Chapter 11
KNOX
It looked like it had been dropped from a roof, which it probably had not been, but in the mind of a five-year-old, the catastrophe level was approximately the same.
To a five-year-old, a broken stick was the end of the world.
To a five-year-old, the loss of something that had been fixed meant that fixing was temporary and everything would break again eventually.
The world was fragile. Things you trusted would fail you.
I opened the door wider.
“Come inside,” I said.
Theo Jr. came inside the apartment and I stood on the small kitchen tile, tracking snow onto the mat that had probably never been used before I moved in.
The apartment was warm. The space heater in the bedroom had been running since the power came back on, and the heat had spread into the main room, making it the warmest place in the immediate area.
The cold from the open door rushed past us both.
Theo Jr. was holding the stick out like it was a dead thing that required burial rites, like it was something that mattered so much that its breaking had consequences.
I took the stick. I looked at it carefully.
The damage was repairable if you were not worried about a perfect repair, and I was not worried about that.
I was worried about a kid who had maybe felt like he was on solid ground for the last week and a half and had just had one small piece of that taken away.
A kid whose mother was probably trying to teach him that things broke and you fixed them and you moved on.
That the world was not a place where things stayed perfect, but it was a place where broken things could be made functional again.
A kid who was growing up in a world that taught you that broken things stayed broken unless someone showed him different.
I said, “I can fix this.”
Theo Jr. said, “It’s broken.”
“I know. I can still fix it. It might not be as good as before.”
“That’s okay,” Theo Jr. said. “Because I also broke my skateboard and my mom said that you can’t fix everything, but I think that’s wrong because you fixed my bike.”
I went to the garage—the small separate structure attached to Maple’s property, the one that I had been using as a workshop of sorts, a place to put my hands on something that made sense.
The garage was cold. My breath came out in clouds.
The workbench was covered with tools, organized with the precision of someone who understood that knowing where things were meant being able to find them when you needed them.
I pulled out the workbench and the tools and I got the stick and I started the process: sanding the splintered edge with careful strokes, assessing the crack with my fingers to feel where the damage ran deepest, determining whether glue and a wrap would hold or whether the damage was too significant to fix a second time.
It took thirty-five minutes. I worked slowly.
I let Theo Jr. watch. The kid stood at my elbow, asking questions, offering observations.
I explained what I was doing without being asked.
I did not assume the kid was not interested just because Theo Jr. was five and had the attention span of a particularly focused golden retriever.
I said things like: “The crack goes with the wood grain. That’s good.
It means I can fill it and wrap it and it will hold your weight again.
” I said: “This tape is called hockey tape. It’s made of cloth and adhesive.
It stretches. See how I’m wrapping it? I’m putting tension on it so it holds everything together. ”
The crack could be glued. The tape would hold. The stick would be fixable one more time. Not perfect. But functional. That was enough.
When I was done, I handed the stick to Theo Jr.
Theo Jr. took it. I held it carefully, like it was something precious. I swung it. I made a sound like wind in the Arctic, like the sound of a stick hitting a puck on ice somewhere far away. The sound came from my belly. The sound was joy. I said, “Thank you.”
I said, “You’re welcome.”
They stood in the cold garage for a moment. The space heater from the apartment had warmed the doorway, but the corners were still cold. You could see my breath. You could see Theo Jr.’s breath. Outside, through the open garage door, you could see the winter afternoon. Gray. Threatening more snow.
Theo Jr. said, “Mr. Grumpus?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you Maple’s boyfriend?”
I did not move. I was in the middle of putting the tools back on the workbench.
My hand paused on the sanding block. The question sat in the air between them like something solid.
Something that required an answer. I understood that if I answered yes, Theo Jr. would go tell my mother, and my mother would tell someone at the grocery store, and it would spread through the town the way all small-town information spread. Inevitable. Complete. Inescapable.
If I answered no, Theo Jr. would believe me, for now, but the truth was probably already visible.
The truth was that I had not left Maple’s house in six days except for practice and the diner.
The truth was that they were spending nights together.
The truth was that anyone paying attention could see it.
Theo Jr. said, “Why.”
I said, “Why do you want to know.”
Theo Jr. said, “Because you keep her warm. My mom said. She said that Maple was cold all the time and then you came and now she’s not cold and my mom said that’s what a boyfriend does, he keeps you warm. And she said Maple is allowed to have a boyfriend now. So are you her boyfriend.”
I put the tools back on the workbench with care.
Each tool in its place. Each tool exactly where it was supposed to be.
I did not answer the question. The answer was more complicated than yes and more truthful than no.
The answer was that I had been sleeping in Maple’s bed most nights for twelve days.
The answer was that I had been buying her things.
The answer was that I had stood in Maddox’s office and been told a secret that had the power to change everything if it came out the wrong way.
The answer was that a five-year-old had just articulated something that the whole town was already thinking.
The answer was that I did not know if boyfriend was the right word for what I was becoming.
I said nothing.
I handed the stick back to Theo Jr. and I walked the kid back to the yard.
The snow crunched under their feet. The air was cold.
The cold had teeth. The cold had a smell.
The cold had weight. They walked across the yard toward Theo Jr.’s house.
The porch light was on. The door was open just enough that Theo Jr.’s mother could see them coming.
I stopped at the property line. Theo Jr. ran the rest of the way with the stick held up high, the way kids held things they were proud of, the way kids held things that mattered to them.
Theo Jr.’s mother was waiting. She waved at me.
I did not wave back. I just watched, and I understood that everyone in town was probably going to get the answer soon.
Maddox had already figured it out. Heather Park had probably figured it out.
Sue Hartwell, the innkeeper, had figured it out the moment she rented me the apartment above Maple’s garage.
The whole town was probably waiting for Maple to figure it out, and she was still in the dark about the mortgage at least, and the moment she found out was going to be the moment that the boyfriend question became something I was actually going to have to answer.
I knew something she did not know.
The 60-day window was ticking.
I had not told her. I had known for six days now.
Six days of sitting at her counter and eating pie and lying in her bed and pretending that the knowledge was not a time bomb sitting in my chest. Six days of understanding that the moment she found out was the moment everything changed.
That the version of them that existed now, in unknowing, was going to shatter the moment she understood that I had known and had kept it quiet.
That the careful construction of their beginning would collapse under the weight of the secret.
I went inside and I closed the door.
I drove to the rink at 10:47 p.m. that night.
The parking lot was empty except for Maddox’s car and a few others I did not recognize.
Some of the team probably stayed late on Tuesdays to do extra work.
Maybe the goalie. Maybe one of the forwards who wanted to stay sharp.
The rink was dark except for the ice lights, which were on all the time now, automatic, part of the system that kept the ice frozen.
The building was silent except for the hum of the refrigeration units—a sound so constant that your brain stopped registering it after a while, the way it stopped registering your own breathing.
It was the kind of quiet that made you understand what silence could do to a man.
It could clear your head. It could also destroy you, depending on what you were thinking about.
I let myself in using the key card that Beckham had given me on Day 1. The key card was the size of a driver’s license. It was weighted. It had the Frostbite Falls logo on it. It meant: You belong here. You are allowed to be here. This place is partially yours now.
The ice was empty. Clean. Fresh. The zamboni had run at 8 p.m., and the surface was smooth, pristine, waiting for something to happen on it. The waiting was the best part. The moment before. The moment when the ice was perfect and nothing had damaged it yet.
The air smelled like zamboni exhaust and the cold rising off the ice and the particular mineral smell of ice that had been frozen perfectly, the way ice was supposed to feel when it was doing what it was made to do. It smelled like coming home.