Chapter Text
Denial, disbelief, and emotional numbness.
When she turns onto the private drive that leads to her son’s summer cottage, Yuna Hollander feels an overwhelming sense of gratefulness come over her.
She’s never been the type to keep a gratitude journal. She’s often too busy to make time for things like journaling. Instead she finds her brain strays from introspection to more practical, actionable things. But she does find that gratefulness creeps up on her at random moments and she does her best to sit with it when it does. Her grandmother always said gratitude and gratefulness are good for a long life, and she must have known something—she lived to 98.
Today’s moment of gratefulness is brought to Yuna by a myriad of things, there are a great many things for which Yuna has to be grateful, but foremost today it’s proximity. In this case the proximity of her son Shane’s summer cottage to her own summer cottage that she shares with her husband David. Though really the proximity is just a testimony to the thing she’s actually grateful for, which is how close she and David are with their adult son.
For 26 years Shane has been the apple of her eye, her son, only child, the living embodiment of her heart walking around in the cruel, cruel world. Nothing, honestly nothing, makes her prouder than Shane. Because Shane is not just her child, but a reflection of her—her genetics, her interests, her love of David—and most importantly, her hard work. And she’s especially grateful on that account because it hasn’t always been easy parenting Shane.
Obviously they’d always known he was a little different. As a small child had been very particular about things—foods, routines, smells. He also needed more help in some things than other children. School work had never been an issue, he was nothing if not smart, but the social aspect of it was difficult for him and it made him anxious. She’d spent hours coaching him through potential social interactions, rehearsing what he would say and how he would act, doing her best to impart all the knowledge and understanding she could to ease his transition into the world without her.
He’d also been prone—is still prone—to hyper fixations. Hockey being the primary. Though that was only an issue where other priorities demanded attention. Priorities like schoolwork and learning how to care for himself had at times been a battle. Some would say she also shares his hyper fixation with hockey. Although she disagrees. The truth is, although she loved hockey on a superficial level, the only real hyper fixation she’s ever really had is related to her husband and son and who could blame her for prioritizing her family above all else. Hockey is just something she shares with Shane, and she loves sharing everything with Shane.
Honestly, it’s what any mother would do for her son even if sometimes it is harder than she’d ever expected.
But it’s also been really rewarding because lately he needs her less and he’s been different in a good way—settled and strong. She finally feels like he’s been launched into the world successfully. It’s the goal of every mother and she feels fulfilled, accomplished, and perhaps a little sad. Because now, unfathomable as it may have been when he was a fussy newborn or obstinate toddler, when the days were long and the years short, she finds she sort of misses him needing her.
And maybe, she thinks, it’s more acute because he’s been on a silent retreat so she hasn’t heard from him in over a week and that length of time without some sort of check-in is just too long for her. It makes her restless and uneasy even if it’s not her who has had to be silent (she would be the first to admit she could never do it).
Then again, she also probably feels that way because he’d just spent several weeks with her and David recovering from a hockey related injury. And she gets that that probably is why he wants a break from his parents. He is a full grow adult. He deserves his private time. But to go from so much to nothing at all is just a transition. That’s all. And anyway, she’s not going to bother him. She’d already texted him to let him know she is coming so she won’t shock him. She’s just going to grab an extra phone charger and a couple laundry pods so she doesn’t have to drive an hour to the store that sells the free and clear kind she likes, and then she’ll be on her way out.
And maybe while she’s on her way out, she’ll check for proof of life and give him a little wave. He doesn’t have to say anything or have a conversation with her, but just seeing him with her own eyes—seeing that he’s well and functioning and, you know, alive, well—that will be good for her mother’s heart.
Yuna is pleased to find that the door to Shane’s cottage is unlocked so she doesn’t have to use her key. That’s a good sign that Shane is actually home. Not that she would expect him to be somewhere else. If he said he was having a silent retreat at his cottage then that’s where she would expect him to be. Shane was nothing if not honest. Like every kid, he’d had his moments where he’d attempted to lie, but he’d always had a terrible poker face, especially when it came to her.
Later, when she replays this all in her mind, she’ll also remember that she’d seen an extra pair of shoes by the door, but her brain doesn’t take notice of them now, not when she’s got tasks at hand. She starts with the laundry pods, liberating four of them from the shelf atop the washing machine that is tucked into the mudroom by the garage.
Then she makes her way into the kitchen where she knows Shane keeps an extra phone charger or two in a drawer near the refrigerator. She doesn’t strictly need the phone charger but David had forgotten his at home in Ottawa and they had been sharing hers since they left. It was getting frustrating in the little ways adjusting one’s routine were frustrating so having a second would be nice.
The cottage is quiet except for the soft hum of the refrigerator and the birds outside, but from the kitchen she can see that the television in the living area is on. The title screen to a hockey video game is on the screen.
Yuna feels something like motherly annoyance flare through her. Of course the first thing Shane would do once he was cleared from his concussion protocol would be to spend all his time on a screen. And of course he’s left it on so the logo of the game will burn itself into his television screen.
She moves toward the living room in search of the remote control to turn it off before it ruins his television. She’s just rounded the couch when she hears it, the soft, rhythmic sound of breathing. She looks toward the sound to find Shane asleep on the couch, but it’s not just Shane, it’s Shane with someone. And that doesn’t even adequately describe it. It’s Shane with his arms and legs draped bonelessly over that someone, his face tucked into their neck, their fingers twined into his hair. They’re both fast asleep, mouths slightly agape and only then does it occur to Yuna that this someone Shane is cuddling on the couch is a man… a man who looks suspiciously like Ilya Rozanov.
Yuna cocks her head and squints. Yes, yes, that does look exactly like Ilya Rozanov.
Yuna has never met Ilya Rozanov before. Despite having had a few opportunities over the years, she had never really wanted to meet the man her son had described as “kind of a dick” when they’d first met at 17. Yuna should have disapproved of Shane’s language then, but hockey players, you know. And she guessed Shane was right, the guy probably was kind of a dick. He was certainly a cocky asshole in interviews. And if the rumors on social media were to be believed—quite the womanizer.
Although he doesn’t look like any of that now. Even with his sun-bronzed skin and at least a day’s worth of stubble, asleep under Shane he looks so young and innocent, sweet almost. Nothing at all like his reputation.
It is strange to look at the man she has hated on principle, her son’s archrival for almost 8 years, and find herself feeling a pang of something almost maternal.
Resisting the urge to cover them with a blanket, she does what she’s set out to do. She turns off the television and leaves as quietly as she’d come.
It’s not until Yuna has returned to her own cottage that she realizes she’d forgotten the phone charger. At least the laundry detergent pods are still in her pocket so the trip wasn’t a total bust.
Well that and learning Shane is alive and apparently not alone. That should bring her comfort, she thinks, but right now she’s not sure how to feel about it. A perverse part of her wishes it had occurred to her to take a picture of Shane and Rozanov to analyze later.
She’s not so feeble minded that she’s going to convince herself she has hallucinated the whole thing, but she is an overthinker and with time and distance she wonders if she will start to question her interpretation of what she saw. Because really what did she see? Shane taking a nap. Shane taking a nap with Ilya Rozanov. Hockey players hung out with each other all the time. Hockey players napped all the time. Perhaps not in that specific configuration or during the off season or at Shane’s very private cottage. But really being friendly is normal and naps are normal and what she saw doesn’t necessarily prove anything. It doesn’t prove that Shane is gay or that they are in a relationship. Though it certainly might have looked that way.
Then there is David. David who didn’t see what Yuna saw and is going to have to rely on her description of what she saw with all its weight and nuance. As if she even understood all its weight and nuance.
Because she is going to tell David about what she saw. She’s been married to David for 37 years. They have been parenting Shane for 26 of those years. In that time, she’s never kept something so substantial from him about their son. In fact, it is often David who helps her process things like this, so there’s no way she’s not going to tell him… eventually.
Except what if she hadn’t really seen anything? What if she is making a big deal over nothing?
For several hours, Yuna mulls this over as she putters. Watering plants, checking emails, fluffing throw pillows and even dusting, which she knows is a sign of just how much she’s struggling because she never dusts anything.
David lets her process, waiting until dinner before he confronts her.
“You’re quiet. Did Shane convince you to try a silent retreat too?”
“No,” she says with a chuckle. “I don’t think I could do that.”
And of course David knows this.
“I was going to say…” he starts with an affectionate tone, but trails off in the way he does that signals he would have said the same thing about her, but elected not to so as not to hurt her feelings.
“No. When I went to Shane’s cottage today… I just… I saw something,” Yuna finally tells him. Even during all her puttering, she still hasn’t come up with a good way to tell David about this.
“Did you see Shane? Is he ok?”
David is not an easily alarmed man, but even she can tell she’s concerned him with how she’s started this conversation.
“Yes, I did. He’s fine. Or I think he’s fine. He was napping, though, so I didn’t talk to him.”
“That’s…” David pauses, looking at Yuna with confusion. “Good, right? Sleep is healing and naps are part of his routine.”
“Right,” she agrees, but it’s tight and awkward. “He, um, he wasn’t alone.”
“Oh.”
And then, because she has no other context for how to explain this to David, she pivots.
“Do you remember that Friends episode where the two characters platonically nap together?”
Yuna and David had been devoted Friends watchers when it was on the air in the late 90s and early 00s, although it had always been his show more than hers.
David looks down at his phone and types something into it. “The One with the Nap Partners?”
He holds up his screen to her, showing her an image of Joey and Ross sleeping together on a couch. The photo doesn’t quite capture what she’d seen though. With both characters on their backs and just an arm around each other it’s strategically less intimate... Less gay, her brain supplies unhelpfully.
“Yes, that,” she confirms.
“What about it?”
“Shane was napping with someone.”
“Oh?”
“A man,” she clarifies.
“Oh,” David says again and she would think she’s broken him, but this isn’t that abnormal for him. “Like that?” David asks, motioning toward his phone where the picture is still on the screen.
“Sort of,” Yuna hedges. “But more?”
“More?”
More Ilya Rozanov, Yuna wants to say. Instead she settles on, “more intimate.”
David’s face does something that makes him look alarmed and Yuna realizes he may have come to the incorrect conclusion.
“Don’t worry, they were clothed,” she says.
David nods. He is quiet for a moment while that settles. Where Yuna processes out loud, David tends to be more inwardly reflective.
“Well, we had suspected he might be gay,” he says finally, as if that makes it better or something.
You, Yuna wants to say, you suspected he might be gay. I was the one who pushed him to date a princess and harassed him about why he broke up with Rose Landry.
Although that’s a lie isn’t it. Because the idea of Shane being gay had actually crossed her mind. Of course it had. She knows her son very well and there had been little things from time to time that made her… think. Like that time he cried over the backsplash tile in his condo or the time she caught him staring at the model on a pack of men’s briefs when he was a teenager. Oh she had never seen him blush quite so hard as when he realized she’d caught him staring.
But although David had quietly accepted their son for what he was or might be or might turn out to be, Shane had given her just enough plausible deniability to allow her to live in some sort of fantasy world about his sexuality and she had accepted it greedily, not wanting to look closer.
And so there had been the Rose Landry and European princess and apparently her denial. All quietly sidestepped by Shane. And now all quietly dissipating like they were figments of some reality that never was.