Maybe I should have waited to read it, because that first line cut me in half. The tears in my eyes made it hard to keep reading. She said so many loving things. And she reminded me to work on my patience.

But she followed that by telling me that I will be loved deeply and completely. And that Bryce was my soulmate.

The letter is tucked away in a shoebox now. It hurts too much to read it. And it won’t do me any good to read it again, anyway. Maman was amazing, and many of her words will doubtless prove true.

But as I sit here staring into the candle’s flame, I can’t help thinking that she got a few things wrong.

It hurts, too.

TWENTY

The Right Kind of Screw

SYLVIE

“You have to admit,” Charli says from a corner of our sofa. “Bombshells is a terrible name for a team. What were they even thinking?”

“It’s not terrible at all,” Fiona argues from the other end. “I love it. A bombshell is a sudden revelation. An overwhelming surprise. That’s what we’re supposed to be, in this scenario—the thing that makes New York realize that women’s hockey is great. Plus, you get the alliteration with Brooklyn.”

“But it also means sexpot,” Charli sputters. “It’s evil marketing. They think they can only sell tickets by sexing us up. If they print posters with a naked woman riding on a missile, I will quit on the spot.”

“Hey,” I argue from the floor, where I’m stretching my quads on the new rug I bought yesterday. “The logo is a cartoon bomb. No boobs in sight. But if it meant we could be paid more, and that a women’s team could be profitable, I’d almost be willing to play topless.”

I’m joking, of course, for two reasons.

First, I don’t need the money because my bookkeeping job followed me to Brooklyn. “You can work remotely,” my dad had said. “And I’ll cover your apartment,” he’d added during the frenzied twenty-four hour period where I had to decide if I was going to change my whole life and move to Brooklyn. “Just go and give this thing a whirl. Don’t worry about money.”

And the second reason I’m joking about flashing my tatas for ticket sales is that I’m hoping to get a rise out of Bryce, who’s in my bedroom right now. That’s right, in my bedroom, where I always hoped he’d end up.

Be careful what you wish for, though. A couple hours ago he texted me, asking if he could come over. So I washed my hair and put on makeup, as well as a low-cut sleeveless top.

In my defense, it’s a warm September afternoon.

But when he came through the door, Bryce didn’t even give my outfit a glance. He was carrying a small toolbox and a brand new deadbolt lock, the kind you can install above the perfectly functional locks already in place on our door.