30. Kieran
Kieran
Greer is in the family section tonight.
The seat next to hers is empty until six minutes before puck drop.
Then Indie walks down the aisle and she sits down beside Greer.
I see her from the bench in the second period.
I see her because I look up at the family section once between the second and third periods, the only time in the game I do, and Lena Diaz is in the seat on the other side of Indie's, with her hand on the back of Indie's chair.
I look back down at my notes.
Lena got Indie there. I don’t know how, but I probably won’t ask.
* * *
We win Game 1, 4-2. Sasha and the third-line center each get goals in the first. The Hurricanes score early in the second to make it 2-1.
We answer with a Mikko deflection three minutes later.
They tie in the third. Sasha scores again at 14:11 to put us up 3-2.
The Hurricanes pull their goalie, we score an empty-netter at 19:42, the horn goes, the Garden roars.
I do the handshake line. The Hurricanes' captain says hell of a series in front of you, Larsen. I say and you. I walk back to the bench.
In the bench-side tunnel on the way to the locker room, the JumboTron above the ice catches the family section one more time. The director in the truck is finding faces — the standard cutaways for a Game 1 Conference Final win. The camera holds on Greer and Indie for several seconds.
It is the first picture of my daughter and the woman I love that has been broadcast on national television.
I am the last person in the building to see it.
* * *
The locker room is loud and full of excitement.
I shake hands with the players. The franchise's communications director is at the door of the locker room with her clipboard, watching the room, not interrupting.
I give her the small nod that means go ahead with the press if you want.
She nods back. She slips into the room, says Coach in fifteen, room is yours, and slips back out.
I go into the small private coach's office, close the door, sit at the desk for forty seconds, and breathe.
When I come out, Mikko is at the bench-side door of the locker room with his sweater off and his hair wet.
He says, "You see them on the JumboTron?"
"I saw."
"Lena Diaz got her there."
“Thanks, Mikko."
"Don't thank me, Coach. Thank my wife. Thank Lena. Drink some water. Go win the rest of these games."
He claps me on the shoulder. He walks past me into the locker room.
* * *
I do the post-game scrum. The reporters ask about the game.
One asks about Sasha's goal. Two ask about the deflection.
One asks about whether Mikko's playoff run is changing anything about his June retirement.
None of them ask me about the family section.
Pat Hennessy is in the second row and does not raise his hand.
I leave the dais at ten-forty and head to Greer’s house.
I do not, on the walk to the SUV, look at my phone.
* * *
She is at her apartment with Lena.
When I let myself in, they are both at the small kitchen table. Greer is in the long charcoal cardigan over sweatpants. Lena is in the deep navy blouse and jeans, with her hair down for the first time since I have met her, and a glass of red wine in front of her.
Greer looks up.
She says: "Indie came."
"I saw."
"She left at the end of the second period but she texted me at ten that she was home."
"Okay."
"She told me to tell you she watched the third on her couch."
"Okay."
Lena stands up from the table, walks past me to the front hall, picks her coat up off the bench, and puts it on. She says: "I am going to the hotel I have booked. I am here for the rest of the week. You two need to be in this apartment alone tonight."
"Lena."
"Yes."
"Thank you."
She says, quietly: "I have known her since she was twenty-two. Don't ask her anything she isn't ready to answer. Sit with her. Hold her. Let her sleep against your shoulder. We figure out the rest of the week in the morning."
"Okay."
"Coach?"
"Yes."
"Good game tonight."
She goes.
I close the door behind her.
* * *
Greer is still at the kitchen table.
I cross the front hall, sit down across from her, and reach across the table for her hand. She gives it to me and says, "Lena texted me at four to tell me she was going to bring her. Said Indie had called her this morning and was asking Lena what to do."
"What did Lena tell her?"
"She told Indie to come to the game and not worry about anything past the puck drop. She told her to leave whenever she needed to. She came, Kieran."
"That's enough for now."
"That is enough for now."
She lifts my hand off the table and presses the back of it against her belly. The baby kicks.
I keep my hand where she has put it.
When she gets up, finally, she does not take my hand to the bedroom. She takes it to the couch.
The small lamp on the side table goes off. She pulls me down beside her in the dark of the front room, tucks her feet under her, leans her head against my shoulder, and puts my hand back on the front of her where the baby has been turning all night.
She says, into the dark: "She came tonight, Kieran."
"She came."
She breathes out — the deepest breath I have felt from her in three weeks.
We sit on the couch in the dark of her apartment for what is probably an hour, without saying anything else, until the breathing against my shoulder slows to the rhythm of sleep.
* * *
The series goes 2-1 Boston after Game 2, 2-2 after the Game 3 road loss, 3-2 Boston after Game 4 home win and Game 5 road win.
Indie sits in the family section for every home game.
Greer sits beside her.
They don’t talk much but they do get up between periods and walk together to the small private lounge the franchise keeps for staff families. They come back together. They sit beside each other through the second and third. After the home wins they wait in the lounge until I come up.
The Globe runs no follow-up piece. The Herald runs no follow-up piece. Brigid Halloran does not, in three weeks, tweet about my family section.
Pat Hennessy files a Game 4 piece on Mikko's playoff run that does not mention the family section once.
The franchise's communications director sends me a one-line text after Game 5 that reads Whatever you are doing, keep doing it.
I am not doing anything.
I am coaching the playoffs.
Greer is in the family section.
Indie is next to her.
That is what is happening.
* * *
Game 6 is on the road, in Carolina, on a Tuesday night. We lose 4-1. The series is 3-3.
Game 7 is in Boston, Thursday night, in forty-eight hours.
I am in the SUV in the long-term lot at Logan at one-thirty on the Wednesday morning after the Game 6 loss.
The team flight got in at twelve-forty. The drive home is the same drive I have made after every late-night arrival back from a road game — Storrow, the dark Garden, the dome of the State House, the South End.
I park outside Greer's building at one-fifty.
I cross the front hall, sit beside her, and put my arm around her shoulders.
She puts her head on my shoulder.
She says, eventually: "Forty-eight hours. Win it."
"That's the plan."
"And if you don't?"
I look down at her.
"If we don't, we don't. I'm coaching the game I am coaching. Whatever the team has, I am going to find it. Whatever it doesn't have, I am not going to invent. If we lose Game 7, we lose Game 7."
"Indie will come."
"I know."
"She told me at the end of the second period of Game 5 that she would be in the family section for Game 7 no matter what."
"Okay."
"She did not tell me what no matter what meant."
"Okay."
She is quiet for a second.
She says: "I think she meant — no matter what the outcome of the season is. No matter what happens to your contract. No matter where we end up. She is going to be in the family section."
"Greer."
"Yes."
"That's what I think she meant, too."
She closes her eyes.
She leans against me.
I close my eyes and listen to her breathe.