Chapter 21
MAPLE
Ihad read the text ninety-four times.
Mira was counting. She had been standing at the back counter of the diner for the past two hours, and every time I picked up my phone and looked at the message again, she said a number.
Ninety-three. Ninety-four. Ninety-five. The running tally of my inability to decide what to do with the words Knox had sent me four days ago from a hotel room in Duluth.
I’m sorry. I will keep being sorry. Tell me when to come home.
The team had come back from the road game on Tuesday.
It was now Wednesday evening, the diner was closed, and I was standing behind my counter running the glass down with a rag that I had stopped actually using for anything useful and had started using instead as a prop for looking like I was doing something while my brain sat in the corner and screamed.
Mira said, “Ninety-five. Jesus, Maple. Either reply or delete it. This is killing me.”
I said, “You’re not supposed to be counting.”
Mira said, “You asked me to count.”
I said, “I said it out loud. That doesn’t mean you were supposed to actually—”
She said, “Maple.”
I said, “What.”
She said, “Go to the rink. See if he’s there. See what he’s doing. See if he’s still in the apartment or if he’s gone. Then decide.”
I said, “He’s at the rink. It’s Wednesday. He’s always at the rink on Wednesday.”
Mira said, “So go.”
I said, “I’m not going to the rink.”
Mira said, “Yes, you are. You’re going to close that rag over the counter, you’re going to take off your apron, and you’re going to walk out that door, and you’re going to drive to the rink and you’re going to watch him work, and then maybe you’re going to figure out whether he’s a man who deserves to come home or a man who should stay exactly where he is. ”
I said, “What if he doesn’t deserve to come home.”
Mira said, “Then you’ll know. And you can stop reading the text ninety-six times and you can actually delete it and move on.
But if he does deserve it, if you look at him and you understand that the thing he did was done because he loves you and not because he’s trying to own you, then maybe you can figure out how to let him back in. ”
She was right.
Of course she was right.
Mira was always right, which was infuriating, which was why she was my best friend, which was why she was also the person who drove me crazy more than anyone else in the world besides Knox.
I said, “Fine. But if I do this, you’re closing up.”
Mira said, “Already done. Go.”
The rink was dark.
Not dark like it was closed. Dark like it was in that particular state of being between things—after practice, before the evening games, in that window when the Fury players were mostly gone and the ice was waiting for the next thing to happen.
The parking lot was almost empty. Knox’s truck was in the lot, parked in the corner like he was trying to make himself small.
I sat in my truck in the parking lot for seven minutes, trying to decide whether I was actually going to go inside or whether I was going to sit here like a coward until the reasonable thing to do was to go home and text Knox and say something sensible and mature.
I got out of the truck.
I walked to the rink door. The cold was significant. My hands were shaking as I pulled the door open.
I opened it.
The Frostbite Arena was quiet in a way that rinks are quiet when the stands are empty and the air is still and the only sound is the particular hum of the refrigeration system working to keep the ice solid.
I walked down the hallway that led to the ice, following the sound of skates moving across frozen water.
Knox was alone on the ice.
I could see him from the tunnel that led down to the boards.
He was in a white Frostbite practice jersey, no pads, just him and the ice and the stick in his hands.
He was moving slowly, deliberately, the way a man moves when he is practicing something that needs to be practiced—not the violent quick movements of a goalie working with a team, but the slow, careful movements of a man who is remembering how to do something he had almost forgotten.
His movements were precise. His positioning was perfect.
He was a man trying to stay sane by doing the work that defined him.
He moved to the left post.
He moved to the right post.
He moved to the crease and then back to the goal line.
He was not stopping pucks. He was not practicing in any real sense.
He was skating the position, muscle-memory work, the kind of thing you do when you are trying to keep your body from disappearing entirely.
He moved with the particular grace of a man who had spent his whole life on ice, who understood the geometry of a hockey rink better than he understood the geometry of his own life.
I watched him for ten minutes.
Ten minutes of me standing in the tunnel in my boots and my diner apron and my everyday clothes, watching the man who had lied to me skate alone on an ice rink like he was paying penance for something.
He had lost weight. He had dark circles under his eyes.
He looked like a man who had not been sleeping, who had been spending his nights alone in an apartment thinking about his mistakes.
He did not see me.
I walked onto the ice.
I was wearing boots. Canvas-and-rubber hiking boots with a terrible grip on frozen water.
I walked onto the ice the way a woman walks toward something she is afraid of—slowly, carefully, one boot in front of the other.
The ice was slick under my soles. The arena was cold.
I was very aware of the particular fragility of my own balance.
Knox stopped.
He was standing at the far end of the ice, by the goal line.
He was watching me walk toward him. His hands were loose around the stick.
His expression was something I could not read.
He looked like a man who was not sure whether he was seeing something real or whether his grief was manifesting itself as hallucination.
I kept walking.
When I was three feet away from him, I stopped.
I said, “I cannot have a man who keeps secrets to spare me.”
He said nothing.
I said, “I am not a thing to be spared. I am not something fragile that you get to protect by lying. I am a woman who is trying to keep her diner alive and trying to figure out whether the man in my apartment is the man I thought he was. And you made that harder by deciding that I needed protecting.”
He said, “I know. I know now.”
I said, “Do you. Because it seems to me like you’re still trying to fix this without me.
You’re still trying to control the outcome.
You’re still not trusting me with your own life.
You’re trusting me with your body and your apartment and your presence, but you’re not trusting me with the things that matter. ”
He said, “What are you asking me to do.”
I said, “I’m asking you to let me in. All the way in. The good parts and the hard parts. I’m asking you to tell me when the team is struggling, when you’re struggling, when you don’t know what to do. I’m asking you to trust me with the thing you’re most afraid of.”
He said, “Okay.”
I said, “Okay.”
He said, “Do you want me to come home.”
I said, “Not yet. Not tonight. I’m not ready to look at you like you didn’t hurt me, and I’m not ready to pretend that two weeks of lying is something I can just forget.
But I want you to come back. Slowly. Like we’re starting over.
Like this is the second first date and you’re the man I’m trying to understand.
Not the man I already love. The man I’m deciding whether to love again. ”
He said, “How long will that take.”
I said, “I don’t know. A week. A month. The rest of the time it takes for me to believe that the man in the apartment is the man who’s standing in front of me right now and not the man who let me cry alone for three days.”
He said, “I never let you cry alone. I stayed in the apartment.”
I said, “You stayed away. That’s not the same thing.”
He was quiet.
I said, “I’m going home. You’re going to take another thirty minutes on the ice, and then you’re going to lock this place up, and you’re going to drive home exactly thirty seconds behind me.
Not next to me. Not in front of me. Thirty seconds behind, like you’re learning how to follow instead of lead. ”
I turned around.
I walked back toward the tunnel, my boots slipping on the ice, my hands reaching out to steady myself against the boards.
I was very aware of the sound of my boots on the ice.
I was very aware of the particular vulnerability of walking away when I was not sure that the person behind me would follow.
I did not look back.
I walked through the hallway and out to my truck and I got in and I started the engine and I drove out of the parking lot going exactly thirty-five miles per hour. I was shaking. My hands were on the steering wheel and they were shaking.
In my rearview mirror, I could see the rink doors.
Knox was not following yet.
He was still inside. He was still on the ice, still processing what had just happened, still understanding that the woman he loved had walked out onto the ice in her boots to tell him that she was not ready to forgive him but she was willing to try.
I drove to my house and I parked in the driveway and I sat in my truck and I counted to thirty, Mississippi-slow, the way Theo Jr. had taught me to count when we were playing hide-and-seek last spring.
One Mississippi.
Two Mississippi.
Three Mississippi.
The count felt like an eternity. Each second felt like a test—would he come? Would he follow? Would he understand that thirty seconds behind meant he was learning to trust the process, learning to follow her lead instead of trying to control the outcome?
At twenty-nine Mississippi, Knox’s truck pulled into the driveway.
He parked on the street, not in the driveway. Not close enough to claim possession. Close enough to be present, far enough away to understand that he was asking for permission.