Chapter 18
LIAM
Ishowed up at Anne's apartment early with coffee and donuts.
Anne opened the door in pajamas, hair messy, eyes still soft with sleep. She looked at the coffee, then at me, then at the coffee again.
"You're early," she said, but she was already smiling.
"Couldn't sleep." I handed her the cup. "Is he up?"
"Is he—" She laughed. "He's been up for hours. He's already dressed."
"In what?"
She stepped aside to let me in, and I got my answer immediately.
Finn came running from the living room wearing a St. Louis Blaze shirt that hung almost to his knees, number 17 on the back, his name — or what I assumed was his name — written in marker on a piece of tape stuck to the front.
FINN
He'd written it himself. The letters were uneven and the tape was crooked and I had to look at the ceiling for a second to get myself together.
"Daddy! Are we going? Are we going right now?"
"We're going right now." I crouched down to his level. "But first — did you write that yourself?"
He looked down at his chest, proud. "Mommy helped with the tape. But I did the letters."
"It's perfect."
He beamed like I'd told him he'd won something.
Carol appeared from the kitchen with her own coffee, took one look at my face, and quietly went back to the kitchen. She was good at knowing when to give people a minute.
Anne stepped close and straightened Finn's collar. "Be good for Daddy. Listen to what he says on the ice."
"I will! Can we go now?"
"Go."
He grabbed my hand and pulled.
The drive to the rink was fifteen minutes of pure Finn — questions layered on top of questions without waiting for answers, delivered at the speed of a child who had been thinking about this moment for his entire conscious life.
"How big is the ice? How fast can you skate? Do you ever fall? What happens if you get hurt during a game? Do the other players know about me? Will they like me?"
"Two hundred feet long. Very fast. Yes. I get back up. Not yet. And they're going to love you."
"How do you know they'll love me?"
"Because you're my son. That makes you automatically cool."
He considered this seriously. "That's true," he decided.
When we pulled into the players' entrance, he went quiet for the first time all morning. Just stared at the building with enormous eyes.
"This is where you work?"
"This is where I work."
"Every day?"
"Most days."
He took that in. Looked at me. "It's really big."
"Wait until you see the ice."
Marcus at the security desk did a double take when we came through.
"O'Connell. Who's this young man?"
"This is my son Finn. He's here to supervise practice."
Finn stood up straighter immediately. "I'm supervising."
Marcus pressed his lips together hard. "Well. We'll all be on our best behavior then."
I let Finn lead the way down the corridor, pointing out the trophy cases, the championship banners, the team photos on the walls. He stopped at a photo from two seasons ago.
"Is that you?"
"That's me. Number seventeen."
He studied it. "You look the same."
"I'm a little older now."
"You don't look older." He considered. "Maybe a little."
"Thanks, buddy."
The locker room was half-full when we arrived — early guys stretching, taping, settling in before practice. The conversation stopped when Finn walked in.
Carter spotted us first and his whole face changed.
"Well." He crossed the room and crouched to Finn's level. "You must be Finn. I've heard a lot about you."
Finn looked up at me.
"This is Carter," I said. "My linemate. He passes me the puck."
"So you can score goals?"
"That's the idea," Carter said. "Your dad's pretty good at it."
"I know. I watched the replay of both his goals. Mommy showed me on her laptop."
Carter looked at me over Finn's head with an expression that said I like this kid already.
The rest of the guys filtered in and each of them stopped to say hello — Jensen, who had the grace to look slightly sheepish when he shook Finn's hand, Travis, a couple of the defensemen.
Hayes, our captain, sat down at Finn's level and had a full conversation about what the C on his jersey meant and why captains were important.
Finn absorbed everything with the focused intensity of someone taking notes.
By the time we headed for the ice, he'd been promised autographs, a tour of the equipment room, and an introduction to the Zamboni driver. Carter had also, ill-advisedly, mentioned that he could do a backflip on skates, which meant that was now the thing Finn most wanted to see in the world.
The rink was empty and perfect.
Fresh ice, clean lines, the cold hitting you the moment the door opened. I'd been coming to rinks since I was four years old and it still did something to me every single time — that particular smell, that particular cold, the way sound moved differently over ice.
Finn stood at the boards and stared.
"It's so big," he breathed.
"It's exactly the right size."
"Can we go on it?"
I was already in skates. I lifted him over the boards and set him down on the ice in his sneakers, and he immediately grabbed onto my arm as his feet started sliding in six directions.
"It's so slippery!"
"That's the point. Here — hold my stick. Both hands."
He gripped it with white knuckles, and I skated backward slowly, pulling him out onto the open ice. His feet slid and scrambled and he laughed so hard he could barely stay upright.
"Faster!"
I picked up speed.
"Faster, Daddy!"
I went faster, pulling him in a wide arc toward the far end, his sneakers barely touching the surface, his whole face open and delighted and completely unguarded in the way that only happened when a child was experiencing pure joy and hadn't thought yet to perform it for anyone.
We made a full lap. He demanded another. We did three.
Then I worked with him on standing — feet apart, weight forward, how to feel the glide instead of fighting it. He fell a dozen times. Got up every single time. Never complained once. Just looked at the ice like it had personally challenged him and got back to his feet.
I noticed Anne at the glass with her mom, watching. I didn't look too long because I couldn't afford to lose it in front of my entire team.
The other guys started coming out for warmups, and Finn watched them with huge eyes as they moved — fast and practiced and effortless, the way twenty years of skating looked when it finally became instinct.
Carter came over and stopped hard, spraying ice across Finn's shoes.
Finn shrieked with laughter.
"You want to see something?" Carter asked.
"The backflip?"
Carter looked at me. "You told him."
"He told himself somehow."
Carter shrugged, built up speed down the length of the ice, and launched into a clean backflip that landed perfectly. He skated back to us like he'd done nothing remarkable.
Finn's mouth was hanging open.
"How," he said. Just the one word.
"Lots of practice." Carter tapped his helmet. "Maybe when you're older."
"I'm going to learn that," Finn announced, with the absolute certainty of a child who has just decided something irrevocable.
"I believe you," I said. "But first — bench. Practice is starting."
I skated him over to the players' bench and got him settled. The helmet I put on him was several sizes too large and immediately slid down over his eyes, and he pushed it up with both hands and looked out at the ice with enormous dignity.
He looked like a bobblehead. He looked like my son.
"You good?" I asked.
"I'm ready," he said seriously.
Coach Reynolds blew the whistle.
Practice was focused and efficient — Coach keeping us fresh between games, no wasted energy. We worked power play adjustments, defensive zone exits, neutral zone regroups. Dallas had collapsed on me in Game 2, so we spent time moving me off the half-wall, creating shooting lanes.
Every few minutes I'd check the bench.
Every time, Finn was watching with complete and total concentration — elbows on his knees, chin on his fists, helmet pushed up on his forehead. The same way I'd watched tape for years. The same way I sat when I was working through a problem on the ice.
When I scored on a wrister during a shooting drill — five-hole, not my most elegant goal but clean — Finn jumped off the bench and cheered so loud half the team looked over.
A few guys grinned. Coach didn't stop the drill but I caught the corner of his mouth moving.
After practice, Coach gathered us at center ice.
"We're up 2-0. Game 3 is home ice. They're going to come out physical — expect them to take some liberties. Stay disciplined. Don't retaliate. We win our special teams, we close this out." He looked around the group. "That's all."
Sticks tapped. The group broke.
In the locker room, Finn sat between me and Carter and watched everything with the same focused attention he'd had on the bench. The noise and the smell and the easy locker room ribbing — he absorbed all of it without speaking, which was unusual enough for him that Carter noticed.
"You okay, Finn?"
"I'm thinking," Finn said seriously.
"About what?"
"About how I'm going to tell Justin at school about all of this. There's a lot to remember."
Carter covered his mouth with his fist.
Hayes stopped by on his way out and crouched down. "Hey Finn. Want to meet the Zamboni driver?"
Finn looked at me. I nodded.
He slid off the bench and took Hayes's hand and walked out like he owned the place, the enormous borrowed helmet tucked under his arm.
I watched him go.
Carter sat down next to me in the quiet.
"How does it feel?" he said.
I thought about it for a moment. About Finn on the ice this morning, feet sliding, laughing so hard he couldn't stand. About him in the number 17 jersey with his name written in marker. About him on the bench with his chin on his fists, watching me work.
"Like I didn't know what I was missing," I said. "And now I do."
Carter nodded. Said nothing else, which was the right thing.
Anne and her mom were in the hallway when Finn and I came out — Finn clutching the puck Carter had given him in one hand and the Zamboni driver's business card in the other, still talking, the full debrief already underway.
I caught Anne's eye over his head.
She was smiling in a way that had nothing performed in it.
I reached for her hand and held it, and we walked out into the morning together, our son between us, still talking.