“Do not encourage this, Gerald! Ryan does not need this kind of drama in his life.”

I scrub my hand over my face. This call has been going for a good ten minutes. My whole family is on the call, so it’s a lot of loud voices and opinions being shouted at me. It’s giving me a headache. “Can you all stop talking over each other, please? And I think I get to decide how much drama I need in my life, Mom.” Despite her being my grandmother biologically, she’s still Mom to me. I can’t unlearn that. And unless it’s a private conversation, I still refer to my momster as Hanna.

“How well do you really know this girl? She’s still legally married to another man. You can’t continue to date her,” Mom replies.

That gets a few coughs and some muttered agreement.

“I respect your opinion, and your concerns, but that’s not a choice you can dictate for me.” Although I will admit it’s a bit of a mind-bender to find out that I’ve been sleeping with a married woman, regardless of whether or not that marriage should have been dissolved more than half a decade ago. It’s bringing up a lot of conflicting emotions, like guilt and anger, and in some ways it feels like another betrayal.

“Where is your head, Ryan?” Mom snaps. I can envision her, sitting at the kitchen island with the glass bowl full of fake fruit in front of her.

“She must be a wild one in the bedroom if you’re willing to take on this kind of press.” I bet a million dollars my brother is smirking. He’s also not wrong, but it’s about a lot more than how compatible we are between the sheets.

“Gerald Joseph Kingston, that is not appropriate,” Mom chastises.

“But it’s probably true,” says Gerald. He’s ten years my senior and acts like he’s still seventeen.

Mom decides to ignore that comment. “I understand that maybe you needed to sow your oats, Ryan, and now that you’ve done that, I think you should consider getting back together with Jessica. I know you went through a rough patch, but it’s clear she still cares about you.”

“We’re not having a discussion about my relationship with Jessica right now, Mom.”

“But you have years together. She’s already like a daughter to me. Have you spoken to her?”

“Not recently.” And I don’t plan to, either, but telling my mother that is like telling a religious fanatic that their belief system is flawed: pointless and asking for trouble.

“Well, I saw her last week, and she asked how you were doing. I told her you would come to your senses soon enough. You don’t want to wait too long, or she’ll move on and find someone else. I would hate for her to settle, or for you to do the same.”

“This isn’t about settling.” I pinch the bridge of my nose, frustrated and trying not to go off on her. My head is a mess over this, and I can see the damage Queenie’s mother did to her self-esteem and self-perception by constantly telling her she wasn’t ever going to amount to anything. I’m beginning to understand Queenie better, and this situation gives me a much clearer picture of why she’s so damn hard on herself. It also makes me wonder what it’s going to take for her to get past that, and if she even can, considering she’s spent the past six years hiding this mistake from the people who are most important to her.

“I think we should come up to visit earlier than planned. We need to deal with this as a family,” she declares.

That statement is followed by Gerald saying he might have trouble getting the time off work.

“Maybe it would be better if we put a hold on the family visit,” I counter. While this conversation is taking place, I have private messages coming in from Hanna, who is also on the call but has remained silent for the most part, other than occasionally telling Gerald to can it.

“I don’t think that’s a good plan at all. If anything, we need to come out there now more than ever. You need the emotional support.”

“That’s not a good idea. I’m not in the headspace for a family intervention.” I just found out my girlfriend is married to a complete jerk. Yes, it’s a technicality, and in some ways I can understand why she didn’t say anything about it, but this isn’t something I’m going to get over in five minutes like everyone probably expects me to. The last thing I need is my family thrown into the mix, giving their opinions while I’m still trying to form mine.

“Which is precisely why you probably need one,” Mom says.

“Look, I appreciate that you’re concerned, and likely shocked, but dropping everything to come out here is not reasonable. I need time to deal with this. Besides, I’m leaving for away games, so you coming out here is pointless.”

“Okay. Fine. But we’re still coming at the end of next week,” Mom concedes.

“Okay. It’s been a long day; I need some sleep. I’ll talk to you all tomorrow.”

It’s a chorus of good nights and I love yous before I end the call. Three seconds later my screen lights up again. This time it’s just Hanna. I accept the video-chat request, and her face pops up on the screen.

“You handled that well,” she says.

“Thanks.”

“How are you really doing?”

“Honestly? I have no idea.”

“Do you want to go through what exactly happened without all the color commentary? That way I can get a better picture of what you’re facing.”

“Yeah. Okay.” I give her the full rundown of the day—well, mostly the full rundown, minus any private moments. “You know, I can appreciate why she didn’t want to say anything to me before I got on the ice tonight. I can even understand why she lied and said Corey didn’t corner her when obviously he did, but she could’ve told me the actual truth about their relationship when he first joined the team. It was an intentional omission, and technically that’s not a lie, but it’s certainly a choice, and it feels a lot like the same thing.”

“Okay, I can see your point, but I want you to put yourself in her shoes.”

“I would never do something like that.”

“Lie by omission? I’m pretty sure you just did that when you told our family you’re okay, since you’re clearly not.”

“This isn’t the same thing at all, and I mean I wouldn’t have gotten married at eighteen and then hid it from everyone.”

“Well, of course not, King. Look at how you were raised. There was a lot of negative role modeling going on. I love Mom and Dad, but you were an easy kid, and you toed the line because you didn’t like getting in trouble and you didn’t want to end up in the same situations as your brother. Uncle. Whatever. They used fear to keep you in line, and it worked. Guess who it didn’t work for?”

“You and Gerald.” I push up off the couch and take my phone with me to the kitchen. I could use a drink.

“Exactly. I mean, Gerald got caught growing pot plants in Mom’s garden, and how many times did he and our cousin Billy get caught drinking underage?”

“I can’t remember. I was pretty young.”

“The point is, you have always been a rule follower, and that’s worked well for you, except now it’s not because you’re sitting in a very gray area. It’s easy to say she lied by omission, but would you really want to tell her that you’d been married at eighteen, for what was supposed to be all of a handful of weeks, filing fee notwithstanding?”

“Well, no, but—”

“But what, then?” She doesn’t let me finish, though. “You’ve had a rough year, between ending things with Jessica and finding out that I’m your mother, Ry. It makes sense that you’re hypersensitive to omissions, because we all lied to you for three decades. I’m partly responsible for that. But then so is everyone else, our parents included.”

“Yeah, that might be part of why I’m struggling,” I admit as I pour myself a glass of milk, then pause when I see the bottles of vodka and coffee liqueur in the door of the fridge. Queenie brought them over the second time she slept here, and sometimes she’ll make me a white russian to help me “loosen my reins.” I don’t know what the milk-to-alcohol ratio is, but I’m sure it’s not that hard.

“What in the world are you doing?”

“Making myself a white russian.”

“Wow, you must be stressed if you’re drinking.”

“Queenie was supposed to stay over tonight. Neither of us have to be up early, and she usually makes me one of these on occasions like this, except now she’s dealing with her dad and I’m—”

“Talking to your momster on video chat, trying to make yourself an alcoholic beverage.”

“Yeah.” There’s a shaker thing in my cupboards somewhere, but I don’t feel like looking for it. I pour some vodka and some coffee liqueur into my pint glass and stir it up with a spoon. It looks like chocolate milk, but it’s not frothy, and there’s no ice. I take a sip. It’s not half as good as the ones Queenie makes for me, but I can suffer through it. “You know, I think with a little time I can get over this whole thing, but I’m not sure about Queenie.”