Can't believe I remembered the password for this account. Wild. Anyway, here's this, and I just want to warn you right off the jump here that there's no hockey players in this story until Chapter 3, and I'm very sorry about that. After that point it's basically a boy festival in here, I swear. Okay, here we go.

Chapter 1 - July 22 - 24, 1979

It was just starting to rain in Everett, Washington as Sandy Benton loaded another full box into the trunk of her car. She looked up at the sky and let out a groan, looking over at the few remaining boxes that had been left out on the front walk, feet away from the shelter of Ray's covered porch. Ray himself sat on the edge of the top step, sipping a steaming cup of coffee. Sandy stared at him across the yard. "So, your plan is to not help at all?"

Ray shrugged and said nothing.

Sandy slammed the trunk shut and sprinted back across the lawn to where the boxes were. "Nice to see you taking the high road. I thought you were the adult here," she huffed at him, hefting another box into her arms and moving as quickly as she could back over to the car. She set it down on the grass and pulled open the rear door.

Ray was suddenly behind her, holding the final two boxes in his arms. "Just—just move," he said. Sandy stepped aside and Ray shoved both boxes across the back seat, against the door on the other side. He easily picked up the box Sandy had set on the wet grass and slid it in as well. "Maybe if you didn't make such a production out of moving these out here it wouldn't have taken you an hour and a half. You knew it was gonna rain."

Sandy glared at him. "I'm making a production out of it because they're heavy, Ray. And you don't have to stand out here and watch me like a smug asshole if you don't want to help."

Ray threw his hands up. "Why should I help you move out? I don't want you to move out. I didn't really get a say in whether or not you would—" He stopped talking abruptly as their neighbour, Paul, suddenly left his house.

"Mornin' Ray, mornin' Sandy," the jovial old man said, lifting a coffee cup up in greeting.

"Good morning," Ray said, and Sandy waved, begrudgingly.

Paul ducked his head, squinting up at the sky. "Looks like a good day to be inside, huh?"

"Tell that to this one," Ray replied, jerking his thumb in Sandy's direction. She elbowed him.

Paul, noticing Ray taking an angry step away from Sandy, wisely retreated back into his house. The neighbours didn't know about Sandy moving out. She supposed that the spectacle of them fighting out on the front lawn while hauling boxes to Sandy's car at 6:30 in the morning was a fairly damning clue, but Ray hadn't mentioned anything to anyone, a fact for which Sandy was grateful. The neighbourhood was made up of mostly retirement-aged people who had been fascinated by the idea of Sandy and Ray's relationship since she had moved in a year and a half earlier. Sandy had noticed that the age difference between herself and Ray had been disproportionately interesting to them, having heard the judgmental edge to their voices when they asked her what her future plans were, and oh isn't it nice for you to just be able to stay home while Ray goes off to work. Ray had warned her to be tolerant, to not worry about what gossipy older women thought, but this was a tall order.

Once Paul was safely out of earshot, Ray rounded on Sandy again. "Don't hit me," he hissed. "Who's not being an adult now?"

Sandy pointed at herself. "Me. It's me. You decided to make this ugly and—and urgent. It didn't need to be like this. Just be aware of that when you go back in there by yourself." The rain had gradually started coming down harder, and she swiped at her forehead to get her bangs out of her eyes.

When it had been decided that Sandy and Ray would no longer be together (a decision that Sandy had made on her own), Ray had retaliated by telling her that she had a week to move out of the house, knowing that she had no where to go. This had, Sandy imagined, been a tactic to try and make her reconsider and ultimately stay, but it had backfired and Sandy had packed up her things in two days. She could have done it faster, but there had been considerable time wasted on fighting with Ray. With no concrete plan in place, she had phoned her brother, her very last resort.

Ray gaped at her. "I didn't think you'd decide to disappear to Minnesota. I thought you'd go stay with your parents. I thought I'd have some more time to change your mind. You know, if you decided right now to come back inside, I'd—"

"I can't do that," Sandy said, shaking her head. "And don't talk nonsense. You know I'm not going to go back to my parents after everything they did. I don't have a choice. I can't get a job here on this short notice. I'm not educated and I'm not skilled at anything. My only job experience is with my dad, and I don't think he's giving me a good reference, Ray. I need to get away from here."

As she spoke, Ray listened to her with a sad expression on his face. "I wish you'd just stay and think about this a little while longer."

She shook her head again. "I can't, because then I'd change my mind. And I really think this is the right thing to do." She closed the rear door of the car and took a step closer to him. He stepped backwards and away from her, onto the lawn. "You know I'm sorry, right?"

Ray folded his arms and nodded. "Yeah, I know. And I'm sorry I scared you off. I'm sorry you feel like you have to go to fuckin' Minnesota to get away from me."

Sandy covered her face and laughed, partly to cover up the tears that had sprung to her eyes. When she uncovered them, she saw that Ray also had his face in his hands. "Will you be okay?" she asked.

He sniffed and exhaled loudly, dropping his arms to his sides. "Nope," he said. "But don't worry about it. You'd better get going—you've got a long drive ahead of you."

Sandy gazed over his shoulder at the house, the ranch-style home that Ray had already lived in for nearly ten years when she met him. This had been her home for what seemed like a lot longer than it had actually been. Her life with Ray was what felt normal, and she felt an overwhelming sense of inertia holding her in place on the sidewalk. After a long moment, the silence punctuated by the sound of rain hitting pavement, she took another step closer to Ray, and this time he didn't move. "Can I get a hug before I go?"

Ray swung his hands up, clapped them together, and then spread his arms. "Bring it in here." He wrapped his arms around Sandy and squeezed her like he was trying to incorporate her into his body. She would normally have complained about not being able to breathe, but Sandy was too preoccupied with trying to memorize the way Ray smelled at that moment, a combination of the early morning coffee he had been drinking on the porch and laundry detergent. "Please drive safe," he said into her hair. Then he patted her twice on the back and released her.

She backed up against the car. "Bye, Ray."

"You be good, kiddo."

Sandy got into the car and pulled out onto the street, glancing every few seconds into the rear view mirror at Ray standing on the lawn. He was still out there when she turned the corner.

The drive from Ray's house on the outskirts of Everett to Burnsville, where Sandy's older brother Will (who was a medical student at the University of Minnesota) lived with his wife Jenny (who taught the fifth grade at an elementary school in Burnsville) was a roughly thirty hour slog that Sandy was dreading with every fibre of her being. She had been tempted to just pack a suitcase, dump everything non-essential in a heap on her parents' front step, and fly out, but Will had mentioned needing a replacement car after theirs had died earlier in the summer. "We'll call it even on rent for a few months if we can split use of your car," he had said, ever the negotiator. And so driving it was.

It took almost three days for Sandy to make the trip. Her original plan had been to separate the distance into two days of straight driving, but just how unrealistic that really was set in after about five hours alone in the car. She had travelled before with her family, but those had been trips to the beach, with conversation, little games, and puzzles to entertain her in the back seat. Now, Sandy had no one's company but her own, and she found her thoughts, combined with the monotony of the highway and the radio, exhausting. The result of this was that Sandy had to stop to sleep twice—once in Billings, Montana (she stayed in a cheap and slightly seedy motel on the outskirts of the city where she turned up the volume on old episodes of M*A*S*H to drown out the sounds of the traffic flying by and people talking loudly in the parking lot), and once in Fargo, North Dakota. Her amended plan was to make the rest of the drive after Billings in one day, but this plan was further amended by Sandy falling asleep at the wheel and swerving momentarily into oncoming traffic. She pulled into a truck stop in the early afternoon.

Sandy put some gas in her long-suffering car and went inside the convenience store, where she bought some coffee in a flimsy paper cup. She couldn't help but feel as if the elderly woman working at the store was giving her a sympathetic look as she paid. When Sandy caught a glimpse of herself in the glass door as she was leaving, she understood why, seeing herself looking gaunt and possibly dead.

She called Will from the payphone outside of the store to tell him where she was. "Fargo? That's, what, another four hours from here?" he asked.

"I think so. I might have a nap here to bring myself back to life a little bit, but I'll definitely be there tonight."

She heard Will breathe a sigh of relief. "Good. That's good. I've been worried about you out on the road for this long. Have there been any issues getting gas?"

"Not really," Sandy said. "There's been lines and there's really nothing in the small towns, but I've been topping up in the cities, like you and Ray told me to do." She stumbled a little on the normalcy of saying Ray's name.

If Will had noticed, he made no indication of it. "Good to hear. Anyway, you just take your time heading out and we'll leave the back door unlocked for you when you get here."

Sandy rested her head against the hard plastic of the payphone's box. "Okay. Thanks for letting me come out there, Will. It really means a lot."

Will was quiet for a moment. "Yeah, I know. It'll be good to have you here. Jenny's excited to have you around. I am too."

They hung up a moment later, and Sandy returned to her car and sat, slightly reclined, in her driver's seat. "Just an hour," she said to herself. "Just sit and watch the traffic for an hour and you'll feel better. Drink your coffee. It'll be okay."

When she awoke several hours later to the sound of the woman from the convenience store knocking on her window, it was dark outside and her coffee was ice cold. "Miss?" she was saying. "Miss, are you all right?"

She wasn't. But Sandy went inside, bought a replacement coffee, and closed the final, two-hundred and fifty mile distance between Fargo and her final destination of Burnsville, a suburb community with the lights of Minneapolis shining distantly to the north. It was nearly three in the morning as she pulled onto Will's street. She parked the car with a sense of finality, leaned her head back against the headrest, and looked over at the house. It was a one-storey bungalow with plain white siding and large windows. She'd only seen it in pictures that Will had mailed to her. The last time she'd been to Minnesota, he and Jenny were living in a sad rental in a bad neighborhood in Minneapolis. Sandy hadn't seen Will in about a year and a half, since the last time they'd all been together at their parents' place. They'd talked on the phone every so often, but those conversations mostly comprised of small talk where Sandy felt like Will tried to extract details about how Sandy was doing for their mother. The seven years of age difference between Will and Sandy meant that the two of them had never really had much in common. The warmest Sandy had felt about her brother was when he sent her a card with fifty dollars stuffed into it when she graduated high school and signed it with love.

Sandy left all her things in the car, thinking it didn't make much sense to haul everything in at this time of night. As per Will's instructions, she went around the house, let herself in through the back door and found herself in the kitchen. The house was dark and completely silent, which wasn't surprising considering the hour. What did surprise Sandy was how tired she suddenly was. She crossed into the living room to the couch and flopped down on it. Sandy was sleeping before she was able to register that she had landed on a mess of papers and books. It was the most comfortable bed she'd ever slept on.

"... and I'm going to need that book later tonight, Jay. What am I supposed to do?"

"You don't need anything. It's July, take a summer break. Let's just leave her for the night—she's exhausted."

"Do you think we can get her shoes off without her waking up?"

"Will, I said just leave her alone."

Awakened by the sound of voices, Sandy raised her head from the couch, a sheet of paper sticking to her cheek. Jenny and Will were hovering nearby, staring down at her. "Hi," Will said.

Sandy pushed herself up into a sitting position, rubbing her eyes. "Hi. Sorry, I didn't mean to lay down on all your stuff," she said. "What time is it?"

Jenny grabbed Will's wrist and looked at his watch. "It's about ten. You've been out all day."

"Ten? Ten at night?" They nodded, and Sandy looked out the front window, alarmed. It was dark outside again. She did the math quickly in her head. "I was asleep for eighteen hours?"

Will nodded. "Yeah. We thought maybe you'd sleep all the way through the night. You kind of scared the hell out of us when we came out here this morning—we didn't hear you come in. What time did you get here?"

"Late. I fell asleep for a while in North Dakota and that slowed me down a little. I—" she paused, noticing stacks of boxes lining the hallway behind them. "Is that all from my car?"

Will glanced back over his shoulder. "We figured we'd better take it all out of there and save you the trouble. You just dropped your keys near the door. Are you sure that's all there was?"

Sandy nodded. "Thanks, guys." She stood up and stretched, feeling intense stiffness in her back and knees from sitting in the car for so long. "I think it's safe to say I'm staying here for the rest of my life. I never want to make that drive, ever again."

Jenny laughed, but Will was looking over at Sandy with concern. "Are you hungry?" he asked. "We made dinner a while ago and there's a plate for you."

At his words, Sandy realized that she was starving. "That sounds great," she said. Will disappeared into the kitchen and she heard him put something into the microwave. Jenny moved to clear up the papers and books on the couch, and Sandy crossed the room to the window and peered out at the street, feeling like she'd skipped a day of her life.

"You know," Will called from the kitchen, "I called Mom this morning and told her you made it here all right, and she said she had no idea you were driving out. Do you want to talk about that at all?"

Sandy frowned at Jenny, who shrugged and rolled her eyes. "Not really. I didn't think they'd care."

Will poked his head around the corner and narrowed his eyes at her. "Don't be dramatic. Of course they care. They're our parents."

"They're your parents," Sandy said.

"Come on, don't be—"

"Don't tell me not to be dramatic," she interrupted him. "They said some pretty awful things when they could have tried to be supportive, and so I don't really have anything to say to them."

Will and Jenny exchanged a look. "Well," Will said, "that'll probably be a little awkward when they fly out for a week at the end of October. But I guess we'll deal with that then. What?" he burst out, seeing the sour expression on Sandy's face. "I can't have a good relationship with my parents just because you don't?"

Sandy folded her arms. "No, you can. You can do whatever you want. I'll figure something out. Do we really have to talk about this right now?"

"Of course we don't," Jenny said, flapping her hands at Will to make him return to the kitchen as the microwave beeped. "Don't worry about it," she muttered, and then straightened up and clapped her hands together. "Okay, anyway, why don't I show you where you're sleeping?"

Jenny took Sandy down the hallway to what she described as the larger of the two free bedrooms. "We already had a spare bed, and I was able to cobble together some furniture from some people I work with on short notice," Jenny explained, gesturing at a dresser with chipped blue paint and a nightstand covered in pale green. "They don't really match, and they came from kids' bedrooms. I hope you don't mind."

"No, it's great, thanks," Sandy said. "I was kind of worried about that—I don't really own any furniture."

"Well, there's a closet too," Jenny told her, pointing to it. "We put some hangers in it and everything. I hope we didn't forget anything but—well, if we did, just let us know." She smiled warmly at Sandy, put her hand on her shoulder and shook it slightly. "Don't let Will bug you. It's just his way of letting you know that he cares."

Sandy shrugged. "I'm kind of used to my family's special brand of love." She heard, in her head, Will's voice telling her not to be dramatic again, and added, "I know he means well."

Jenny let out a sigh. "He does his best. I'm hoping having you here will be good for him. He needs a little perspective, I think. But he really is glad that you're here, Sandy. So am I."

Sandy had heard some form of this sentiment from the two of them almost constantly since it was decided that she would stay with them, but she was grateful to hear it. She felt like they were overcompensating for what her parents lacked, and while she felt a little uncomfortable about that, she was glad that someone was trying. Sandy had never really been close with Jenny. She was the same age as Will, and had been a part of Sandy's life since she was a kid, but Jenny had always seemed to inhabit a much more adult space. But now, standing in the empty bedroom with her, Sandy was glad that Jenny was there to be a buffer between herself and Will. "Thanks," Sandy said. "I'm happy to be here, too." She let herself be pulled into a hug. She relaxed for what seemed like the first time since she left Washington, and felt Jenny's shoulders shaking. "Are—are you—?"

Jenny broke away, wiping her eyes. "Yeah, I'm okay. Sorry. I was just—"

"Sandy, your food is getting cold!" Will's voice rang out from the kitchen, making them both jump. Jenny smiled at Sandy, put her finger to her lips and disappeared into the hallway, leaving Sandy mystified.

Once Sandy had finished eating, Will and Jenny went to bed, leaving Sandy to start unpacking her things. She dug through the boxes and pulled out her track shoes, the tattered Brooks trainers she'd kept after high school with the intention to start running again. Sandy had been pursued, albeit gently, by college reps during her senior year for track, but they had all been scared away by her lack of discipline. She had been offended by this at the time, but, looking at the layer of dust on the shoes, Sandy had to agree. She set them near the door of the bedroom, thinking that there was no better time to try and get back into shape than immediately after moving to a new state where she knew no one.

She put clothes away into the closet and dresser for a half an hour before she happened upon one of Ray's shirts that she figured she must have packed by mistake.

She sat down on the bed, cradling the shirt in her hands. It was just a plain black t-shirt with a hole in the left shoulder, but to Sandy it might as well have been an album full of photographs. She could remember, suddenly, dozens of memories in which Ray wore this shirt. She remembered a hiking trip at Mt. Ranier, when Ray insisted on carrying both of their backpacks up the trail but had to sit down every five minutes because it was all too heavy. It was a hazy, faded memory, but Sandy was fairly sure that Ray had been wearing this exact black shirt that day. She suddenly felt very homesick.

Sandy continued to sit there, feeling an intense emotional connection with a plain black t-shirt for a while. Eventually, she looked over at the clock on the nightstand and saw that it was nearly midnight. It was still relatively early in Everett. Ray would probably still be awake. Sandy stood up abruptly, dropping the shirt on the carpet. "Stop it," she said, out loud, to herself. What was the point of continuing to hold on? You made your choice, Sandy thought. You drove all the way out here. This was the right move. And if not... well, you're here.

The lights were off in the house when Sandy came out of her room, carrying the shirt with her, but this time she knew where she was going in the dark. She opened the side door and hurried around the porch to where the trash cans were. She lifted the lid off one, dropped the shirt inside, and went back into the house.

And later, just before Sandy was about to drop off to sleep, she suddenly remembered that Ray had been wearing a plaid shirt on the day they went hiking.