Chasing Cities

After

~Anja's POV~

As much as I wish I could have, I wasn't able to visit my best friend and our daughter as often as I wanted to visit them. There are strict rules on visitation in the afterlife, which is why ghost sightings are popular but still fairly uncommon.

I was able to visit about two times a year, and I saved those visits either for birthdays or very special events in the lives of the two people who made two of the biggest impacts on me in my life.

When Tuukka got injured in 2020 and was forced to retire in 2022 because his body gave up on him, I visited. I sat with him in the locker room as he cried after his press conference. He didn't want to retire at thirty-five and was furious at his body for refusing to function properly, so I just appeared to him and let him vent all of his frustration to me.

"Look on the bright side," I said, wishing that I had a human body again just so I could let him lean on my shoulder for comfort. "You'll have way more time to spend with Sinikka now that you won't be traveling all over the place nine months per year. She's almost sixteen years old now, and she'll be an adult before you know it. You should spend time with her before she moves out and starts her own independent life."

Tuukka wiped the tears from his face, and I knew from the look on his face that he was thinking about what I said.

"You're right," he said, his hazel-gray eyes filled with emotion. "I only have two years until she is an adult, and she is the only child that I have. I want to spend some time with her before she leaves me."

"I think she'll be just like you one day," I predicted. "I raised her for eleven years, and starting from the age of two, she was passionate about goaltending. I know she gets that from her father, and I think she'll follow in your footsteps and go into the NHL as soon as she is of age."

"I wouldn't doubt it," Tuukka smiled proudly. "There will be scouts for different professional junior leagues at some of her upcoming games."

This piqued my interest, and I promised myself that I would ask how scouting went when I visited for Sinikka's sixteenth birthday two and a half weeks later.

When March 27 came, I visited again. Since I wanted to spend time with just my family, this was after all the party guests were gone.

I had not forgotten the promise I made to myself a few weeks earlier. As I asked the question, I looked up at the large picture above the TV in the living room. It was Sinikka in her goalie gear, RASK and the number 40 on the back of her jersey, standing next to her father as the national anthem of the United States was played and sung before a Boston Bruins game. I supposed that she was there in gear for a special young hockey players' night promotion or something like that.

Whatever the context of the picture was, it gave me one feeling: pride. My daughter was growing up to be a star like her father, just like I always knew she would. He was clearly her inspiration—she played like him, wore the same number as he did, and had a temper just as fiery as his.

And Tuukka? Well, he was aware of this too, and the fact that he cheered her on every step of the way and encouraged her just warmed my heart. He truly loved his only child, and every time he had to opportunity to prove that to her, he did.

Maybe that's why he couldn't resist smiling so big and hugging Sinikka tightly when she revealed to me that she was being honestly considered by many scouts for several different professional junior leagues. Once he pulled away, I could see that he was silently crying.

"I know," Sinikka said as her father wiped the tears from his eyes. "It's big news. I'm going to try extra hard to play well in order to be drafted by a team in one of these leagues."

"You should always work hard, even if you're not competing for anything," I told her. "A consistent goalie is the most trustworthy and most successful type of goalie."

"And accept that you won't always get what you want," Tuukka added. "You will make mistakes and let in embarrassing goals, and you will lose some games. If I hadn't accepted the fact that things wouldn't always go my way, I would have retired after losing my first Stanley Cup at the age of 26. Hell, I would have probably retired after losing that embarrassing playoff series to the Flyers in 2010!"

"And if you had done that, you wouldn't have won the championship along with the rest of the Bruins just one year later," I reminded him. He agreed, but not before insisting that his one championship wasn't technically his because he was a backup at the time. I just rolled my eyes.

A few months after this meeting, Sinikka was drafted by the Youngstown Phantoms of the USHL and went to live in Ohio. Tuukka was sad to have to be separated from his only child, but he supported her as she moved on to the next step in her hockey career.

Her two years on the Youngstown Phantoms helped her tremendously, and she was selected third overall by the Boston Bruins in the 2024 NHL Entry Draft. She became the new highest-drafted female NHL player, narrowly defeating Grace Michaud, the fifth overall pick from 2022. In addition to being tremendously proud of his daughter for being drafted higher than most goaltenders could ever dream of being drafted, Tuukka was overjoyed that Sinikka would be part of the team of which he was an alumnus. Even better, she would be a goaltender, just like him. She was making him so proud.

Recently, Sinikka married Phillip Garneau, a goaltender for the Montréal Canadiens who she had been dating since she was 16. Many fans spoke of this interesting union between two members of teams that had been rivals for a hundred years. I just smiled and wiped tears from my cheeks as my little girl grew up right before my very eyes.

She has changed so much since I moved on to the afterlife ten years ago. She went from a little girl who was forced to face the cruel reality of life when her mother died to a woman who could take on any challenge that life throws at her. She went from a pipsqueak of a goalie who could barely fit into a gear to a tall, agile goaltender who can stop almost any shot she faces, even as a rookie.

But no matter how much she accomplished in life or how much she changes, Sinikka will always be my daughter.

And even though I'm no longer alive, I will always be her mother.

THE END