Chapter Thirty-Five #2
“I knew the mechanics. Practices, games, filing, travel. I knew how to interview people. I didn’t know the room. I didn’t know when McDonough was actually angry or when that was just his face.”
“That takes years.”
“I didn’t know which players would give me something real if I waited or which ones would keep repeating the same answer until I left.”
“Also years.”
“I spent the first month feeling like everyone expected you to walk back through the door.”
“Did they?”
“Some.”
“And you?”
Tessa looked toward him.
“Yes.”
Frank nodded as though he expected the answer.
“I kept thinking about how you would have asked something. What you would have written. I thought the job was going to be proving I could do what you did.”
Frank remained quiet.
“I didn’t want to imitate you,” she said. “I knew that would be impossible. But I wanted to keep up the standard.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It was.”
“What changed?”
Tessa looked toward the banners hanging above the ice.
The newest one did not exist yet. It would be raised at the beginning of the following season.
“I started learning which stories were mine.”
Frank waited.
“Joona,” she said. “Nobody knew whether he would make the team. He became the playoff MVP.”
“I read the camp story.”
“You remember it?”
“He was the loud Finnish kid annoying Viktor.”
“That is still accurate.”
“What else?”
“Viktor’s knee. Ben Carver getting recalled. The goaltending situation.”
Frank glanced toward her.
“Belov gave you a difficult year.”
The words carried only professional meaning.
Tessa kept her expression neutral.
“He did.”
“Good year too.”
“Yes.”
“His first answer to you was about winning.”
Tessa looked over.
“You remember that?”
“It was in the Cup story.”
“I didn’t use it in September.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Because I read that too.”
Frank’s mouth shifted.
“You reported around him.”
“He would not talk.”
“So you found people who would.”
“Pat and Viktor.”
“The story was better for it.”
Tessa had needed several months to understand that.
“I thought he was being dismissive.”
“He probably was.”
Tessa looked toward the crease where Matvei made the final save.
The ice had been resurfaced since Game 7. Nothing remained of the moment except memory and the photographs already becoming permanent around the city.
“I understood the quote by the end,” she said.
Frank nodded.
“That showed.”
Another silence followed.
Workers began dismantling the podium.
Frank watched them for several seconds.
“The championship felt different than I expected,” Tessa said.
“How?”
“I thought I would feel it when the horn went.”
“You didn’t?”
“I did. But then I had to write.”
Frank laughed quietly.
“Yeah.”
“I watched the Cup. I interviewed everyone. I wrote two stories. By the time I finished, the ice was empty.”
“Sounds right.”
“I missed most of the celebration.”
“No.”
Tessa looked toward him.
“You covered it,” Frank said. “That was your celebration.”
The words echoed what she had told herself after Game 7.
Her place had been inside the press box. She had written how Halifax won. Frank understood without requiring explanation because he had done the same thing.
“What did you write after the first Cup?” Tessa asked.
“You looked it up.”
“I read the story. I’m asking what it felt like.”
Frank leaned farther into the seat.
“Terror.”
“You had covered them for years.”
“Didn’t matter. The horn went, everybody started screaming and I realized the largest story I would ever write was happening faster than I could type.”
“That is reassuring.”
“It shouldn’t be.”
“It is.”
“I missed the first press-conference question because I was still rewriting the lead.”
Tessa turned toward him.
“You?”
“Yes.”
“You never told anyone that.”
“Why would I?”
“Because everyone thinks you were perfect.”
“That sounds like their problem.”
Tessa smiled.
Frank looked down at his hands.
“I remember sitting here after everybody left,” he said. “My wife was downstairs. Players’ families were still on the ice. I had champagne on my shoes and no idea how it got there.”
His expression softened.
“I filed three minutes before the press stopped waiting.”
“That late?”
“Different system. When I read your story,” he continued, “I thought about that night.”
“Because of the Cup?”
“Because I knew exactly where you were sitting when you wrote it.”
Tessa looked toward the desk.
“You covered the championship,” Frank said.
The statement sounded obvious.
It did not feel that way.
“You did too.”
“Thirty years apart.”
“Different teams.”
“Same city.”
Frank turned toward her.
“Same deadline.”
Something in Tessa shifted.
All season, she had measured herself against the years Frank spent in this chair. His sources, authority and ability to place every new event within a history he had witnessed personally.
That gap still existed.
She had covered one season. Frank had covered nearly four decades.
But they had both watched Halifax win the Stanley Cup, then turned away from the celebration long enough to explain it.
In that one narrow, significant way, Tessa had reached him.
Not replaced.
Reached.
Frank seemed to recognize the realization.
“You know now,” he said.
“What?”
“What it is to sit up here while everybody else gets to feel the thing.”
Tessa looked down at the empty ice.
“And write it anyway.”
“Yes.”
The answer connected them more clearly than the chair ever had.
Tessa was no longer the inexperienced reporter occupying a position Frank left behind.
She had her own Cup story.
Her own final save.
Her own lead written while the city shouted beneath her.
Frank had not come to inspect how she used his seat.
He had come because Halifax won, and he understood exactly why she was still upstairs afterward.
Frank’s expression became more serious.
“You did good work.”
The approval entered more quietly than she expected.
It mattered less than it would have in September.
That made it mean more.
“Thank you,” she said.
Frank nodded once.
Then looked toward the ice again.
“So what happens now?”
Tessa thought of the internal posting.
The question waited close enough that she wondered whether Frank already knew. Elaine might have told him. Someone else at the paper might have mentioned it. The listing was internal, not secret.
“Viktor comes back,” she said. “Matvei is eligible for an extension this summer. Joona has to follow the postseason. They defend the Cup.”
Frank glanced toward her.
“That was the team answer.”
“You asked what happens.”
“I asked what happens to you.”
Tessa picked up the coffee.
It had gone cold.
“I don’t know.”
“More honest.”
“The Tribune posted a new job internally.”
Frank waited.
“The Tides beat.”
His response came immediately.
“The women’s team?”
“Yes.”
“From the beginning?”
Tessa nodded.
“A full-time dedicated beat. Similar salary to this one. Travel budget.”
Frank turned fully toward her.
“They’re doing that properly.”
“That was my reaction.”
“Who pushed it?”
“Elaine.”
“Of course.”
He looked pleased in a way Tessa had not expected.
She had prepared for skepticism.
Perhaps disappointment.
Frank had spent his career covering the Convoy. The NHL beat represented the position he built, protected and eventually handed to her. Tessa assumed he would hear interest in leaving as a rejection of what she had spent the year proving she could do.
Instead, his attention sharpened.
“When do they start?”
“Next season.”
“Do they have a practice facility?”
“Atlantic Centre and a dedicated setup being built. Claire Dunning said there will be permanent locker-room space rather than converting rooms game to game.”
“Good.”
“They have the name, colors and president of hockey operations. That is almost everything.”
“That is almost nothing.”
Tessa stared at him.
Frank’s excitement remained visible.
“You think that is good?”
“For a reporter?”
“Yes.”
“It’s fantastic.”
The answer unsettled her more than resistance would have.
“I thought you might see it as a demotion.”
“Why?”
“The NHL.”
Frank waited for more.
“The established audience,” Tessa said. “The travel. The access. The prestige.”
“The Tides job has travel.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do.”
He leaned back again.
“Do you think it’s a demotion?”
“I don’t know.”
“That sounds like yes with guilt.”
Tessa looked down at the notebook.
“The NHL was the goal.”
“And you reached it.”
“For one year.”
Frank gestured toward the banners again.
“You covered a championship. That’s a fairly efficient first year.”
“That does not mean I have finished.”
“Didn’t say it did.”
“If I leave now, it could look like I could not sustain it.”
“To whom?”
“People.”
Frank’s expression turned dry.
“Did Elaine give you that answer?”
“Almost.”
“Smart woman.”
Tessa rested the coffee on the desk.
“The Convoy has an audience already,” she said. “Every story matters immediately. People know the players, history and stakes.”
“And the Tides do not.”
“Not yet.”
Frank smiled again.
“Exactly.”
Tessa frowned.
“You are enjoying this.”
“I’m remembering.”
“What?”
Frank looked toward the empty ice.
“The first year.”
“With the Convoy?”
“Yes.”
His voice changed.
Not sentimental.
Younger, somehow.
“When I took the beat, nobody knew what the team was going to mean here,” he said. “We knew Halifax wanted hockey. That’s different from knowing it can sustain an NHL team through bad seasons, ownership changes and everything else.”
“You covered them from the start.”
“First press conference. First draft. First training camp.”
Tessa knew the facts.
Hearing him list them changed their shape.
“First captain,” Frank continued. “First coach fired. First player who refused to waive a no-trade clause. First teenager everybody decided would save the franchise before he played a game.”
“Did he?”
“No.”
Tessa smiled.
“First home win. First playoff game. First series loss.”
Frank’s gaze moved slowly across the building.
“Every story was the first time something happened.”
The line entered her with enough force that she stopped moving.
Frank touched one finger against the desk.