Roz didn't understand why her mother, who had, until that moment, always supported her at everything she had ever pursued – she had cheered her on through dance classes and spelling bees and basketball and more – but suddenly backed away when she announced her desire to pursue hockey. It was just another school sport, and her friend Sawyer had played on teams almost since he could stand, and she thought it was fun. She had a knack for it, like she had a knack for just about anything she tried. But her mother was oddly resistant to the idea, asking the heavens why the child could not take an interest in something less vile, like cheerleading, which was quite a statement considering how much she scowled at cheerleaders.

11-year-old Roz stood in the living room, wearing a Maple Leafs jersey, with the junior league hockey permission slip in her hand. "Please, Mom, please!" she pleaded, just as she had done the year before.

"No. Absolutely not."

"Alex, this is ridiculous. I don't know what you have against hockey, but you shouldn't let your hang-ups keep Roz from doing what she wants to do. The coach said she shows great promise."

"Considering you already took her to tryouts without my permission, you probably shouldn't be trying harder to get on my bad side."

"I'm doing this for Roz. You should too."

"Hockey is expensive and violent. You should be happy enough with field hockey at school. Join the Degrassi team when you're old enough."

"It's not the same," said the girl, frustrated that her mother was again not budging.

"What is this really about?" asked Gina, who knew very well when Alex was hiding something.

"It's about me not liking something. Why can't I have one thing that I am one hundred percent opposed to? Where's the crime in that?"

Gina did not back down. She was fighting for Roz. "You need to deal with this for Roz's sake."

Alex took one look at her. "I will never – never – be ok with my daughter playing that sport!" she said in a voice that terrified both her wife and daughter, and then she turned on her heal and fled the house.

When she returned that evening, Gina told her the deed was done. She had signed Roz up for the team and taken her out to shop for supplies before treating her to a special dinner.

Alex opened her mouth to protest, but Gina shut her down immediately. "She needs this. I don't care how much it costs. I'll find a way. And you are going to keep your opinions to yourself about the matter. You don't like it, fine. But I am done with you attacking Roz for something she enjoys."

Alex never spoke on the subject again. Gina became the hockey mom, dutifully taking the girl to practices and being her biggest fan at games.

With the subject now verboten, a strange black hole appeared in the middle of their relationship, a wedge that would eventually lead the preteen girl to start thinking that Alex wasn't her mother. One year later, while snooping through a box of her mother's old things, she finally stumbled across a picture of her mother as a teenager, standing with a girl who looked eerily like herself. She wanted to know who the girl was, but knew better than to ask either of her moms. She asked her Uncle Jay instead, and he sized her up before telling her anything.

"That's Paige," he said simply.

She had heard him use the name before in reference to her, but only at times when she was not supposed to be awake. She stared at the picture as she debated whether she should ask him more.

"Kid," he said, putting down his beer and looking her straight in the eye, "There are things you really should leave behind. That's one of them. You go put that picture back wherever you found it, and forget you ever saw it. You ask your mom about that one and you'll regret it."

She did not put it back, of course. In time, she reasoned that Alex probably was not her mom after all, that Paige had given birth to her, and handed her over to Alex, and perhaps left them with nothing. Perhaps Paige had abandoned her, making her mother resentful. Hockey was in the Michalchuk blood, and so she couldn't bear to be reminded that Roz was not her own. It was the best she could guess. But when she sneakily asked her mother what it was like being pregnant with her, Alex always had a lot to say, though she didn't have a single picture to prove it.

Roz needed answers, and as soon as she saw the invitation to the Degrassi 15th reunion sitting on the dining room table, she knew she was going to have to talk to the one and only Paige Michalchuk.