16. Dante
Dante
I am awake in the space between cycles, the thin hour when the house goes silent and my mind starts running inventory. Marco's unanswered texts. The draft. The season. Cole breathing through the wall.
For three nights now, Maya has been at the end of the hall, pulling air into her lungs by force of structure.
Four in, four hold, four out. I hear it only when I hold still enough.
Night one, three cycles. Night two, five.
Tonight, eight. The repetitions are increasing, and I lie in the dark with both hands flat on the mattress, counting her counting.
On Tuesday, we play the conference quarterfinal at Providence and win.
The system works, the Voss-Maddox line produces, and Addison's adjustments hold.
I play the way I play when my body knows the game and my mind is at the end of the hall.
Efficient. Violent. Precise enough that scouts write it down and coaches call it focus.
In the second period, a two-on-one develops off a clean zone entry. I have the pass. Cole is open on the weak side, and my eyes cut to the press box for one second before I can stop them.
Her seat is empty.
It should be empty. She is at Elm House. Spare room at the end of the upstairs hall. Door that locks from the inside. Eight cycles last night before the house went quiet. The pass still finds Cole on muscle memory, the read late by half a stride. Addison will not catch it on film.
Cole will.
He notices between the second and third period, in the tunnel, when he puts his shoulder against mine.
"Where are you?"
"Here."
"You're playing hockey the way you drive a car. Your body's doing it."
"My body scored twice."
"Your body scored twice while you were somewhere else. I'm asking where."
I do not give him an answer because I do not have one that makes sense. My head is at the end of the hall, counting breathing cycles, lying awake at 2 a.m. tracking Maya's four-count through a wall I used to only listen through for Cole.
We ride the bus home for two hours with film running on tablets. I watch the same shift fourteen times and see nothing.
Marco texts during the ride, three messages in succession.
Papà wants to talk about the summer. The Milan meeting is confirmed.
Papà expects you in June.
Call me, Dante. The silence ends this week or I come to campus. Your choice.
The summer. June. Milan. I have been deflecting the meeting since October, the one where the family discusses the transition.
Marco's word for the moment when the draft money starts flowing and the Voss infrastructure extends into whatever city I land in.
Restaurants. Consulting firms. Investment vehicles.
My thumb hovers over the thread. I delete the texts, but Milan stays printed behind my eyes. It will still be there tomorrow and the day after, because Marco does not ask twice without following through.
The bus pulls into Briarcliff at midnight. Cole and I walk to Elm House through the cold with our bags over our shoulders, the three-inch gap between us, and four minutes of silence.
The living room light is on when we get inside, the pale glow of a laptop screen leaking into the hallway.
Cole sees her first. He stops in the living room entrance with his bag on his shoulder, and his expression softens before he can catch it.
She is on the couch, asleep and curled into the corner with her knees drawn up, her body compact and taking up the minimum possible space.
Her laptop is open on the cushion beside her, the cursor blinking at the end of an incomplete sentence about our neutral zone entries. She fell asleep mid-thought.
She is wearing the gray sweatshirt. Cole's. It has slipped off one shoulder, exposing the line of her collarbone in the laptop glow. Her hair falls across her face, one hand tucked under her chin, the other still resting on the keyboard, fingers curved over an unfinished sentence.
"Leave her," Cole whispers. "She'll wake up if we move her."
He squeezes my shoulder, the brief contact that says goodnight, and heads upstairs. His footsteps are deliberately heavy on the stairs. I do the same thing now. Neither of us has discussed it. We just started making noise on the stairs the first night she slept here.
His door closes.
I should follow him, shower, and let the morning come fast.
Instead, I go to the closet for the gray wool blanket Cole bought. My practice jersey is on the hook beside it, number eighty-eight, the navy mesh still carrying the cold from the rink, the name I chose printed across the shoulders. My hand closes on the wool.
I carry the blanket to the couch and unfold it over her, careful with every inch of movement because Cole is right. She will wake if I get this wrong. The wool settles over her shoulders and drawn-up knees.
My jersey is still in my hand. I do not remember taking it off the hook.
I lay it over her feet where the wool does not quite reach. Navy mesh over gray wool over Cole's sweatshirt over her skin. Nobody asked for that arrangement. My hand smooths the hem flat before I pull it back.
Her laptop glows beside her, open and unguarded. The article is on the screen, her browser behind it. Whatever else she has been building—the notes, the searches, the private system I know she keeps—is six inches from my hand.
The woman with a file on my family is asleep on my couch with her research open. I could look.
Instead, I close the laptop and set it on the coffee table beside her mug. The Barry's tea is cold now. She made it herself tonight. She knows where the kettle is, where the box is, which shelf. She moves through our kitchen like she has been here for years.
Upstairs, I stop outside Cole's door. He's awake. I hear it in the silence beyond the door, in the stillness that changes when Cole is awake. He heard me in the living room longer than a walk-through takes. He heard me stop. He knows I covered her.
From down the upstairs hall, the spare room is silent. The breathing count has not started yet. She is still downstairs on the couch, wrapped in the blanket, asleep under our roof.
I go to my room, my bed, my phone on the nightstand with Milan still printed behind my eyes.
Maya's breathing count starts an hour later.
She must have woken up, found the blanket, found the jersey, left them downstairs, and gone upstairs.
Cycle one. Four in, four hold, four out.
I lie in the dark and listen. She found the wool and the mesh and the name on the shoulders, and she still needs the count.
I can put my jersey over her feet, close her laptop, make her tea in the morning, and still the count starts.
I listen anyway.
By Wednesday morning, the blanket is folded on the arm of the couch with the corners aligned. My jersey is folded on top of it, the number facing up, the creases sharp enough that she used both hands. On top of the jersey sits a sticky note in her small, controlled handwriting.
Thank you.—M
I pick up the note.
M. One letter. Smaller than Maya. More personal than Maddox. The blanket is folded beneath it. My jersey is under her handwriting. I put the note in my pocket.
I make coffee for Cole and me, fill the kettle for Maya, and set out three mugs. The third one is a recent addition, white ceramic, placed at the edge of the counter where she will see it when she comes down.
I make eggs and set out three plates, hers first, near the edge of the counter.
She comes downstairs in Cole's sweatshirt, bare feet, her hair still pressed flat on one side from the couch cushion.
She hoists herself onto the counter instead of the stool, knees drawn up, facing the door.
Her phone is beside her plate, face-down, the way it has been on every surface since she arrived.
"Morning," she says.
"Morning."
She picks up the tea with both hands, and steam curls between her fingers. Last Friday in this kitchen, I swallowed words I had no right to put in her hands. Cole said our kitchen. Maya said yes, I'll be back tonight.
Three days later, she is barefoot on the counter with her phone face-down beside her plate, drinking tea I made because I know the shelf now. Cole's sweatshirt hangs off her shoulder. My mug is six inches from her knee.
Cole comes down and goes straight for the coffee and sugar, his grin aimed at both of us.
"How was the game?" Maya asks.
"We won. Dante scored twice while mentally somewhere else."
"I was focused."
"You were automatic. There's a difference." Cole stirs his coffee. "Maya, your forechecking piece. The one on zone entry pressure metrics."
"What about it?"
"Dante put it on Addison's desk," Cole says.
Maya goes still. She turns to me.
"You put my piece on Addison's desk."
"The analysis was sound. The coaching staff needed to see it."
"You hand-delivered a student journalist's article to your head coach."
"I delivered accurate data to the person who could use it."
"That's advocacy, Voss."
"Call it what you want."
"I'm calling it what it is. The man who spent six years telling me I was a tourist just walked my work into his coach's office."
The kitchen goes quiet. Cole watches both of us from the counter with the same expression he wore Friday night, his coffee untouched in his hand.
"The piece was right," I say. "I should have said that sooner."
"How much sooner?"
"Years."
She holds my gaze. I hold hers. The counter is between us, the tea is in her hands, and the eggs are going cold. Her collarbone is bare above the sweatshirt collar, and the flush starts at the base of her throat.
"It's a start," she says.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. Milan hits before the second buzz. I leave the phone where it is.
"Practice at nine," I say, putting my plate in the sink.
"Film at noon," Cole says.
"Filing deadline at two," Maya says. "I'll be at the Chronicle."
She slides off the counter, leaves the eggs, takes her tea, and goes upstairs. Her footsteps test the boards and map the creaks all the way up.