“So tell me how it all started, and why.” The interviewer turned on his tape recorder and sat back, looking expectedly at the individuals sitting across from him on the other side of his mahogany desk.
“Why?” Autumn raised her eyebrows, “You mean, why do things like this, happen to innocent people?”
Jacob looked down at this hands. Oliver seemed to be staring off into space.
“Well...” she glanced at Nathalie, whose hands were folded neatly over her pregnant belly, “I suppose because...like us, they were looking for a way out.”
-
It was peculiar when she received the letter, and even stranger still when David got one as well. But Nathalie decided not to let it bother her. After all it was a great opportunity, however strange it was presented.
As a reporter, Nathalie was usually not working with her boyfriend of four years, but rather with a different team. Up until she had started dating David, she had worked for Skelleftea AIK, and then transferred to a different club in Stockholm so as not to mix her personal life with her work. David was understanding.
It was there she met Autumn, a young medic who also received a letter that day. Autumn was the younger sister of Canadian superstar Jordan Eberle, and tired of living in her brother’s shadow, she decided to work overseas. She struck up a good friendship with Nathalie and David, which became especially important to her after her short romance that resulted in an unplanned pregnancy, derailed so suddenly. Autumn was just thankful she was given joint custody of her daughter, Emma, now four years old.
Jacob was different. He hadn’t had a long-term relationship or any children, but he sometimes wished he had. It was lonely, since losing his parents in a housefire years earlier, and a sister to suicide shortly afterward. His brother had moved to Spain to play professional football, and there was Jake, alone for the summer, unsure of himself or his future. That is why he jumped at the opportunity for a change when the letter arrived.
Oliver was fortunate enough to still have his brother and sister, although he missed his parents terribly. His father, who had taught him everything he knew about the game of hockey, had died of cancer when Oliver was just sixteen. His wife, overcome with grief, died of a broken heart two years later. Neither of his parents saw him drafted or even play his first NHL game. To hide his shyness and ever-growing sensitivity, Oliver obsessed over fitness and hockey. The letter was an open door to him.
Tim hated his home life. Foster home after foster home had showed him that being an orphan was one of the worst things to happen to a child. Everywhere he went, though – “that’s Jan Erixon’s son, you know!” – and Tim would just grimace. Jan the alcoholic, he thought. His father couldn’t handle losing his wife during childbirth, and to Tim’s stillborn brother, of all things. So he drank himself to death, left his son next to nothing, and the ambition to change the family name forever in the sport. The mere thought of training somewhere different for the summer made Tim excited the second he tore open his letter that very morning.
Perhaps that was why they were chosen, or maybe it was just because they were so close without even knowing it. Maybe it was exactly what they needed, not just at the time, but for all reason in the world. At the same time, when bad things happen to good people, it’s curious as to if we really do choose our
