1. Lucy
LUCY
NOW
Ezra Thomas loved two things with alarming intensity—his children and the Minnesota Frosthawks.
Unfortunately for me, the Frosthawks had spent most of my life winning.
Which meant hockey had lived in every corner of my childhood.
In the television glow spilling beneath the den door long after bedtime.
In newspaper stacks beside my dad’s coffee every morning.
In postgame phone calls that stretched through dinner while my pasta slowly turned cold across from him because somebody’s second line forgot how defensive coverage worked in the third period.
Some daughters grew up competing with work for their father’s attention.
I grew up competing with an entire professional hockey team.
“My girls,” Dad announced from the head of the table for the second time in twenty minutes, lifting his glass of iced tea like we were gathered for a holiday instead of Sunday lunch. “All here. No crisis. No one bleeding in my office.”
Bea paused mid-bite beside me. “Should we knock on wood?”
Late fall sunlight spilled through the tall kitchen windows behind her, warm and gold against the stone countertops Lo had insisted on replacing last year because the original kitchen looked, according to her, “like a bank manager picked it out during a divorce.” The room smelled like rosemary chicken, fresh bread, and the aggressively expensive coffee my father pretended he did not need emotionally despite being physically incapable of forming coherent thoughts before caffeine.
For once, the house was quiet. No game replay humming in the background. No sports analysts yelling from the den. No television paused on a slow-motion fight while Dad stood there aggrieved by defensive coverage he was not physically involved in.
Lo took a sip of wine beside my father, elegant as ever in cream-colored cashmere while Dad loaded enough food onto his plate to feed an entire checking line.
Across from me, Bea looked unfairly pretty for a Sunday afternoon, her dark hair falling over one shoulder while she stole roasted potatoes directly off my plate with the confidence of someone who had emotionally moved into this house months ago.
I let her, mostly because I was too busy complaining. “I’m serious,” I told them, setting my fork down harder than vegetables deserved. “If that man schedules one more ‘quick touch-base meeting’ that lasts two hours, I’m going to fake my own death.”
Bea nodded immediately. “Reasonable.”
Lo hummed sympathetically. “Poison or disappearance?”
“Lo,” Dad sighed.
“What? If she’s going to commit, she should commit fully.”
I laughed before I could stop myself, and my father’s expression softened instantly at the sound.
“I am serious,” I continued, pointing my fork toward Bea because she’d made the mistake of looking entertained.
“He scheduled a product operations sync, a vendor onboarding call, and a leadership alignment meeting all for the same thirty-minute window, then told me I needed to be more proactive about managing his calendar.”
Bea’s mouth twitched. “Was this before or after he asked you to order his girlfriend’s birthday gift?”
“After. But before he messaged me asking where the birthday gift was.”
Lo carefully set her wine glass down. “And where was the birthday gift?”
“In his office.” I took a bite of roasted carrots with unnecessary aggression. “On his desk. Wrapped. With a card. Because apparently I am not an executive assistant anymore. I am now some kind of organizational cryptid who solves problems before they fully exist.”
Dad leaned back in his chair looking deeply entertained by my suffering, which felt rude considering he helped create my personality.
“To be fair,” he said, “you have always been very organized.”
“I color-coded one binder in ninth grade and you have been dining out on that for a decade.”
“You had tabs.”
“I was a teenager. Everyone had tabs.”
“No,” he corrected gently. “Everyone else had folders full of loose paper and crushed granola bars. You had tabs.”
Bea pointed her fork at him immediately. “That is exactly the kind of thing that gets competent women punished with more work.”
“Thank you.” I gestured toward her with my glass. “Someone understands.”
“Deeply. Men discover you can make a spreadsheet and suddenly you’re responsible for the emotional infrastructure of an entire organization.”
Lo hummed thoughtfully. “Put that on a pillow.”
Dad’s smile turned faintly rueful. “I feel like I should defend men here.”
“You should not,” Bea and I answered at the same time.
Lo laughed softly, and something in the room loosened with it.
I let myself enjoy it for a second. The familiar clink of silverware. The warmth of the kitchen. The way my father’s house held people differently than the arena did.
At Talon, he belonged to the team. To players and staff and sponsors and reporters and fans who all wanted pieces of him at once.
Here, at this table, he was just my dad.
He watched me over the rim of his glass, expression shifting in that quiet way I knew too well. The owner faded. The former player disappeared. “You’re miserable there, Lucy.”
I looked down at my plate automatically. “I’m not miserable.”
Bea made a small sound that suggested I had personally insulted her intelligence.
I pointed my fork at her. “You are supposed to be my friend.”
“I am. That’s why I’m not letting you lie during poultry.”
“It’s a startup,” I insisted, because apparently defending bad decisions was one of my more committed personality traits. “Everyone is miserable at startups. That’s part of the branding.”
Dad lifted one eyebrow.
I sighed dramatically and set my fork down again. “Fine. I’m not thrilled.”
“That is your professional way of saying you hate it,” Lo translated.
I folded my napkin in my lap, unfolded it, then folded it again because my hands apparently required active employment. “I hate parts of it.”
“Which parts?” Bea asked.
“The part where I do three jobs and get paid for half of one.”
The sun shifted across the table, warm light catching the condensation on my water glass. Somewhere deeper in the house, old pipes creaked softly behind the walls.
My father’s house always sounded lived in. Not museum-perfect the way rich people’s houses looked in architectural magazines where nobody appeared to actually consume carbohydrates.
This house had noise. Lo’s candles burning year-round.
Hockey games humming from distant televisions.
Dishes clinking in the sink. The front door opening constantly because players, staff, coaches, and random giant men apparently treated my father’s kitchen like a community center with better appliances.
“I just need to figure out what comes next,” I told them, taking a sip of water. “Something bigger. Something that isn’t me babysitting a founder who thinks operational strategy means buying more whiteboards.”
Bea leaned back slightly in her chair. “Whiteboards are where ideas go to pretend they have structure.”
I pointed at her immediately. “I’m stealing that.”
Dad tapped one finger lightly against his glass. “Quit.”
I blinked at him. “What?”
“Quit,” he repeated, like the word had not just entered the conversation carrying a weapon. “Come work for the team until something better comes along.”
The room went still for half a second. Not the kind movies used before someone announced a murder. Enough quiet for my nervous system to recognize danger before my brain caught up.
Then Bea sat up straighter.
Lo’s eyes flicked toward my father over the rim of her wine glass.
“No,” I blurted out without hesitation. And I laughed because, what else was I supposed to do when the man who accidentally gave me lifelong hockey-related emotional issues suggested I solve my professional burnout by walking directly into the center of the problem?
Dad’s mouth twitched slightly. “That was fast.”
“That was generous. I could’ve started laughing sooner.”
Bea angled toward me. “It’s not the worst idea.”
I looked at her in betrayal. “You work there. You have Stockholm syndrome with a media badge and a fake relationship.”
“I have direct deposit and health insurance.” She lifted both hands, but she was already smiling. “I’m just saying it would be nice to have someone in the office I actually like.”
The warmth that moved through me was immediate and deeply inconvenient.
When she first entered my father’s world, I’d expected to like her politely.
Respect her professionally. Exchange composed conversations at family dinners while she navigated yet another public relations disaster caused by professional athletes discovering Instagram stories and alcohol simultaneously.
Instead, she’d become real. Coffee shop meetings before work. Late-night texts. Shared looks across rooms whenever my father slipped into owner mode and started speaking like everybody in the organization was part of an elaborate spreadsheet instead of a person with blood pressure.
Bea understood pressure without making a performance out of surviving it. She understood ambition too.
Not the glossy LinkedIn version people posted beside photos of laptops and airport terminals. The kind that sat in your chest like a second heartbeat and whispered constantly that being useful was not the same thing as becoming something.
“I love you,” I told her honestly. “But absolutely not.”
Dad rested his forearms against the table. “You don’t even know what the job would be.”
“I know where the job would be.”
“Talon Arena has excellent coffee now.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Because Alois bullied somebody into fixing it.”
Bea examined her nails. “I prefer the word advocated.”
“He threatened to bring his espresso machine and expense it to the organization.”
“And now the coffee is better,” she replied smoothly. “Advocacy.”
Lo smiled faintly into her wine glass.
I shook my head. “I’m serious. I don’t want to work in hockey.”
Dad didn’t flinch. “That’s part of why I’d want you there.”
I stared at him. “Because I hate hockey?”
Dad sighed softly. “You hate what hockey took from you.”