory was in LM’s defensive zone because there was some slack in that area. Penncrest’s Jake Stall passed the puck to teammate Eric Layton, who let it rip with a slapshot. Rory turned to block the shot and it smashed into the lower half of his face.

But in the moment, all she knew was the crowd gave a collective gasp, and all of them were suddenly on their feet. It’s human instinct to follow the energy of the crowd, and so even though she was lost in her own world, Lauren found herself standing, looking at the ice, where she saw the player down. She knew instantly it was Rory. And was that…blood?

She didn’t remember running down the stairs, but there she was on the ice, the assistant coach Jim Reilly shooing her away. Mrs. Kincaid was bent over Rory, along with Coach McKenna and a few others.

“What happened?” Lauren asked, turning to a stranger in the first row. Paramedics raced down the stairs. Rory was sitting up now, a towel against his face, blood seeping through it.

No one spoke to her. A flurry of activity, and then he was gone from the ice.

Bryn Mawr Hospital was a ten-minute drive down Lancaster Avenue, maybe even less. Lauren had been born there, and that had been the last time she was at that hospital—or any hospital. Lauren parked in the visitor lot and hurried to the information desk. Breathless, she asked where she could find Rory Kincaid. “He’s my brother,” she added quickly, figuring they’d only let family see him.

The weary-looking woman behind the desk consulted a computer and directed her to the fourth floor.

The wide, oversize elevator, the antiseptic smell, the people in wheelchairs, all made her feel like an interloper in some adult world where she didn’t belong. The elevator pinged open, and she felt sheer terror. What if Rory was terribly injured? What if he didn’t want her there? Suddenly, showing up like that seemed like a very bad idea.

Lauren stepped out of the elevator and into a jarringly bright corridor. She went down the hall and into a glass-enclosed waiting area, not sure what to do next. Inside, a TV played CNN. Only two other people were in the room, an elderly man and woman drinking coffee out of Styrofoam cups. Through the glass, she spotted Mr. Reilly, the assistant coach, heading in the direction she had just come from. Why not Coach McKenna? For the first time, it dawned on her that the game had continued. The rest of the team was still on the ice, and Rory was here, injured.

She poked her head out of the room. “Mr. Reilly!” she called.

He was surprised to see her.

“Is Rory okay? Can I see him?” she said.

He said she should follow him.

It was the world’s most awkward minute of walking. They passed the nurses’ station and finally reached Rory’s room. The door was open, and Mr. Reilly knocked on the frame. Peering inside, Lauren spotted Mrs. Kincaid. The edge of a hospital bed was in view, but little else.

“Mr. Reilly, come in,” said Mrs. Kincaid. “My older son just went to find you to tell you the good news—it’s not a break. We’ll have him back on the ice in no time.”

That’s when she spotted Lauren, and her face crinkled with confusion. Lauren, anxious to see Rory, didn’t feel the polite hesitation that might have held her back in other circumstances. Instead, she edged past Mr. Reilly into the room.

Rory was sitting in a chair, a bandage around his head and wrapped under his chin. His mouth didn’t move when he saw her, but his eyes smiled.

“Oh my God, are you okay?” She moved to hug him and felt a clawlike grip on her arm.

“Young lady, excuse me. Who are you?” Kay Kincaid said.

Rory reached for Lauren’s hand. Clearly, he couldn’t speak. Lauren didn’t know what to do—she didn’t want to leave him, but she wasn’t a big fan of pissing off adults. Especially not adults who were related to Rory.

The energy in the room shifted as Emerson walked in; he was as big as Rory, and his presence took up a lot of space. He immediately began talking with Mr. Reilly. Rory squeezed her hand.

“Rory, this isn’t the time or place,” Emerson said. “Your friend is going to have to leave.” Rory grabbed the pen attached to the clipboard by his bed, then reached for a paper napkin. He scribbled something, then passed it to Emerson, who frowned and then passed it to his mother. And that was the end of anyone telling her to go.

Later, Lauren saw the napkin crumpled up on the edge of the bed. While everyone was getting ready to leave, she managed to slip it into her bag unnoticed.

Alone in her car in the dark parking lot, she turned on the overhead light and read it: She’s my girlfriend. She stays.

Any thought of breaking up with him to appease Stephanie was gone.