Chapter 5

Thanks to Mel for her info and Shan for her inspiration & thank you of course to my readers for their encouragement!

“It’s done.” He looks down at the papers that have just been slid across the table and stares at the signature.

“She signed it?” It’s more of a statement than a question but he can’t hide the surprise in his voice. As he looks at the signature he can’t help but imagine that her hand shook as she signed it and he wonders if the man sitting across the table from him intimidated her. He wonders if she cried. 

“She didn’t take the cheque either.” He looks up and across the table and blinks at the Penguins junior legal counsel in disbelief. “I know, it surprised me too but she said she wouldn’t either. She was pretty adamant that she won’t take money from you.” He knows he should feel relieved but as he pushes the stapled sheets around on the table in front of him he doesn’t. If anything he feels even more anxious. There’s something disquieting about her refusing the money that he knows is going to have him wanting to look over his shoulder from now until...he counts the months off in his head – five months.

“But she signed it,” he says, almost as if to remind himself that there is a positive here, that the paper in front of him represents at least a measure of security.  

“Oh and she wanted you to have this.” The young lawyer slides a folded piece of paper across the table towards him. Sidney stares down at unsure what to expect next. He half expects the paper to cut him as he reluctantly reaches out to pull it to closer to him. He toys with the corner of the page as if he’s expecting something to crawl out from beneath it, something sharp and poisonous to sink its teeth into him. He wonders if it’s a demand, if the amount they offered to keep her quiet wasn’t enough. If she wants more he knows he’ll be back to listening to his father say I told you so. 

Folding the paper open he stares down at the one word scrawled across the middle of the yellow, lined foolscap page in neat, feminine handwriting – COWARD.

The corner of his mouth turns up in a satirical grin. There’s that spark of fire in her that he’s seen only briefly on both occasions that he’s been with her. His amusement fades quickly as his mind races ahead, already considering the possibilities, the worst case scenarios. Facing the press in Pittsburgh would be one thing but if this got out back home it would be a scandal of epic proportions. The press scrums he’s faced over the years over simple, straight forward things like injuries would be nothing in comparison to the ones he’d face over something juicy like this. 

“You explained it to her, right? You told her she can’t go to the press?” he asks, looking apprehensively across the table. The young lawyer smiles confidently, leans back in the high backed leather chair and twirls his silver pen in his fingers.

“Oh yeah, I told her.”

_____________________________________________________________

Earlier that day

She looks down at the papers he’s placed in front of her with the highlighted spaces awaiting her signature. The pen is in her hands but the words swim, meaningless, before her. Looking up, she watches the young professional in his expensive suit drain his cup and set it down, his smug grin returning. 

“Take your time,” he advises, sounding to her much like a used car salesman trying to make a sale, “make sure you’ve read it over.” She nods and goes back to reading the same section that she’s already read over and over again, doing her best to decipher the legal jargon and looking for clues, for a sentence that will tell her if anything in the contract that’s been placed before her will result in her worst fear coming to fruition.

“Can he take it? Is there anything in here that says he can take the baby?” She searches the south pacific blue ocean coloured eyes of the man across the table but his expression remains smug.

“You think he wants it? He just wants you to keep the snotty brat the hell away from him,” he says, his eyes crinkling in the corners when he says it, his grin growing, like he thinks what he’s just said is funny as hell. She looks back down at the sheets of crisp white paper covered in dark black type and then back up at him. 

“So this...,” she says slowly flipping the page over and running her gaze down the sections that forbid her from selling her ‘story’ to any magazine or media outlet, from giving interviews or worse, black mailing the Crown Prince of the NHL. “I sign this and he...leaves me...us, alone?”

“In a matter of speaking,” he chimes in, seeming pleased with her reply, “y’know until the kid is born and then you agree to have the kid swabbed or whatever and they do the test and then if it really is what you say it is, you agree to some kind of figure and get your payments once a month and keep your trap shut.” It hurts. It teels like a stake through her heart but she nods and keeps her opinion of his version of what is in the contract and the contract itself to herself. 

“Okay,” she says quietly, taking her own, cheap five cent pen from her pocket. Her hand shaking, she begins to sign on the highlighted line and then stops. “Did he send you, or did they...did someone else send you?” She doesn’t know why but she knows the answer to this question is important.

“You think he has time for shit like this?” His mocking laughter has head turning and try as she might, Fern cannot keep the blood from rising in her face, burning to the tips of her ears. Gritting her teeth, she presses her pen to the paper and signs her name.

“Fine,” she says through clenched teeth as she flips to the next page, “but I want you to take him back a message from me.” 

 ___________________________________________________________

He sits behind the wheel of his expensive SUV, sheltered from the early fall drizzle and watches the diner. He watches the clients going in and out, the college kids with their lap tops and their book bags, the old women with their shopping strollers, and the young mothers with their children in tow. He doesn’t go in. That had been his intention but his courage has failed him. 

He sees her deliver a pair of plates to an elderly couple near the window. She smiles brightly at both of them and then laughs, her entire face transforming as she tips her head back, a broad grin brightening her face. 

When she disappears from sight again he drums his fingers on the steering wheel in time to a country song on the radio and tries to gather his wits about him. He has a cheque in his pocket. He believes if she takes it he will feel better, more secure. It will give him piece of mind and chase away the pounding ache behind his eyes but the longer he sits in his vehicle the more he begins to listen to the voice in the back of his mind telling him that he has to admire her, just a little, for having the testicular fortitude to tell him to stick his cash. If she was a guy, he would shake her hand but she is not. 

When she reappears, at a different window and serving a younger couple, her hair is down, the way it was when he rakes his fingers through it, and he thinks, just as he did then, that she is not as ordinary as he keeps thinking that she is. It takes him a few moments to realize that she is no longer wearing her uniform, that she is wearing a snug fitting black sweater, the more dramatic colour suiting her pale skin. She smiles at this couple too and they talk for a few minutes, her standing at their table looking like any of the college girls on the streets in this area. 

When the couple stand he realizes that he knows them, that it’s MAF and Vero and his fingers cease their drumming on the steering wheel. 

________________________________________________________________

“I couldn’t,” she shakes her head but he is already fishing in his jacket pocket for his keys. 

“C’est absurd,” he insists, his long dark hair falling into his eyes as he slides along the banquette until his long legs push him up to his full height. “We don’t mind, ce n’est pas juste V?’ he adds, holding his hand out to his strikingly beautiful girlfriend with her shining hair the colour of a raven’s wing.

“We go right by there,” she smiles, her face lighting like a neon sign. Of course she is the kind of girl they date, a WAG, with perfect teeth and perky breasts but Fern knows Veronique wasn’t always like that and now that she’s met her, she likes the shy, unassuming French Canadian girl. “It’s no trouble. You cannot go out in the run, pas avec un bébé sur le chemin,” she adds with a wink and a meaningful glance towards the bump that is even more noticeable bump now that she is wearing her favourite knit skirt. Fern smoothes her hand over the slight swelling and decides not to argue. 

“Well thank you. I mean...you don’t know me,” she begins and then drops her voice to an almost whisper, “I don’t know why you’re being so nice to me.” 

“Because Sid is being a putain connard,” Marc André growls as he reaches for the jacket that is lying over her arm. She looks down at it and then blinks up at him as she lets him take it and then turns so that he can help her into it. 

“He’s not always,” Veronique whispers conspiratorially, reaching to squeeze Fern’s hand before she also turns around to let Marc André help her into her jacket. “I think it’s this head injury. He isn’t quite himself.” Fern nods, as if she agrees but inside she is rolling her eyes and wondering if Sid’s friends and teammates always defend him. 

As Vero reaches to link her arm with Fern’s and the two of them follow the Pens goaltender towards the exit, she can’t help but think that today has turned out better than it started. 

______________________________________________________________

He watches his friend’s girlfriend climb into the back seat of Flower’s white Escalade while MAF holds the passenger door open for Fern. His teeth grind together as his teammate smiles broadly at something she says before he closes the door. This feels like a knife in his back, a betrayal of epic proportions. It’s one thing to disagree with how he is handling this situation but to go behind his back and meet with her makes his stomach churn and his head pound. 

To make matters worse, as the lean net minder walks around to the driver’s side Flower aims a tooth filled grin in his direction making it clear that he knows they are being watched. 

Sid grips the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turn white and as his teammate’s vehicle pulls out of the parking lot he stares angrily after it, muttering threats and violent promises under his breath but as reaches for his phone he knows that he cannot pick this fight. He has already alienated his road roommate and picking a fight with Flower would mark him as the black sheep of the team in short order. 

He pounds the steering wheel with his fist and then rests his forehead against it. Nothing about this has gone as planned and he feels helpless; as helpless as he feels against his injury. It feels like everything and everyone is conspiring against him at once and he can’t see a light at the end of the tunnel.