“Yeah, so essentially, she made it your job to create the kind of family she could live with, and if you couldn’t do it, then she’d have to stay away.” Will’s gaze narrowed on him. “You understand what I’m saying? She had an idea in her head of what a family looked like, but instead of disciplining us, distracting us, doing any of the things a parent does, she looked to everyone else to make it happen for her. Her husband, me…and then you. You were her last attempt.” Will watched him carefully. “And when that didn’t work—because you were eleven years old—she had to divorce Dad.”

“Are you saying I blame myself for the family breaking up?”

Will gave a terse nod. “I remember hearing Dad and Uncle Lachlan talking about how you carried the breakup of the family on your ‘little shoulders.’ Dad wondered if Coach should be pushing you so hard, because he thought you might only be training and competing to make peace in what was left of the family. To keep the five of us intact, since you felt responsible for Mom leaving.”

Shit. Fuck. All those hazy memories he’d carried of his mother’s role in his life clarified. The truth locked into place. And it made him sick. Because he had, absolutely, felt responsible for the destruction of his family. It was just something he’d accepted.

Will shifted Ruby to his other hip, adjusting the chicken between them. “We were all too young to understand that Mom never wanted to move to Calamity in the first place. She wanted to be a socialite in a big city. She wanted to shop and go out to lunch. There wasn’t anything we could have done to keep her here. Even if she’d shipped us all off to boarding school, and Dad had become the perfect husband, she still wouldn’t have stayed in Calamity.”

Brodie was too unsettled to respond.

“So, I guess where I’m going with all this, is everybody thinks the worst thing that ever happened to you was getting injured two weeks before the Olympics. But I think it’s that Mom made you feel responsible for the family blowing up. And I worry that you carry the burden of that failure in here.” He tapped his heart.

“Dat your heart, Wheel.” Ruby pressed her ear against Will’s chest. “It goes da-dum, da-dum, da-dum. Scock gone listen now.” She shoved her chicken against him.

He smiled adoringly at their half-sister, before turning his attention back to Brodie. “All I know is I’ve never seen you like someone as much as Rosie, and it would be a shame if you let her go because of Mom’s mind games.”