25. Kieran
Kieran
We line up for the anthem.
Greer is in the building tonight, she has been at every home game from the medical wing's treatment room since she moved off the bench at twenty-four weeks, with a radio to the bench in case Will needs her and the door of her office closed.
The arena ceiling is between us all night, but at least the same building.
The cameras pan to the family section.
Indie's seat is in the second row from the back, on the aisle. She has sat in it for every Round 1 home game.
It is empty tonight.
The cameras find it about thirty seconds into the anthem, and by the end of the anthem, they have held on it for three different cutaways.
The director in the truck knows what she has.
We have been the league's lead human-interest story for two weeks, and tonight there is an empty seat in the front row of the family section.
By the time we drop the puck, my phone in the breast pocket of my suit jacket has buzzed eleven times. I do not look at it.
By the third intermission of Game 1 the phone has buzzed another eighteen times.
I look at exactly one of the alerts; the one from the franchise's communications director that reads Brigid Halloran has tweeted about the empty seat.
We are not responding. I close the screen without looking at the tweet. I do not have to. I know what it says.
We win Game 1 in regulation, 4-1. I do not, in the post-game scrum, look at any of the reporters in the second row.
I drive to Greer's after midnight. She is awake on the couch in soft sweatpants and one of my long-sleeved tees, the television on the post-game coverage on mute. She does not get up when I close the door behind me. I cross the front hall, sit beside her, and put my arm around her shoulders.
She says: "I saw the empty seat. I'm sorry, Kieran."
"You have nothing to be sorry for."
She puts her head on my shoulder. We do not talk again until I leave at five-fifteen for morning skate.
* * *
Game 2 is Monday at the Garden. We lose 3-2 in overtime. The crowd is louder than it was for Game 1. The empty seat stays empty. Brigid Halloran tweets again. The franchise's communications director sends a one-line text just after eleven that reads Still not responding.
I don't respond either.
I drive to Greer's, sleep at her apartment for three hours, leave before sunrise for the morning skate before the flight to Toronto.
* * *
Game 3 is in Toronto on Wednesday night.
We are down 1-2 in the series by the third period. Toronto's crowd is the smartest hockey crowd in the league and the meanest one in Canada, and they have spent eighteen minutes of the third period chanting the headline of Pat Hennessy's piece from two weeks ago at me from the upper deck.
I do not look up.
In the break between the second and third periods, my phone vibrates in the breast pocket of the suit jacket I have hung on the back of the chair in the visiting coach's office. I am alone in the office for ninety seconds, and I have not heard from Greer all day, so I check.
It is not Greer.
It is a number I don't have in my contacts, with a 401 area code.
Coach Larsen. This is Lena Diaz. I am at Greer's tonight.
She wrote a resignation letter today and showed it to me an hour ago.
It is sitting in her drafts. She has not sent it, and as far as I know, she has not told you it exists.
She asked me not to call you. I am calling anyway.
The decision is hers, but I think you should know where her head is at. I trust her with you.
— Lena .
I read it twice.
I write back: Thank you, Lena.
She does not reply.
I put the phone back in the suit pocket, walk back down the corridor to the bench, coach the third period of Game 3, and we lose 4-2.
* * *
Game 4 is Friday in Toronto. We win 5-2. Sasha gets a hat trick. The crowd in the upper deck switches from chanting the Pat Hennessy headline to booing Sasha, which the home-team head coach takes as a small private victory.
We fly back to Boston Saturday morning. Series tied 2-2.
The flight home is two hours and forty minutes.
I do not write Lena back a second time. I do not say anything about the letter to anyone.
Greer has not sent it. Lena told me about it so I would not be on the wrong end of a closed door when she did.
The flight gives me two hours and forty minutes to figure out what to say when I get home.
* * *
Game 5 is at the Garden on Sunday night.
I do the line review fifteen minutes before warmups. The room is quiet, careful, every player breathing through their nose. Sasha gives the two-sentence captain's speech he gives before every Game 5 home game, the one that ends with the word now.
We walk to the bench.
The anthem.
The family-section camera.
Empty seat.
I do not look up at the family section.
The puck drops. Sasha scores the first goal at 4:22 of the first period.
Toronto scores at 11:30. We score again at 17:08 to take the period 2-1.
Toronto ties it at the start of the second.
Mikko deflects from the slot at 8:14 of the second to make it 3-2.
Toronto pulls their goalie with 1:40 left in the third.
We hold. Sasha clears the puck off the boards with fourteen seconds left.
The horn goes. We win 3-2. The series is over. We are going to the second round.
The Garden crowd is loud and glad and on its feet, the way it always is when the team has just closed out a Round 1 series. The handshake line happens. The Toronto captain shakes my hand, says good series, Kee, and moves on.
I do not, on the walk back to the locker room, smile.
The locker room is muted because the head coach is not celebrating. The room takes its tone from the room's coach, and the room is, by the time I have made it through the doorway, drinking water and shaking hands with each other and not opening the champagne the equipment manager has wheeled in.
I shake hands with the players, with the assistant coaches, with Mikko last.
Mikko does not, in the handshake, say anything.
I go into the small private coach's office off the locker room, close the door, sit at the desk, and put my head in my hands for what is probably four minutes.
When I take my hands down, there is one new text on my phone.
Not from Indie.
From Greer.
You won. I'm proud of you.
I read it three times.
I write back: Thank you, Greer. Coming over.
I shower, get back into the suit, do the post-game scrum on autopilot, sign the post-game notes the assistant coach has put in my inbox. The building is mostly empty by the time I leave.
I drive to her apartment.
She is awake on the couch with the television still on the muted post-game coverage.
The room smells like the tea she has been drinking.
She gets up, this time, when I come in. She crosses the front hall, puts both her hands flat against the front of my dress shirt, and kisses me on the mouth, slow and careful, the way she has been kissing me on the mouth for three weeks now.
"You won," she says, into my mouth.
"We won."
"Mikko's deflection."
"You saw it."
"I see all of them, Kieran."
"Greer."
"Yes."
"Three days off. Round 2 starts Wednesday."
"I know."
"I have you for the next three days."
"You have me."
She walks me to the couch. We sit. She puts her head on my shoulder.
I do not turn the television off. The closed captions run across the bottom of the screen, Sasha being interviewed by ESPN in the visiting room, the franchise issuing no statement, Brigid Halloran tweeting again about the family section.
I do not look at the screen.
I look at the woman on the couch beside me with her head on my shoulder, in the tee that has my name across the back, with the curve at her middle that I have not, in three weeks, put my hand on a single time without feeling the baby moving under my palm.
I have, also, the resignation letter Lena texted me about in Toronto two nights ago.
I have not, yet, said anything about it.
I am not, tonight, going to.
Tonight is three days off, the couch, and the steady rhythm under my palm. Tomorrow I will ask her about the letter. Tonight I will sit here and let her sleep against my shoulder.
I close my eyes.
Greer's hand finds mine on the couch.
The muted post-game coverage keeps running.
The next three days start.