Chapter Twelve
She had been awake since before five, dragged from sleep by two alarms and the fear that she had somehow packed everything except the one item that would become essential once she crossed the Atlantic.
Her suitcase had been zipped and waiting beside the apartment door since midnight. She reopened it twice before leaving.
The first time was for another sweater.
The second was to make sure her passport remained in the inside pocket where she had placed it less than six hours earlier.
Nina had offered to drive her to the airport, then withdrawn the offer when Tessa explained how early she needed to leave.
“You know I love you,” Nina said over the phone the night before, “but not enough to experience four in the morning voluntarily.”
Tessa had taken a cab instead.
By the time the plane lifted over Halifax, daylight had only begun spreading across the horizon. Snow covered the roofs beneath them in thin patches, softening the city before it disappeared beneath the clouds.
Tessa watched until there was nothing left to see.
Montreal’s international terminal was decorated for Christmas with artificial garland, red bows and enough instrumental holiday music to make the airport feel trapped inside a department store.
Families filled the gate area carrying gifts, winter coats and children whose excitement had outlasted their patience.
Tessa found a seat near an outlet and plugged in every device she owned.
Her flight to Helsinki would leave shortly after noon and land early the following morning local time. The tournament’s media availabilities were scheduled for that afternoon, which gave her enough time to arrive, check into the hotel and become functional before facing players and cameras.
That was the theory.
She opened the event schedule.
Finland at noon.
Canada at one.
Russia at two.
The first game, Finland against Russia, would begin at three o’clock on Christmas Eve.
Tessa had circled it several times in the printed copy inside her notebook. The tournament organizers could not have designed a better opening if they had chosen the matchup solely for her coverage.
Joona in Helsinki.
Matvei representing Russia.
The young winger trying to score against the goaltender who had spent the first half of the season telling him every goal was luck.
Her phone vibrated beside the laptop.
Nina: Have you started your international hockey adventure?
Tessa: In Montreal.
Nina: Did you bring the correct coat?
Tessa looked at the navy wool coat folded over the handle of her suitcase.
It was the warmest one she owned. She had purchased thermal shirts, better gloves and wool socks after the western trip. The forecast for Helsinki showed temperatures several degrees below freezing, nowhere near what she had experienced in Winnipeg.
She had decided another coat would be an unnecessary expense.
Tessa: I brought layers.
Nina’s answer arrived immediately.
Nina: You didn’t bring the correct coat.
Tessa locked the phone.
She had no intention of allowing Nina to be right about two unrelated things involving Matvei Belov.
Boarding began twenty minutes later.
Tessa stored her suitcase overhead, lowered herself into the window seat and arranged the airline pillow behind her neck. She had chosen the seat because she imagined watching the Atlantic pass beneath them would feel significant.
The view consisted mostly of cloud cover.
She opened the tournament media guide, read three pages and realized she had retained none of them. The words moved across the screen without settling into meaning. Her eyes burned from the early morning and the previous week of work.
Tessa closed the laptop.
For once, she did not argue with exhaustion.
She ate the meal served shortly after takeoff, pulled the thin blanket over her legs and leaned against the window. The vibration of the plane became steady enough to disappear. Voices around her softened. Somewhere ahead, a child cried briefly before falling silent.
Tessa slept.
Not the shallow, fragmented version she usually experienced on planes. She slept deeply enough to miss the lights being dimmed and the drink service that followed. When she opened her eyes, the cabin had become dark except for the small reading lights scattered above other passengers.
The flight map showed them halfway across the Atlantic.
Her neck ached, and one foot had gone numb beneath the bag stored under the seat in front of her, but she felt more rested than she had expected.
Tessa checked the time in Halifax, then in Helsinki.
The difference made both seem incorrect.
She opened the window shade slightly. Darkness pressed against the glass, offering no evidence they were moving at all.
For several minutes, she sat without reaching for her laptop.
She thought about the last time she had left Canada.
A family vacation when she was seventeen, before journalism became a career instead of an idea borrowed from movies.
She had imagined then that adulthood would involve frequent flights, beautiful cities and work important enough to justify crossing an ocean.
The reality included compression socks, airport coffee and an editor asking whether she could turn around twelve hundred words before readers in Halifax woke up.
It was still close enough to the dream that she could recognize it.
Tessa lowered the shade and slept again.
When the cabin lights came on for breakfast, daylight had spread beneath the clouds.
Helsinki appeared through the window less than an hour later, a city of white roofs, dark water and roads carved through snow. Forest surrounded the airport, and the low winter sun cast a pale blue-gray light over everything beneath them.
Tessa pressed closer to the glass.
The city looked quiet from above. Controlled. Almost severe.
She could already understand why Matvei liked it.
That thought arrived too naturally.
She blamed the lack of coffee.
The plane landed shortly after seven on the morning of December 23.
Tessa followed the other passengers through passport control, collected her luggage and stopped in an airport restroom long enough to change her shirt, brush her teeth and make herself look less like someone who had spent the night unconscious against a window.
The sleep helped.
Coffee helped more.
By the time she reached the hotel, she felt almost human.
Her room was ready, a small miracle she accepted without question. Tessa wheeled the suitcase inside, opened the curtains and found herself looking across the narrow street at a larger hotel marked by several black vehicles near the entrance.
Small Russian flags had been placed inside their windshields. The Russian national team was staying across the street.
Of course.
Somewhere behind those windows, Matvei was sleeping, eating breakfast or complaining about the practice schedule in Russian.
Tessa let the curtain fall back into place.
She had several hours before she needed to collect her credential. She showered, unpacked enough clothing to make the room feel temporarily inhabited and set two alarms before lying down.
The plan was to rest for forty-five minutes.
She woke ninety minutes later with one arm beneath the pillow and no memory of turning off either alarm.
Tessa sat up too quickly.
The room tilted, then corrected itself.
She checked the time.
Still enough time to make the media shuttle to the arena.
Barely.
She dressed in black trousers, a cream sweater and the navy coat Nina distrusted. Then she gathered her equipment and boarded the shuttle.
Outside, Helsinki was brighter than it had appeared from the airport.
Christmas lights hung over the streets, simple warm strands that reflected in windows and across patches of ice.
Snow had been pushed into clean banks near the curbs.
Trams moved through the city with an efficiency that made Tessa suspicious of every transportation system she had used in Canada.
The cold felt sharp but manageable.
Her coat was fine.
She sent Nina no evidence of this.
The tournament arena stood near the waterfront, surrounded by temporary signs bearing the Six Nation Showdown logo. Volunteers directed media toward a secured entrance attached to the main building. Inside, the event was less polished than the league’s promotional materials suggested.
Camera operators argued over positions. Reporters from six countries attempted to claim workspace in the temporary media center.
Communications staff explained the differences between mixed zones, formal press conferences and team-specific availabilities while being asked the same questions in several languages.
Tessa collected her credential, found the Tribune’s assigned desk and placed her bag beneath it.
A tournament schedule waited on the table.
The next day’s game time remained highlighted.
Finland versus Russia.
Three o’clock.
She looked toward the ice.
Players in Czechia tracksuits moved through one end of the corridor. Canadian staff carried red equipment bags toward another. The entire building seemed to contain several tournaments at once, each national program operating inside its own language and routines.
Halifax existed here only in fragments.
Joona on Finland’s roster.
Matvei on Russia’s.
Viktor absent from Sweden’s.
Finland’s availability began first inside the main arena concourse.
Players sat at individual tables beneath signs bearing their names and numbers. National and international media moved between them in loosely organized groups. Joona sat near the center wearing a navy Finland tracksuit with the national crest over his heart.
Joona answered questions in Finnish first.
Tessa remained near the back and listened without understanding the words. The difference in him did not require translation. His answers flowed without hesitation. He interrupted one reporter, laughed with another and gestured widely while describing something that made the entire group react.
This was the Joona his teammates probably saw when language did not stand between him and everyone else.