Twenty-Nine
The coffee maker stops hissing.
I set my phone on the bar and press both palms flat against the wood.
My lawyer talked for eleven minutes. I know because I watched the clock over the office door, tuning out the reporters who could see my light on through the window.
Extension filing goes out the second offices open tomorrow—holiday contractor provision, BC Building Code, and she sounds sure enough that I let myself believe it too.
Then, slower, like she’s choosing each word before she hands it over: one of the inspectors flagged in our compliance order has a pattern.
Three businesses in the corridor, all cited the same quarter, all sitting on properties tied to Westfield Sports & Entertainment.
A line of inquiry, she calls it. I shelve that where I file everything that might explode later: below the waterline. For now.
Delilah hangs up at the far end of the bar and drops her phone on a stack of printouts—Reza’s assessment, the email chain with the city, the building code provision she’s been highlighting. She looks like she hasn’t stopped. She looks like she doesn’t plan to.
The baseboard heater ticks against the cold. Something ozone-sharp drifts from the electrical panel Reza left exposed in the utility closet—gray metal, wiring spilling out, the thing that makes my skin prickle every time I pass it.
Outside, a reporter’s voice lifts. Then another.
I stop listening.
My eyes find Dad’s photo by the till instead.
Him leaning against this same bar top—except it’s pristine, newly built—still in his sawdust-speckled work jacket.
Arms folded, grinning at whoever held the camera like they’d just told the worst joke he’d ever heard.
I moved the photo to the office once—safer there.
Moved it back the same night because the bar felt wrong without him watching the room.
The Penalty Box started as a place to watch hockey. That’s all it was. A spot for people who couldn’t afford the suite seats. A spot for people like him.
And here I am, standing in my own bar, hiding from reporters, while someone tries to turn my dad’s place into a municipal code violation.
The heater clicks.
Enough hiding.
I set my mug down. “Delilah.”
She looks up.
“Unlock the front door.”
Gabriel pushes off the bar edge behind me. I feel it without turning.
“Ivy—”
“I know.” I don’t look at him. I’m looking at Dad’s photo. “Stand one step behind me.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Gabriel.” I say it once, flat and final, the way I say last call. “One step.”
I toss a glance over my shoulder. The shift of him moving back.
Delilah is already off the stool, lips pressed thin, eyes scanning my face for the plan. She doesn’t question if I’m sure. She crosses to the door, flips the chain, twists the deadbolt. The CLOSED sign swings.
Frigid air lashes my cheeks. The porch boards are frozen under my bare feet, salt grit biting into the skin. No time for a jacket or shoes. I squint through the wintry flurry. The cameras find me before I’m through the frame.
Flashguns bleach the porch white. The cold bites into my lungs so fast I want to cough, but I breathe through it—slow, low.
The reporters surge one half-step forward, mics tilting up like antennae. Three in front, maybe four behind. Another on the far side of the van, panning.
I find the doorframe with my left hand. Brace.
“Ms. Hayes—”
“I have a statement,” I interrupt, my voice as crisp as the air. I hold up my pointer and middle fingers. “I’ll take two questions after.”
A ripple through the cluster. Pens come up. Phones lock onto my face.
Gabriel’s heat presses against my back—a solid wall I don’t lean into. Not yet. Not on camera.
“The Penalty Box is my father’s legacy,” I say, the cold sharpening my words as they hang in the air.
“A few days before Christmas, the city handed us a compliance order. Our very first. They gave us exactly two weeks, during the one week of the year when you can’t hire a licensed electrician in this province for love or money.
” Flashbulbs pop, white and relentless, but I don’t blink through a single one.
“The estimate alone runs higher than what this bar nets in a season. It was designed to be a death blow.”
My knuckles flex against the doorframe. I scan the faces of the reporters, pausing long enough for them to know I’m human, to connect.
“Here’s what I’m not going to do.” Beat. “I’m not going to roll over.” My voice stays conversational now, like I’m taking an order. “I’ll dig into savings. Pick up a wrench. Cash in every favor this Village owes me. Whatever it takes, the doors stay open.”
A mic creeps closer. I hold my ground.
“And if there’s a billionaire out there who decided to bury a small-town sports bar on Christmas week—” I find the nearest lens. Let one corner of my mouth lift. “—coffee’s on. I’m easy to find.”
“My dad opened this place twenty-three years ago on a bank loan and more nerve than sense. We’ve outlasted a recession, two roof collapses, and a four-year parking war with the ski hill. We’ll outlast this, too.”
The silence cuts deep before three reporters start talking at once. I point to the one closest to the door.
“Is there a connection between the compliance order and the Sin Bin Lounge?” her mic tilts up.
“The order arrived the same week the Sin Bin’s opening was announced, and fourteen days before my kitchen would be forced to close.” I keep my voice dead level. “You can draw your own lines.”
She writes fast. I point to the second reporter—younger, a local paper lanyard, phone held up instead of a mic.
“With everything going on, will The Penalty Box even be open this weekend?”
A laugh almost gets free before I catch it.
“Saturday, Sunday, same hours as always. Same broken, free-for-all jukebox, too—we still haven’t fixed it.
” I let my eyes drift over the cluster of cameras, the vans, the lights bleaching the porch white at ten in the morning on a holiday.
“Though I’ll be honest, I don’t think I need to buy ad space this month. ”
A ripple of laughter breaks through the cluster.
“That’s two. Thanks for coming.”
I step back through the door.
Delilah swings it shut and slides the chain before I can exhale.
The room smells like coffee, wet wool, and the faint edge of my own sweat.
I press my hands flat to the bar top, lean my weight into them, let the cold still living in my palms bleed into the wood.
The bar is still broken and still cited. But the fine clock’s about to freeze, and every camera on that sidewalk just got a better story than the one Westfield paid for.
I look at Dad’s photo. Still standing, old man.
Outside, the reporter’s voice carries on. Thinner now, less urgent—the fill-time mumble of a live shot with nothing left to break.
I straighten. My spine protests—all the places I slept wrong on the pullout complaining at once. I ignore them.
The reporters take their time scattering. I watch through the glass as the cluster on the sidewalk loosens—one peels off already typing, another presses a phone to her ear, gesturing at the van like she’s narrating the whole thing for someone who wasn’t here for it.
My phone buzzes against the bar. A text from my lawyer: Extension’s drafted and queued for nine tomorrow. I’ll confirm the second it’s stamped. I read it twice before my shoulders drop the half inch they’ve been owed since December.
I restack pint glasses. Wipe a counter that’s already clean. By the time the second knock comes, my hands have finally stopped shaking.
Not the sharp reporter knock. Two taps, then a pause. Soft, muffled voices on the other side.
I move to the door and open it, keeping the chain on until I can see.
A woman on the porch—late thirties, toque with a pompom, a girl of maybe nine or ten tucked against her side. The girl has a Wolves toque to match and a jacket covered in the kind of pins you collect at hockey tournaments. Three provinces’ worth.
“Sorry to interrupt,” she says. “I was—we were here for the Howloween event, back in October. My daughter plays U11.” She puts a hand on the girl’s shoulder.
“She saw you on TikTok this morning. I know it’s—we weren’t sure if we should knock.
” A short, embarrassed laugh. “She wanted to say thank you. For last night.”
The girl stares up at me with the frank, unblinking attention that children have before they learn to pretend they’re not staring. Her tournament pins catch the light.
“Thank you,” the girl says. Clear and simple, the way kids say the truest things.
I crouch down to her level.
“What’s your position?”
“Left wing,” she says. “But I want to play centre.”
“Centres eat more breakfasts,” I tell her seriously. “Worth knowing upfront.”
She considers this. Nods.
I straighten, and the mother’s expression shifts—something careful in it.
“I don’t know how you’re fixed for time, with everything that’s—” She stops, regroups.
“But if you ever wanted to come watch a practice sometime. Or if you’d ever consider…
” She pulls a card from her jacket pocket, holds it out.
“We’re always looking for coaches who actually played the game. Especially for the girls’ side.”
I take the card.
The name is printed above a Whistler Minor Hockey Association logo, a phone number, and the words U11 Girls Program in small blue text.
Not right now arrives before I decide to say it. Seven years of telling myself exactly that—every stick bag that catches my eye outside the rec center, every WMHA newsletter I delete without opening. I’ve never had to say it out loud before. Nobody’s ever asked.
This girl just did.
“Not right now,” I say. “But—thank you. I mean it.”
The mother nods. No pushback, no pitch. She squeezes her daughter’s shoulder, and they turn back down the porch steps into the cold morning.
I watch them until they reach the sidewalk.
Her hand stays on her daughter’s shoulder the whole way down—steady, unhurried, the kind of touch that doesn’t need words to mean I’ve got you.