“Dadda,” she murmured again and then closed her eyes and snuggled in for more love. My heart filled with love, but the sorrow in my chest grew stronger daily, and it was making it harder to keep it there. I’d worked my way through the steps of grief. Hell, denial had lasted an hour before I was on the internet googling everything from cutting-edge drugs to mystical solutions. I would do anything for Sophie, but I felt hopeless and lost because I couldn’t be the dad she needed right now.
One-handed, I attempted to open the box, hacking through the tape in a messy uncoordinated way until the top was shredded and I was finally able to pin back the tabs. There was an envelope at the top, and opening that was an exercise in frustration, but at last I was able to pull out the note. It was short and to the point, and from a name I recognized. Jillian McAfee, an old roommate of Ashley’s at UT—who majored in chemistry or something equally intelligent and had been as quiet as Ashley was vivacious. Last I saw her was just after Sophie was diagnosed when I’d been looking for clues as to the identity of Sophie’s baby daddy. Jillian summed up Ashley as someone who flitted from person to person and didn’t have a steady partner, adding that Ashley was confident and sassy and always smiling. Still, she couldn’t give me a clue as to the identity of the sperm donor.
“This is from a lady who knew your momma,” I told a sleeping Sophie.
Hi, you might not remember me, but I roomed with Ashley for a while. These are some of her things that I’d mixed in with mine when she didn’t come back for the final semester. Hope all’s good with you. Love Jillian.
As notes went it wasn’t earthshattering, but I was excited to see some of Ashley’s things that I could put away for when Sophie was older. If there was a later. I rubbed at the abrupt pain in my chest, forced away the sorrow, and focused on the positives. We would find a way to get a match. Somehow.
At the top were a couple of sparkly leotards, seeing them brought back so many memories of Ashley dressing up in things like this and giving our grandparents impromptu dance recitals. They hadn’t happened much after we lost them, seemed as if nothing nice happened after that, but hell, I wasn’t going to think about that right now.
“Come on, Soph, let’s take this into the garden room.” I carried coffee out there first, then returned for the box. Sophie never woke for one second. When I finally got to sit in the comfy chair that was my happy place, Sophie tucked into my neck, I pulled the box onto the small side table and picked out the next item. It was a calculator, an old Casio, that I couldn’t believe for one second my sister had ever used. Neither of us were gifted with mathematical brains, she a dancer and me an artist, but on the back, scratched into the plastic, was her name. I missed her so much, for all that happened when we were growing up, for all the obstacles in our way, for her leaving too soon. I missed her like a limb.
A stuffed toy followed next, a giraffe wearing an orange T-shirt, and attached to the T-shirt was a key ring from the bar she worked at—Branson’s Beach Pub. There were some postcards of London, a place she always wanted to visit, and a photo of Mom, Dad, me, and her from way back when we were just youngsters without a care in the world. We looked so innocent, me ten and her eight, the year before a tropical storm became something more, and Hurricane Wilma took Mom and Dad without stopping.
There was something else wedged in at the bottom, a textbook or something, but when I levered it out, I realized it was stuck because it had a lock on it, like one of those old-fashioned secret diaries, although there was no sign of the key. I stared at it for the longest time, torn between opening it and then struck by the fact there might be a name in there that would help find a connection to Sophie. Was it an actual journal? I went to fetch a knife then thought better of carrying Sophie at the same time and placed her back in her chair. Just give me a few moments, sweet girl.
I had the lock broken in no more than two twists of the knife, then placed it carefully on the counter. Sophie seemed content to sleep where she was, and with a prayer to the goddesses of luck and hope, I opened the journal to page one.
It was a diary of sorts, dated, but there were random notes scattered in the margins, a reminder for a haircut, a shift list for the bar, a list of possible nail polish colors, and a lecture schedule that was pasted on page five. A bobby pin marked that page, and it was oddly bright with a smiling ladybird against the subtle cream paper. My hope shifted to despair when I didn’t immediately find the words baby daddy with an equal sign and then a name.
But when I got further in, the posts were more of a diary. There were entries for deadlines for work, even a note about a three-hundred-dollar tip and what she was going to spend it on.
Then I saw the first note of interest, dated Christmas Eve 2017. I hadn’t seen her at all that Christmas, or even much at all the entire year. She’d been at college, getting on with her life. We had at least exchanged texts, but they never went much past the “are you okay, yes I am,” kind of exchange. Too many wasted days.
“Met HG tonight, dark eyes, muscles, sexy man, swoon.”
Well, that didn’t narrow the pool, but it was the only mention so far of this nebulous man and the initials HG. That could be Harry, Henry, anything.
I went through the next few entries. HG appeared a couple of times, and she seemed interested in him.
Was HG Sophie’s father? The timing was right. Christmas 2017. There were smaller notes, a clipping of a red low-cut dress, and then there in black and white was the first clue I had.
29th HG puck drop 7. Will call ticket. Reminder NYE 8-3, nails = scarlet lake.
I flicked back to her schedule, and yep, she was working New Year’s 2017 from eight p.m. to three on New Year’s Day, so that was one detail I could rule out. Puck drop, I guess that is hockey? I’m not the world’s best expert at hockey, or sports in general, but the one thing I did know is that pucks were found in hockey. Was she meeting someone at the hockey game? Was HG a hockey fan? That narrowed it down a bit. Maybe I needed to reach out to the local NHL team or to one of the smaller teams? I didn’t know enough, but I had initials and that was a start. Then I saw the words Hockey Guy, and my heart sank. HG was just short for Hockey Guy? Had she even known the man’s name? How could she conceive a baby and not know the sperm donor’s name? A flush of anger vanished as soon as I glanced at Sophie because no connection that made her could be wrong.
I scanned the rest of the journal, broken up once by Sophie waking up grumpy and hungry, but by the time midnight rolled around I knew without a doubt that Ashley had met and hooked up with a hockey fan she called Hockey Guy, or HG for short, because it was the only thing that made sense.
Which is why for the opening game of the preseason, against Tampa, I left Sophie with June, a neighbour and retired nurse, who had babysat for me in the past. Dressed head to toe in neon orange, I headed to the Tampa Arena with three huge signs I’d drawn, determined to get the attention of every single hockey fan as they went into the place.
Sophie needed help so there I stood half-naked with face paint, looking like a carrot. I couldn’t get a ticket to the game, but if queuing fans read the signs and went to get themselves tested with the hospital to see if they were a match to Sophie, then it was a win. Maybe, somewhere, within the twenty-thousand people at the arena, HG might be there, and I was going to find him.