23. Kieran
Kieran
It is six in the morning at Greer's kitchen counter in the South End.
The coffee in front of me has gone cold.
Greer has been asleep in the bedroom since five-fifteen — her first real stretch of sleep after seven hours on the couch with her face against my shirt and her body waking every twenty minutes to cry.
I have not slept. I came out of the bedroom at five forty when her breathing finally steadied, and I have been at the counter since, watching the slow gray of pre-sunrise come up over the alley between her building and the next one.
I pour the cold coffee into the sink, make a fresh pot, drink it black at the counter in the sweater I have been wearing since yesterday.
I pick up the phone and call Indie.
It rings four times and goes to her voicemail. Hi, this is Indie. Leave a message.
I take a breath and leave one.
"Indie. It's Dad. I'm not going to ask you to call me back this morning, and I'm not going to ask you to forgive what I can't un-do. Whenever you're ready, on whatever terms you set, I'm here. I love you. Goodbye."
I hang up, set the phone down on the counter, and look at it for a long minute. It does not ring.
I rinse the mug, write Greer a note on the back of an envelope from the pile by her sugar dish — Sleep. I'll call at lunch. K. — prop the envelope against the dish, take my coat off the back of the chair, and let myself out.
I drive to the practice facility through the late-Sunday-spring traffic on Storrow with the river dark on my left and the dome of the State House gray against the gray sky, and the steady knowledge in the back of my head that my daughter is not, this morning, going to call.
* * *
By eight I'm at my desk on the fifth floor with the door closed, working through the league office's overnight items, the scouting report on Detroit for Saturday's road game, the video coordinator's notes on this past weekend. By 8:20 my morning practice plan is on the screen.
I do my job. I do it the way I have done my job at every desk I've sat at on a Monday morning for twenty-two years. The work this morning is the only thing in the building that doesn't require me to think about my daughter.
* * *
Practice starts at ten. The team is on the ice at nine forty-five for warmups. I'm on the bench with notes in my left hand and the clicker for the video board in my right, and the steady professional face I have been holding since I walked into the building.
The players know.
No one tells me they know, but I know they know, because of the way Sasha looks at me twice in the first five minutes and then makes a point of not looking at me for the rest of the warmup, because of the way the third-line center who has been with the organization for ten years gives me his usual start-of-practice nod and does not say Coach, and because Mikko, on the bench between drills, does not, for the entire first half of practice, make eye contact with me.
He skates over to the bench at the end of the second period of practice, during the line-change drill the assistant coaches are running. He gets a water bottle, drinks, sets it down, and says without looking at me: "How's it going?"
"She won't take my calls."
"She will."
"I left a voicemail at six. She did not call back."
"She probably won't today, Kee."
"What if she doesn't ever?"
He drinks again, sets the bottle down a second time, and skates back to the drill without answering. Halfway through the next change, he looks back at me from the far end of the ice. He mouths, she will.
He skates back to the drill.
* * *
Video runs from twelve to one, the lights down, me at the front with the clicker, the team in the chairs in the back, the assistant coaches in the front row. I do not look at the assistants any longer than I look at any of the players.
At my desk I eat a protein bar, drink a glass of water, check the phone.
Eleven texts.
The first is from Greer at 6:15 — thank you for the note. sleeping. love you.
The second is from Lena at 7:20 — I have her covered, Kieran. Take care of yourself today.
The third is from my GM at 8:05 — Stop by my office at one-thirty.
The fourth is from a number I don't have in my contacts. Coach — Pat Hennessy, Herald. I'm checking in. The piece I owe my editor by Wednesday won't write itself. If there is anything you would like me to know before I file it, let me know. — PH.
I read it twice. He has not said he knows. He has not named me. He is fishing. Mikko has held him off twice now, and Pat is giving me a third chance to be the one who tells him.
I do not write back yet.
The other seven texts are from my video coordinator, an assistant coach, the team doctor, the franchise's communications director, two old coaching friends checking in without saying why, and Mikko's wife.
I read the one from Mikko's wife. Kieran — Mikko told me on Saturday. I will not say a word to anyone. Please tell Greer I am here if she needs anything. — Anya.
I write back: Thank you, Anya.
I close the phone and head to Declan's office.
* * *
Declan's door is open when I get there. He sees me and says, "Close it."
He nods at the chair and looks at me without saying anything for ten seconds.
Then, "Kee, tell me what you want to tell me."
I look at him across the desk. The framed photograph behind his head of his two grown sons in 2019 is the photograph I sat across from on the morning we found Mikko's name on the cap binder.
The cap binder is on the same desk. The small clock on the corner of the desk is the clock I have looked at across this desk many, many times.
I take a breath.
"The baby is mine."
He nods once.
He does not ask the next obvious question, because Declan has been a GM long enough to know which questions get asked and which ones don't.
"How long have you and Ms. Callahan been together?"
"Since November."
"Does Indie know?"
"Yes, as of yesterday afternoon. She is not currently speaking to me."
He is quiet for a moment, then he leans back in the chair the way he leans back when the work part of the conversation is done and the friend part is about to start.
"Kee."
"Yes."
"What do you need from me?"
"Two things. First — Pat Hennessy is going to file a piece by Wednesday. He doesn't have the father yet. He is fishing. I'm going to give him something on Tuesday so he doesn't write whatever he can stitch together from rumors."
"Okay."
"Second — Greer is at twenty-two weeks. She has been on the clinic-only side since March 15. The protocol there is solid. The work part of this is clean. I want you to know that before anyone else tries to make it sound like it isn't."
"I know it is, Kee. I have read the file. It has been clean since the day she walked into Priya's office in February."
"You knew."
"Priya does not, by her protocol, tell me anything more than she has to. She told me, in February, exactly what she was required to tell me. She did not mention anything about you of course."
"Okay."
"You have my office, my schedule, and the communications director on whatever you need this week. The franchise's line is no comment on personal matters of staff. That line holds through the playoff run. After May, you and I will figure out the rest of it."
"Thank you, Declan."
"Kee."
"Yes."
"Tell your daughter I asked after her."
"I will."
I stand. We shake hands across the desk. I leave.
* * *
I do the daily media availability at two.
The franchise's communications director has prepped me with the same lines she preps me with every day; the lines a head coach gives a press room on the day after a back-to-back when the locker room is in third place and the playoffs are in three weeks.
I deliver them. The questions come in; Saturday in Detroit, line combinations for Wednesday, whether Mikko is going to play in Toronto, Sasha's points pace, and I answer each one.
Nobody in the press room asks about the Herald item. Pat Hennessy is in the second row in the tweed jacket he always wears. He does not raise his hand.
I get up, thank the room, walk off the dais. Pat catches me in the side corridor on the way to the elevator. He has a coffee in one hand and the press credential around his neck.
"Coach."
"Pat."
"Got two minutes?"
"Fine."
"I am following the developments on your medical staff.
My editor wants the next piece by Wednesday morning at six.
If you have anything to give me — on the record, off the record, on background — let me know.
I am not going to tell you what to give me.
I have, in thirty-eight years on this beat, never asked a coach to source a piece against his own family. "
"Pat."
"Yes."
"Tuesday morning. My office. Bring a notebook."
He nods, the small private nod of a man who has been on this beat long enough to know what my office and Tuesday morning mean coming from a head coach. "Tuesday morning. I'll be there."
"Thank you."
He goes. I take the stairs to the fifth floor, sit at my desk, close the door, and do not move for what is probably twenty minutes.
* * *
I drive to Greer's at eight, still not having heard from Indie.
I let myself in with the key.
She is on the couch and looks up when she hears the door but does not get up. I cross the front hall, sit down beside her, put my arm around her shoulders. She puts her head on my shoulder.
Then she says, into my shoulder: "She didn't call."
"She didn't call."
"Did you leave a message?"
"I left the message."
"What did you say?"
I tell her. She listens without lifting her head off my shoulder. When I am done, she asks, "Pat Hennessy?"
"He's coming to my office Tuesday morning. I told Declan today, and Declan is giving us the back of the franchise. The line is no comment on personal matters of staff through the playoff run."
"You told Declan."
"Yes. He already knew. He has known since February. He did not, of course, tell anyone."
She nods against my shoulder. "Then by Wednesday it's out."
"By Wednesday it is out."
"On our terms or close to it."
"As close as we can manage."
She is quiet for a long second. "Kieran."
"Yes."
"Will Indie forgive us?"
"I don't know."
"I don't know either."