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  PLAY ON

  By Heather C. Myers

  Text Copyright © 2014 Heather C. Myers

  All Rights Reserved

  For hockey fans everywhere

  1. She always knew her grandfather would die – he was eighty-two after all – but to say she was surprised to find his lifeless body crumpled to the floor of his office would be a drastic understatement.

  The door closed behind her but she couldn’t hear it. The sight before her had been a part of her worst nightmares, but now that she was confronted with the scene, she simply couldn’t see it. It was like a staged photograph, a museum installation she was on the outside of looking into. The connection she normally had with the old man had yet to be made; logically, she knew that she should at the very least be crying, but it was as though her brain was paralyzed which caused her whole body to be incapable of anything, even breathing.

  Of course, after the initial shock, Seraphina Hanson ran over to her grandfather and tried to see if he was breathing, if there was a chance that this actually was a nightmare she had fallen into and not her current reality. The tears started to fall now, almost in waves cascading down her cheeks. Even so, as she spoke to the 911 operator, she managed to keep her voice surprisingly steady.

  While she waited, her eyes flitted around the room. Seraphina did not think he changed anything since he first acquired his ownership of the Newport Beach Seagulls the year she was born, save for the fact that the team photos that filled the wall behind his desk changed with each passing year. His red oak desk had scattered papers and financial books flipped open and strewn about, completely disorganized unlike the man who occupied the office. His computer – which he always complained about and rarely if ever transferred records from his books due to his disdain for the technology – was off, looking untouched as it usually was. The framed photograph of Seraphina and her older sister Katella that normally rested on the left corner of the desk was on the floor, just out of reach of her grandfather’s body, cracks diluting the smiling faces. The day’s newspaper was close to where she was sitting, crumpled, carelessly open to an article about her grandfather contemplating selling the Gulls in order to retire. She couldn’t read it.

  Her mind desperately needed something to focus on now that the first round of tears were subsiding and the sporadic hiccups that typically followed such an eruption began, and yet the options she had before her were too slippery for her mind to grasp. Probably she should get up and leave the room, waiting for the police just outside the room – crime scene now, she suspected. Due to her weekly “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit” marathon, she knew she shouldn’t have entered the room at all. Crime scene now. Her grandfather was healthy for his age, and from the apparent struggle that had taken place –

  But she didn’t want to think about that.

  Most likely, she contaminated the office, maybe even his body, but she had to make sure that he was really –

  No. She didn’t want to say the word. And she didn’t want to get up. Not just yet. She knew that once they got here, they would take his body to determine cause of death and then he would really be gone. And she didn’t want him to be gone just yet.

  Seraphina and her sister Katella had always been close to her grandfather. Ever since their parents die in a car accident, Ken Brown and his wife Jane took the girls in and raised them. Jane died the October of Seraphina’s senior year of high school from a stroke, but even with all this tragedy surrounding the family, Ken was always the sturdy oak tree, the sap that held the family of now only three together. Every once in a while, Ken’s two sons, Alan and Ryan would visit, but they wouldn’t stay long, and afterwards, Ken would always be in one of his rare snippy moods. He never would tell his granddaughters as to why but Seraphina guessed he didn’t want to taint their optimistic views regarding their uncles. It didn’t matter though because eventually, both Katella and Seraphina realized what losers their uncles were which only strengthened their affection for Ken. To both girls, he was their hero in different ways. While Katella admired his silent strength, always preparing, planning and yet maintaining an optimistic view on life and reveling in the spontaneous (mostly), Seraphina admired his resilience; having gone through the Depression, he literally came from nothing, worked hard, saved up, and now was a quiet multi-millionaire living in Newport Beach, living out one of his many dreams of owning a national hockey team.

  Was, of course, being the key word.

  Her eyes rolled down. Before, she couldn’t see him. Now, he was all she could see. His short, grey hair usually covered by a navy blue sailor’s cap he wore ever since Seraphina could remember – now somewhere on the floor, a few feet away from her left leg – his cauliflower blue eyes that would never again look at her and shine the way they used to. His false teeth that he would always pop out to surprise the girls when they were younger would never present themselves in a smile. Quickly, her mind gathered everything she knew about him and stored those memories at the forefront of her mind; the way he smelled like aftershave and musk, the way he would throw his head back and let out an obnoxious, guttural laugh when he found something truly funny – a trait she inherited from him – the way he would stick out his tongue at her when they used to go to church, before Jane died, even though the surrounding people could see. The way his arms always made her feel safe, and the way, no matter what, she felt everything would be okay no matter what she was going through – death, a breakup, a poor grade, girl problems, puberty – everything would be okay because he would take her hand, look her in the eyes, and tell her so. And she would believe him without question.

  She was afraid she would forget him. Forget the coolness of his skin. The protectiveness of his touch. The way he laughed. The sound of his voice. The way he looked. The way he smiled. The way he smelled.

  He was the only constant in her life, besides Katella of course, and now he was gone. Taken from her by someone.

  She didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye.

  Her mind raced back to their last conversation. She needed to make sure there was nothing left unsaid between them, something she might have misspoken about that could have offended or disappointed him. After a few minutes, she realized that no; in fact, they had spoken only a couple of hours ago. He wanted her to meet him here at seven that evening because he needed to talk to her about something, something regarding the team. He would never mention what troubled him when it came to work. Instead, if anything, he asked her to his office once the working day had concluded and told her his dilemma. For whatever reason, he held Seraphina’s opinion in high esteem, even when it came to something as foreign to her as hockey. She had a feeling he needed to hear her point of view concerning the situation, whatever the situation might be. Of course he would never tell her his decision until after he disclosed it to the people involved, but after their talk, he would usually take her out for ice cream and then they would talk about everything but business - what Seraphina planned to do now that she was a college graduate, how Katella’s event coordination business was doing, and was Matt ever going to ask Katella to marry him?

  Ken had wanted to confirm that Seraphina was going to come in that evening. The conversation was no more than two minutes. Ken had called her his Baby Doll, his term of endearment for her, and they both said “I love you” before hanging up. There was nothing special about it.

  For a moment, Seraphina’s mind wondered if whatever her grandfather wanted to discuss with her led to his… Maybe she needed to fantasize in order to grapple with her current predicament, and yet the evidence, the scene before her that she was now in, had shown an obvious struggle. And a victim was produced in the form of her grandfather.

  Someone had killed him, but for the life of her, Seraphina had no idea as to w
ho would do such a vicious act to another human being, and why they would do it to her grandfather. He was eighty-two; sure, he was strong, and if anyone threatened his granddaughters, Seraphina knew Ken wouldn’t hesitate to protect them. But courage did not equal strength, and while Ken could defend himself if a match between him and somebody else was relatively even, it was highly unlikely that he had a chance against his attacker if this person was a fraction faster or stronger or younger.

  Ken wasn’t a bad, mean person. He didn’t go out of his way to make someone miserable. Yes, he had to make difficult decisions regarding his hockey team, the players, coaches, trainers, equipment managers and anyone else involved with the Gulls, but he was always direct, discreet, and fair. If he had to trade someone, he would explain why, but he would never trade someone without warning. He always gave people a chance to redeem themselves before making that final decision, because once that decision was made, he wouldn’t change his mind, even if it turned out that that particular decision was wrong. He negotiated salaries not just on performance, but on a person’s demeanor and if they were a team player both on and off the ice. Rarely if ever did he talk to the press personally; he let head coach and his close friend Henry Wayne take care of that for him. The only people that really knew what he was thinking about were Seraphina and Katella, the former more so than the latter only because Katella ran her own business and had to focus more on that than a hockey team. People seemed to like him, respect him, whether they agreed with him or not. Which caused Seraphina to shake her head in confusion: who would do such a thing to her grandfather? What could he have possibly done to warrant such a death?

  From her position in the room, she wasn’t quite sure how he died. For whatever reason, her mind had already concluded that he had been murdered rather than simply killed or dead from something internal like a heart attack. But there seemed to be bruises forming around his neck and Seraphina could feel a lump forming on the back of his head. Her rational mind wanted to figure out just what happened, the sequence of events, the suspects. It couldn’t stop thinking even if it wanted to.

  But the pain wouldn’t allow the mind to work just yet. All Seraphina could do in that moment was to hold her grandfather as tightly as she possibly could, his head resting softly in her lap, and try to memorize everything about him. Her heart constricted painfully, and before she could stop herself, she started talking to his body as though he was sleeping instead of gone. She talked about her day and how much she loved him and how he was her hero and would always be her hero and how she never properly thanked him for taking her and Katella in after their parents died and for sending her to college and for being there when she needed it. She apologized for not attending more hockey games and for dating Billy Stanford and for getting her first and only D in science class her sophomore year of high school.

  She wasn’t sure how long she sat there mumbling incoherent sentence fragments or when she started to cry again, but EMTs and police officers arrived soon after. She didn’t remember having anyone pry his body away from her. She didn’t remember someone helping her up and leading her out of the office. But she remembered watching the EMTs place her grandfather’s body on a stretcher and wheel him to the elevators just down the hall. She knew she would never see him again.

  2. Even though the Southern California was picture-perfect, Emma Winsor wished she was back at home, wrapped up in a book rather than at a secluded beach in Corona Del Mar. But this was only once a year and her presence seemed to make her father happy.

  Still, it wasn’t as though hockey was something Emma was terribly passionate about. Her father was deeply involved in the game – his favorite team being the Newport Seagulls – and as such, bough season tickets every year for himself and his daughter. Though Emma would rather have been reading or dancing, she attended every home game with her father, even if she had a midterm or something the important the next day. Her friends knew to inquire about games during the season before making plans that included Emma in order to assure games and plans didn’t clash. If she was dating anyone or had a serious boyfriend, he, too, would have to adhere to her unspoken rules that lasted from late September until, sometimes, May, depending on how far the Gulls got in the season. Technically, speaking, they had yet to make the playoffs in their twenty-three years of existence.

  Of course, there were times her friends got annoyed with her and her disciplined schedule, but they understood why Emma was so adamant about keeping it; rarely did she ever see her father due to the fact that he ran a highly successful law practice in Newport Beach. But it wasn’t as though she was neglected or abused, it wasn’t as though her father didn’t ask about school and boys, or that he didn’t know her favorite movie was American Psycho or that her favorite artist was Taylor Swift. They still had a close-knit bond. Emma herself was busy with school – her last year at the University of California, Irvine was coming up in a week, and as a dance major, she had to invest a lot of time and effort into perfecting the choreography for her three recitals of the year. On top of that, she liked to spend time with her group of friends at least once a week, and there were moments when she would rather be alone, by herself, lost in a completely different world brought to life by one of her favorite authors. Yet there was a silent agreement between father and daughter that during hockey season, the games and corresponding events that accompanied the season would be first priority – as first priority as it could be.

  And today was one of those events days.

  “A Day at the Beach,” as the coordinators of the day liked to call it, was a typical charity day in Newport Beach during the summer – because in Southern California, September still constituted as summer – where the players, coaching staff, managers, and even the owner would all congregate to this private beach, and fans were able to purchase tickets in order to attend where they could meet, speak, take pictures, ask for the autographs, and pretty much socialize with those people that made up the team. There was also free food and drinks, a full bar, a raffle, Gil the Gull – the team mascot – and other games for kids. It wasn’t the cheapest charity event the Gulls had, but it was probably the most relaxed; people were dressed in flip flops and bathing suits, not gowns and neckties. And even Emma had to admit that it was hard to feel uptight on such a beautiful day.

  From the corner of her eye, Emma could see her father talking to who Emma remembered as the head coach of the team, Henry something. He was an older gentleman, somewhere in his sixties if she had to guess. Short, reaching her father’s chin, but Henry’s grey eyes were commanding, adding to his already strong presence. He was bald for the most part, but even so, he wasn’t wearing a signature Gulls cap in order to hide the fact. He was portly, but unapologetic about it, though for a day at the beach, he was dressed somewhat conservatively; a white, long sleeved shirt and black board shorts. On his feet were blue Crocs, and they looked like they had been worn for a while. He seemed approachable but firm, and the way his small mouth moved as he replied to whatever Emma’s father said seemed to show the seriousness of the topic.

  Normally, Emma would put in her iPod, grab a hot dog and at least two bags of chips, before heading off in order to eat. It wasn’t as though she would blatantly avoid anyone associated with hockey, but she simply didn’t care, and as such, didn’t want to waste her time faking smiles and forcing conversation with people she was certain would forget her name moments after she exited the conversation or would only remember her as her father’s daughter. However, she had heard numerous rumors from her father about something happening to the owner of the Gulls, Ken Brown, and considering that she couldn’t place him here, she wondered whether or not there was any truth to them. Death? A heart attack? Isolation? Dementia? Murder?

  Biting her lower lip, Emma threw the now-empty paper plate into a nearby metal garbage can before subtly making her way over to her father and Henry. She didn’t want to interrupt the flow of their conversation, especially since she wanted to overhear just what wa
s being said, but she needed to get closer in proximity to them in order to actually hear the two. Of course, she knew that if she asked her father later what was being discussed, he would tell her. They had an easy, open relationship, and besides the typical subjects that were normally kept private by twenty-two year old women from their fathers, they talked about everything. But this gave her something to do while here, to occupy her mind with rather than everything else she would rather be doing.

  “…just don’t understand why someone would do something like that to Ken,” her father murmured, shaking his head.

  Emma could tell her father was sincere in his statement. In fact, she remembered that he and Ken would share dialogues at these events about the Gulls. Her father liked him, and even more than that, respected him. For Emma, this said a lot because her father didn’t respect many people.

  Henry shrugged his shoulders, and Emma could see sadness clearly written in his grey irises. Which was weird, because in the six years that Henry was the coach of the Gulls, she’d never actually seen him sad. Upset? Yes. Mad? Yes. Excited, happy? Yes. Strict, firm? Yes. But sad? No. Not even when his team didn’t make the playoffs.

  This couldn’t be good in relation to Ken.

  “Well, nothing’s definitive yet,” Henry said. His voice was low and gravelly, key in barking out plays and formations and other hockey-related things to his player. But in normal conversation, especially when expressing sympathy, it was almost off, as though his voice wasn’t made to express calm emotions. “But Seraphina did mention a bump on the back of his head and bruises around his throat. Jesus, I can’t even imagine what it must be like for her, having walked in on that mess.”

  “She found the body?” Emma’s father asked. His thick brow pushed together, his rich brown eyes Emma inherited from him pooling in concern.