28. Kieran
Kieran
The missed call from Indie comes in at four in the morning.
I see it at six when the alarm goes off in the room at the hotel near Logan I have been sleeping in for two nights because the team flight to New York leaves at two this afternoon and the franchise's communications director needed me close to the airport for the morning that is, by then, already in motion.
The screen shows one missed call. No voicemail. Indie's name at the top of the recent-calls list for the first time in three weeks.
I look at it for a long time, but I do not call her back right away.
I sit at the small desk in the hotel room in the suit pants and the dress shirt I will wear in front of twenty reporters in six hours, and I read the single page I wrote at three this morning, the page I am going to read from at noon.
The page is two paragraphs.
I read it through nine times.
At a little after ten, I call her.
She picks up on the second ring.
"Dad."
"Indie."
I hear her breathe in and breathe out.
"Don't speak. Just listen."
She is quiet on the other end.
I look at the single page on the desk. I take a slow breath.
I tell her what I am going to do at noon — where, who will be in the room, what I am going to say, what I am not.
I tell her the organization has not authorized this and is not going to stand on the dais with me.
I tell her Greer does not know I have decided.
I tell her I would have done it weeks ago if I had thought I could keep her name out of it, and that since Thursday morning the story has named her anyway.
The version that goes into the room at noon will be in my voice, not Brigid Halloran's.
I stop.
I do not, in the silence after the page, ask her for anything.
She is quiet for what is probably ten seconds.
She says: "Dad."
"Yes."
"I needed to hear it from you first."
"You're hearing it from me now."
She does not, for another second, answer.
Then she says: "Okay."
"Indie."
"Yes."
"Thank you for picking up."
"Goodbye, Dad."
She hangs up.
I sit at the small hotel desk with the phone in my hand.
I do not, for several minutes, move.
* * *
Declan is in his office when I get to the practice facility at a little before eleven-thirty.
I close the door behind me, sit in the chair across from him, and tell him what I am going to do at noon.
I tell him I am calling the press conference myself, that I am using the team's daily-media-availability slot and the daily-media-availability room, that I am going to stand at the podium alone, and that I am going to read from a single page and take no questions.
He listens.
When I am done, he says, "I will not stand at the podium with you. The franchise will not, today, put any of us next to you on that dais."
"I'm not asking you to."
"The communications director will be in the back of the room with the press credentials. She will say no team statement to anyone who asks afterward. We will not contradict you. We will not corroborate you. We will not endorse what you say. We will let the page you read be the page you read."
"Okay."
"After Game 7, whenever that is, you and I will sit in this office and figure out what comes next for your contract. Until then, the franchise's position is no comment on personal matters of staff as it has always been . That has been the line for two months and it will be the line for two more."
"Okay."
He looks at me across the desk.
He says, more quietly: "Kee. For what it's worth."
"Yes."
"My older boy is forty-one. I have been a father for forty-one years. What you are about to do at noon — that's the move of a father, not the move of a head coach trying to save a contract. I want you to know I know the difference."
"Thank you, Declan."
"Get out of my office before I say anything else my lawyers would tell me not to."
I stand. I shake his hand across the desk and I go.
* * *
The daily-media-availability room is on the second floor of the practice facility, three doors down from the locker room.
I have walked into it twice a day since October.
It seats forty when full; a small raised dais at the front, franchise logo on the wall behind it, credentialed press chairs in the front row, columnist bleacher seating behind.
At twelve sharp, I walk in.
The room is full.
Twenty-three press credentials are in the seats.
Pat Hennessy is in the second row in the same tweed jacket.
Brigid Halloran is at the far left in the third row, the first time, I think, she has been in the building in person in eighteen months.
The franchise's communications director is at the back with her clipboard.
I walk to the podium.
I do not, at the podium, smile.
I do not, at the podium, thank the room.
I take the single page out of the inside pocket of the suit jacket. I unfold it. I lay it flat on the podium. I look up once at the room, then I look down at the page, and I read.
I read slowly.
"My name is Kieran Larsen. I have been the head coach of the Boston Barons since October. Before that, I was an assistant coach in this organization for eleven seasons. I have a daughter named Indie, who is twenty-six.
"I came in here to say one thing. I am the father of Greer Callahan's child. Greer and I have been in a relationship since October. We have, since then, kept it out of the building for reasons that were ours to weigh and that, in hindsight, we weighed wrong.
"Greer was placed on paid administrative leave by the organization at her own request when the Globe story ran.
She notified the state licensing board, on her own initiative, of her disclosure.
I have not, on any matter related to either of these things, asked the organization to handle anything differently than it would have for any other member of staff.
"I will accept whatever the organization decides about my contract.
"I love Greer. I love the child she is carrying. I love my daughter, who has, for the last three weeks, been carrying the weight of this conversation in private. I am asking everyone in this room, and everyone watching, to be patient with my family. They did not call this press conference. I did.
"I will not be taking questions today. Thank you."
I look up from the page.
The room is silent.
I fold the page. I put it back in the inside pocket of the suit jacket. I walk off the dais.
I do not, on the way out, look at any of the twenty-three reporters in the chairs.
* * *
In the corridor outside the room, Pat Hennessy catches me at the elevator. He does not extend his hand.
"Coach."
"Pat."
"That was the right way to deliver that statement."
"Thank you."
"My follow-up runs at four. I am going to lead with the part where you took responsibility."
"Okay."
"And, Coach — thank you for not making me work for it."
"You are welcome, Pat."
He nods. I take the elevator to the lobby.
* * *
The team flight to LaGuardia takes off at two-fifteen. I do not, during the flight, look at my phone.
When we land at LaGuardia at three-twelve, I turn the phone on. There are sixty-eight new alerts. I read three of them.
The first is from Greer.
you did it. I saw it live. you did it. I love you.
The second is from Mikko, from somewhere on the same plane I am on.
Coach. Boys saw it on the airport TV. Good work.
The third is from my daughter.
That was good, Dad. I'm okay.
I read it twice.
I set the phone down on the tray table in front of me.
I do not, for the entire taxi from the gate to the team buses, pick it up again.
* * *
Game 5 at Madison Square Garden is at seven-thirty.
I run the pre-game — address to the room, line review, walk to the bench, anthem. The Garden crowd in New York is louder than the Garden crowd in Boston, angrier and meaner and entirely on their own team's side.
I coach.
We score in the first. They tie. We score in the second. They tie. We score in the third on a Sasha wraparound at 7:34. We hold. The horn goes. We win 3-1. The series is 3-2 in our favor. We are one win away from the Conference Final.
The handshake line happens. The Rangers' captain shakes my hand, says hell of a thing today, Larsen, and moves on.
The locker room is not muted, this night.
It is loud the way a road locker room gets after a team has just won Game 5 of a Conference Semifinal in the building they came in to win it.
Sasha gives the captain's speech he gives after every road win that puts the team one win from the next round.
The assistants pour the team water. I shake hands with every player on the way out.
Mikko is last. He hugs me briefly, the hard fast hug.
He says: "Good job today, Coach."
"You too, captain."
He looks at me for a second longer than he usually does.
"Greer saw it?"
"She saw it."
"Indie?"
"Indie saw it."
"Good."
He goes.
* * *
I do the post-game scrum on autopilot. The reporters ask about the game; none of them ask about what happened at noon. I deliver the answers and leave the dais.
The team flight back to Boston takes off at eleven-fifteen. I sleep for forty minutes of the flight, the first sleep I have had in three days.
The SUV is in the long-term lot at Logan when we land at twelve-forty-eight. I drive south through the cold of late April in Boston, past the dark Garden, past the dark dome of the State House, into the South End.
* * *
She gets up from the couch when I come in.
She does not, this time, say anything.
She walks to me in the front hall, puts both around my neck and presses her face against the side of my neck.
I hold her there for a long minute.
When I lift her face, I see she has been crying — the small careful crying she has been doing for three weeks at the edges of every conversation that has not put her in the position to break.
"Greer."
"You did it."
"I did it."
"I have watched it six times."
"Six?"