Epilogue
It was September, and the Ironhawks geared up for a new season.
Pratt's kitchen ran quieter than mine. The refrigerator didn't rattle, and the pipes didn't knock. Nothing announced itself. Everything just worked, which had taken some getting used to, because I'd spent most of my adult life in apartments that only partially functioned.
I still owned my place next door, but it was increasingly feeling like an annex, instead of a home.
Pratt came out of the bedroom wearing his arena suit, pulling his jacket straight at the collar. I handed him a mug of coffee.
"Ice okay yesterday?" I asked.
"Fine."
That was his entire review of a two-hour practice session. I'd learned to read the tone instead of the actual words. Fine-good was a flat delivery with no follow-up. Fine-actually-complicated had a half-second delay.
I thought about last spring's playoffs.
The Ironhawks won the first round in six. I watched most of those at Carver's
The second round was a seven-game affair, but we still won. In Game Six, I peered at the bar TV through a gap in my fingers like I was nine and the movie had gotten too real. Nora said, "Breathe." I offered a thumbs-up. She said, "That is not breathing, Sullivan."
In the quarterfinals, we took game seven in overtime.
I can't tell you what I did during the first overtime period. Tomasz said I reorganized the speed rail twice without breaking stride. That's possible. I don't remember it.
Kieran scored eleven minutes into the second overtime. I was on my side of the bar and said something I can't repeat because there were children present. Nora set her coffee down and put her arms around me from behind, and held on for about fifteen seconds without saying a word.
It was the best playoff run the franchise had managed in a decade. Pratt made the second team All-Playoffs.
Heath sent me a video of Pratt with Coach Markel in the handshake line. He leaned into Pratt and could just barely be heard above the noise. "You set a new standard."
Pratt held his helmet in his left hand, gear soaked through, looking at the coach like he'd said something only mildly interesting. "There'll be more."
Markel smiled.
I watched it eleven times. I'll never tell Pratt that.
"Back by noon," he said.
***
My therapy started in May. It was Tuesday afternoons, with a woman named Dr. Osei whose office was on the fourteenth floor of a building on Michigan Avenue. The waiting room played obscure jazz.
I'd found her through Tricia, who'd found her through a friend who described her as someone who didn't let you get away with anything but wasn't mean about it.
That turned out to be accurate. For the first session, I arrived with three prepared deflections and a bit about the irony of a bartender in therapy that I'd workshopped on the walk over.
She let me deliver all of it. Then she asked what I was most afraid of being asked, and I was so surprised, I answered honestly.
That was May. This was September. I hadn't missed a Tuesday.
I played the records. The self-titled album came out sometime in May. I listened without doing anything else at the same time.
I cried once, listening to "Rhiannon." It wasn't a collapse. The album kept going.
I wasn't ready for Rumours until July. I put it on Pratt's turntable, while he was at morning skate. Sipping my coffee, I got through the whole first side before he came back. When he returned, he drank a tall glass of water and came and sat beside me.
We listened to the second side together.
I wrote Cath a letter in June. It took three nights because I kept trying to find the perfect words.
The final version wasn't long or eloquent. It was honest.
I didn't tell Pratt I was writing it. He found out when he asked, a few days later, if I'd been in touch with her. I said I'd sent a letter. He said good.
The blanket moved sometime in August. It migrated from the baseboard to a dresser drawer.
He was sticking with "More Than a Feeling," but he thought he might alter it for the new season. He asked whether I thought he should extend beyond ten seconds. I said he should try it for the first game and gather data from there.
Contract matters weren't discussed at home. Once, Pratt mentioned he had a call with his agent. I said okay. He said it should run about forty minutes. I said I'd pick up food. He said fine. We both walked away from that exchange completely satisfied.
When he returned, I dropped onto the couch beside him, with my foot tucked under me.
"Anything you need before the game?" I asked.
"No."
"I'm reorganizing the spice cabinet this evening while you're gone."
He turned to look at me. "Why?"
"The cumin is in the back. Nobody puts cumin in the back."
"I put the cumin in the back."
"I know," I said. "That's what I'm telling you."
He looked at me sideways. "Leave the cumin," he said.
"I can't promise that."
I left the cumin exactly where it was.
We'd visited the Shedd Aquarium in August. Kieran volunteered on Wednesdays and Fridays.
We came around the corner to see the beluga tank, and Ansel was already moving toward the glass before Kieran had fully appeared. The whale drifted forward. Kieran put his palm flat against the glass. Ansel held his position, with one eye tracking.
Heath materialized at my elbow four seconds later.
"June," he said, by way of explanation. "It's been like this since June. I think Kieran has stronger feelings for the whale than he does for me."
"Does that bother you?"
"No," he said. "It's a very impressive whale."
We had dinner at a place Heath had walked past twice and decided looked honest. We got a table in the back.
Heath was halfway through a story about Varga and a penalty box in St. Louis when he stopped himself mid-sentence, as if something had just caught up to him.
“Actually—” He glanced at Kieran, then at Pratt. “Did you guys see anything weird the other day?”
Kieran didn’t look up from his drink. “That depends on your threshold for weird.”
“I’m serious,” Heath said. “After practice. Everyone was clearing out, and Rook had Varga backed up against the lockers like he was telling him something.”
“That’s not unusual,” Pratt said.
“Yeah, but he was in his ear,” Heath said, leaning forward now. “Like—close. And Varga wasn’t talking. Just standing there like he’d been told to stay put.”
That got Kieran’s attention. Not much, just enough that his eyes flicked up.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Heath said. “That’s the thing. I walked past, and Varga just reached out and straightened Rook’s collar. Didn’t even look at me. Then they both went back to acting normal.”
“Define normal,” I said.
“Varga talked for twenty straight minutes about a podcast no one else had listened to,” Heath said. “Rook didn’t say a word.”
“That tracks,” Pratt said.
Heath frowned, still turning it over. “Yeah, but since when?”
Kieran picked up his glass again. “Since you started paying attention,” he said.
Heath sat back, unsatisfied but outnumbered. “I’m telling you, it was weird.”
“Everything’s weird if you stare at it long enough,” I said.
He pointed at me. “That’s not helpful.”
“I’m not trying to be helpful.”
The server came by to clear plates, and Heath let it go, already halfway back into his story before the glasses were off the table.
I caught Pratt’s eye for a second. He didn’t react, at least not in any way anyone else at the table would have seen.
That tracked too.
The following morning, I looked at my phone.
Heath: good call on the aquarium. ansel says hi.
Sully: tell Ansel he has excellent taste.
Heath: he already knows.
We visited Lexington on Labor Day weekend. Cath opened the door before we reached her porch steps.
I'd warned Pratt on the drive from the airport that Cath Baker was the kind of person who looked at you like she was doing an inventory. It wasn't unkind. It was thorough. He'd said okay. I'd said no, I mean she will actually look at you. He'd said he understood. He was right that he understood.
She looked at Pratt the way I'd described. She started with his eyes, working outward and taking her time. Pratt stood quietly.
Her house was the same as I remembered it. She had a photograph on the wall at the bottom of the stairs of Bryan probably age eight or nine. He was smiling, holding a foot-long fish.
Cath made sandwiches: turkey, sharp cheddar, and mustard on one side of the bread. Pratt asked if he could have mustard on the other side too. She nodded and made it the way he wanted it.
We sat at her kitchen table for two hours. She asked Pratt questions about hockey. He gave carefully considered responses, leaving out the hockey jargon.
When we left, she hugged me at the door. She shook Pratt's hand and held it a second longer than a standard handshake.
"Drive safe," she said.
After leaving, I didn't say anything for about ten minutes. Pratt drove.
"She liked you," I said finally.
"I know."
"How do you know?"
"The mustard on the sandwich. She did it without hesitation."
The Ironhawks won the game. Pratt returned wearing a red t-shirt and jeans.
He'd texted me about when he'd be home, and I put Rumours on the turntable in preparation. The bass and drum intro kicked in as he walked through the door. It didn't take long for him to recognize the song, "You Make Loving Fun."
I whispered, "Truth," and signaled for him to join me on the couch. I leaned in and we kissed. The record kept going, and by the time I was aware again of our surroundings, the music had long stopped.
I thought about Bryan, and it stayed where it was. It wasn't gone, but it stayed contained, where I knew I could find it.
Pratt rubbed his thumb against my arm. "Morning skate at nine," he said.
"I know the schedule."
He got up to turn the record over.
***