4. Everly #2
Three rules this morning: show up, skate, leave. Do not seek out Everly Hart. Do not attempt to repair seventeen years of personal wreckage at a charity event in a suburban mall.
I break rule one in under an hour. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The event is rolling when I arrive—two p.m. sharp, because Coach said don’t be late, and I’ve learned the hard way that Coach Hart’s suggestions are anything but.
The stands are packed. Wooden bleachers creaking and groaning, stuffed with families and kids in Blue Ox jerseys and old-timers who remember when Sutton Arena was the beating heart of East Metro hockey.
A hand-painted banner stretches across the boards: FAREWELL SUTTON ARENA—ONE LAST SKATE.
Someone’s taped balloons to the penalty box.
The Zamboni—so ancient it might qualify for a museum exhibit—squats in the corner like a retired warhorse watching the cavalry ride out without it.
And the ice. Gray and scarred and magnificent. Every nick and groove a story—a hundred thousand blades, a hundred thousand mornings when somebody showed up before dawn because the ice was the only place that made sense.
My dad skated on this ice. I don’t think about that often—I’ve built an elaborate internal filing system for thoughts about my father, organized by emotional payload, and the heavy stuff lives in a drawer marked Do Not Open.
But standing here, smelling the ice, hearing the boards rattle when a kid slams into them, the drawer rattles too.
Michael Benson. Thirty-one. Dark hair like mine. He practiced on this exact sheet before the accident, and somewhere under all the resurfacing and all the years, his blade marks are still here. Invisible. Permanent.
I lace up. Step on. And for three seconds, my brain goes quiet.
Then Candy plows into me from behind and the spell shatters.
“Benson! Kids’ clinic in five! Move your carcass!” Candy shouts, skating backward.
“Come on.” I gesture toward the surrounding arena. “I was having a moment.”
“Have it faster. Forty third graders. They’ve been given sticks.”
The clinic is chaos in the best possible way. Forty peewee players, half barely vertical, the other half wildly overconfident and armed with composite sticks they have no business holding. I’m stationed at the blue line, running a passing drill that devolves into keep away. And I’m losing.
A kid named Marcus, maybe eight, crooked-grinned and fearless, fires a pass between my legs.
“Megged you!” he shrieks, and his teammates erupt like he just netted the Cup winner.
I scowl. “This is hockey, not soccer.”
“Whatever, dude!” Marcus gestures something at me, and I will ignore him for the good of both of us. I set up the drill again, and somewhere in the rhythm—stick tap, pass, correction, knees bent, eyes up, follow through—something loosens in my chest.
This is what Coach did for me. On this ice. Twenty-three years ago, he saw a scrawny kid skating alone and started feeding him drills, and that was the beginning of everything I am now.
I adjust Marcus’s grip, nudge his elbow—and realize I’m using Coach’s exact technique, passing it forward to another wide-eyed and grinning kid on the same scarred ice.
Maybe I’ll cut Marcus some slack.
We break for fifteen, and I step off the ice, wander into the mall in search of water.
Northwoods Mall is the same mall it’s always been—not booming, not dying, just humming along in that particular suburban petri dish where an Orange Julius and a Hot Topic can coexist. The corridor outside the rink connects to the main concourse, and the smell shifts from ice and rubber to floor wax and the ghosts of a thousand Auntie Anne’s pretzels.
The stores are open and busy, Saturday foot traffic boosted by the rink event spilling crowds into the concourse.
The Penalty Box has a kid with his nose flattened against the Blue Ox jersey display.
Sutton Sweets is doing brisk business in caramel apples the size of softballs.
Blue Line Books has a local author display I glance at and keep walking past because I do not need to think about authors right now.
The corridor bends toward the food court, and I can see Blake’s Café at the far end. A chalkboard sign in rainbow chalk reads Still here. Still brewing. Come say goodbye to the rink and hello to our hot chocolate.
That’s when I see her.
She’s standing by the old atrium fountain—basin dry, a few stubborn pennies cemented to the bottom by time and oxidation.
Jeans. Oversized cable-knit sweater. Real winter boots.
She’s holding a camera—lens the size of a coffee can—tilted up, photographing the glass ceiling where winter light filters down in dusty shafts.
Her back is to me, but I know that rich red hair.
Not the dark, choppy bob from the gala. Curls—red ones. Wild and alive, tucked up in a familiar bun that’s both elegant and messy—natural and effortless. They catch the light and glow. Turn copper.
Freckles. Vivid. Uncovered—she’s turned just enough in her chair that the rink light catches her profile. The crooked glasses pushed up with one finger.
Everly.
This is the Everly I actually remember. The girl who sat in these stands doing homework while Coach ran practice. The one whose hair was always escaping, always rioting.
The dark hair was the costume. This is the real one.
She looks completely different.
Or…maybe she looks exactly the same.
I’m going over there.
NO. Nope. No. Do not seek out Everly Hart.
It’s too late. Whatever sense I’d jammed into my head earlier is gone. I’m walking.
“Hey,” I say. Friendly. Nice.
She lowers the camera, and her whole body stiffens. Okay…? Maybe I missed the mark on friendly and nice.
She glances away, her eyes looking anywhere but at me. “Hey.”
“You look different,” I say, because apparently, around her I can’t stop talking.
Her hand goes to her hair, and she gives me a wry look. “This is actually what I look like.”
“I remember.” Again, going for friendly, nice—and somehow careening over an embankment into creepy. I should stop while I’m ahead. But I don’t, and spoiler alert, I’m probably not going to. “I remember the hair. Red. Very red.”
Stop, Beckett, for the love.
Something flickers across her face—a grimace? Concern?
Silence falls between us, sucking up every molecule of oxygen that should be supplying my brain. Tiny sirens go off inside my head while I nod, smile, act as though we’re talking and not just staring at each other in awkward silence. And then my mouth says, “So, what are you doing here?”
Wrong. Wrong! I hear it the second it clears my teeth.
Her chin lifts. A millimeter. “What am I doing here? At my father’s event? At the rink where I grew up?” She catches herself. “I can be here, Benson. I don’t need an excuse.”
“That’s not what I—”
“I can be here. Deal with it. I’m in the stands where I belong, right?”
I wince. Wow, she throws a punch like an enforcer. Bam. Then she turns, clearly charting a course for anywhere but here.
I start to follow. “Listen, I was just trying to be friendly—” And of course, my foot catches the stone lip of the fountain.
I stumble forward. My hand connects with her camera—just enough to knock it sideways on the strap, the lens cap popping off and skittering across the tile like a tiny fleeing witness.
She yanks the camera against her chest. “What are you doing?”
And the look she gives me—well, we’re suddenly time traveling seventeen years, and I’ve sprayed ice on her and somehow destroyed her life.
Okay, I can admit some regret of the moment.
But she totally overreacted and—
Nope. Not going there. Instead, “I’m sorry—I didn’t—” I reach for the lens cap. She snatches it first. Takes a full step backward. A small step, but a continental distance.
“It’s fine. The camera’s fine.”
“Everly—”
“Look.” She pulls her camera against her chest. Pushes her glasses up.
Her jaw is set exactly like Coach’s. “I’m here for my dad and the rink.
You’re here for the event. Those are two separate things that can happen in the same building without intersecting.
You stay out of my way. I’ll stay out of yours.
I think even you can probably figure that out. ”
“Fine,” I snap. Sheesh. What is wrong with me? But she just has this power to turn me into an angry teenager.
She nods, turns toward the rink, and walks away—camera against her chest, red curls bouncing.
I stand by the fountain. It’s a dry basin full of cemented pennies. Wishes that went nowhere.
“Fine,” I say again, apparently still coming to terms with the way that conversation went, and head back toward the locker room.
Halfway down the corridor, I pass the old offices. A door marked Staff Only—cracked open two inches. A voice catches my attention. Tense. Hushed.
I freeze, just barely able to make out Cole Thompson through the crack. And across from him, one of the hard-faced men from the parking lot. Cole’s face is drawn, hands lifted, imploring. The man’s expression suggests it’s not working.
Cole’s eyes flick to the door. To me. I’m not sure, but something that looks like fear, or maybe desperation, washes over him.
Then the door swings shut.
Huh.
Maybe I imagined it.
I keep walking. Whatever’s going on with Cole, he got himself into that mess.
I am not here to rescue anyone, thank you. I can barely rescue myself.
I step onto the ice where I belong. This day can’t get over fast enough.