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Shane had just been trying to escape the celebration going on inside when he ran into Rozanov’s mother smoking.
He’d immediately apologized and tried to turn right back around. But she’d called his name—his full name, of course—and started to chat with him.
And, unexpectedly, it’s nice. She’s nice.
“What was her name?” Irina asks.
He can feel his phone buzzing incessantly in his suit pocket, but he doesn’t dare check it now.
Shane answers, “Yuna.”
“Yuna,” she repeats. “Very pretty. And she looked like you?”
“Uh, yeah. Everyone tells me we look alike, anyway.” Shane shrugs.
“And she had, ah…” She says something in Russian then points across her own nose. “This too?”
“Oh. Yeah. She had my—I mean, I have her freckles.”
“Ah, so a pretty name for a pretty face.” Irina smiles charmingly.
“Yeah,” Shane agrees and can’t help smiling back. “She was beautiful, actually.”
Then the words start to come surprisingly easily.
“—she never saw me play hockey past age eight, but she had all these letters and gifts ready for me, like she knew I’d make it to the MLH.”
Shane huffs a tremulous laugh.
“Do you think—” He blinks and swallows around the lump in his throat. “Do you think she knew?”
He has no idea what he’s actually asking—about hockey or mourning her or maybe…maybe that small, secret shame he has yet to even acknowledge to himself.
He startles when Irina steps close enough to extend a gentle hand to his face, thumb wiping at his wet cheek. He’s crying.
“She’s your mama,” she states with a mother’s conviction, her other hand reaching for a necklace that isn’t there. “She knew. We know our children.”
Her palm against his cheek feels familiar. But he can’t be sure. He only has fragments of faded memories he’s scared are really just figments of his imagination.
She wouldn’t smell of cigarettes. Her comforting words wouldn’t be in Russian. She would tell him he was her son and that she was proud and loved him no matter what—
No. She wouldn’t. Not if she knew.
But Shane closes his eyes and allows himself to lean into it, anyway. His dreams of a mother’s acceptance. Just this time.