Chapter 8 #2
I watched the players come off the ice — six of them, rotating through the volunteer shelter situation the team had run for the last seventy-two hours.
They looked tired in the particular way of people who had been up for three days in a row, who had been feeding people and moving equipment and making sure the generators stayed running.
They looked like a small community that had survived something together.
They looked like they had all aged two years in one day.
They looked like men who understood what it meant to show up for something.
Maddox saw me come in. I was standing at the rink-side door in a Frostbite Falls hoodie and jeans, holding a cup of coffee that steamed in the cold air. I nodded toward the practice ice.
I did not acknowledge the nod. I walked to the goalie coaching zone and I picked up a stick and I watched the kid in the crease — eighteen, nineteen, still fresh enough to have something to prove, still new enough to believe that hard work was the answer to every question — and I noted that the glove was still too low and the stance was still not holding the line properly.
Nothing in the fundamental mechanics had changed except everything had changed inside my chest and the kid would not notice for years. That was okay. That was the job.
Practice ended at 1:47 p.m.
Maddox came to me in the locker room after most of the players had filtered out into the cold, their gear damp from sweat and effort. The big doors of the rink were closed. The team was changing out of their practice gear. The fluorescent lights hummed their tired hum.
Maddox said, “You look different.”
I did not answer. I was loading equipment into the bag with the particular care of someone doing work. Every piece of equipment had a place. Every place had a purpose.
Maddox said, “You’re smiling.”
I knew I was not smiling. I knew this with certainty because my face did not do that thing.
My mouth did not curl. My eyes did not crease.
But Maddox would not say it unless I was seeing something, some shift in the landscape of my expression that meant something was visible now that had not been visible before. Some crack in the wall.
I said, “The diner girl.”
Maddox turned to look at me fully.
I said, “You said she was fine. During the storm. I went to check on her.”
“And?”
“She’s fine.”
Maddox smiled. It was the smile of a man who had just made a decision and was comfortable with the implications.
The smile of a man who understood what was happening.
“Good,” I said. “That’s good. The team’s going to want to check on the whole town in the next round.
Food donations, supplies, make sure everyone made it.
Don’t be surprised when we show up at her diner. ”
I said, “Maddox.”
“What.”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what. Come to her diner. Like normal people. Like a team that lives in a town and cares about the town.”
I did not answer. I zipped the equipment bag. The sound was loud in the quiet locker room.
Maddox said, “Iron. You’re the goalie coach.
You’re allowed to have a life. You’re allowed to want things.
You’ve been wanting things since the day you moved into that apartment, and everyone at this rink can see it except maybe the diner girl, who is apparently too busy trying to keep her business alive to notice that a man would move heaven and earth to make sure she had a working space heater. ”
I turned back to my locker and did not continue the conversation.
But the words were already out there, taking up space, making it harder to pretend that whatever this was could be kept quiet.
In a town this small, the secret had already been noticed.
I just had to figure out when to tell her, and the deadline was getting shorter every day.
The diner did not open until three o’clock on Sunday.
I came in at 6:15 p.m.
Maple was behind the counter in a different outfit — jeans and a sweater in a dark blue that made her look like she had slept, which she had not, I could tell by the way she was holding her shoulders, the careful-ness of her movements.
The diner was empty except for them. The light was low.
The pie case was full. Everything was exactly as it had been before the storm except nothing was the same.
The apartment had changed the physics of this space.
Knowing her body had changed the way I could see her standing at the counter, folding a coffee-stained rag, waiting for me.
She looked up when she saw me.
She said, “Hi.”
I said, “Closed?”
“Closed to everyone but you.”
I sat at the counter at the same stool — the one I had been sitting at for eight days straight, morning and evening, every shift, which probably meant something to the rest of the town but was only about the pie to her, I was sure.
She had not mentioned the regularity. She had not asked why I came back.
She had just kept the coffee hot and the pie fresh and looked at me like she was solving a problem.