Chapter Two
JACK
Medical school had already resumed, so my days belonged to lectures, clinical placements, and study long before most of the university returned for the fall semester.
Dad and the team would leave tomorrow morning for their annual preseason retreat, but my schedule wouldn't allow me to go with them even if I'd wanted to.
While they spent five days in the mountains laying the foundations for another season, I'd keep the arena running, maintaining the ice exactly the way Dad expected until they returned.
The arena had become more than the place where I worked.
It had become the place where I thought most clearly.
Every corridor carried memories, the dressing room held echoes of championship celebrations and heartbreaking defeats, and each section of seating reminded me how much Dad had invested in the game.
Hockey had slipped away from me as something I could play competitively, but it had never stopped being part of who I was.
Long before I accepted responsibility for preparing the ice, I'd discovered that no matter how difficult life became, stepping onto an empty rink had a way of settling the noise in my head.
The world outside might demand impossible decisions, endless study, and responsibilities I sometimes wondered whether I was ready to shoulder, but none of that seemed quite so overwhelming once my skates touched the ice.
It had become a ritual over the years. Once the last player disappeared into the locker room and the arena settled into the comforting silence that only arrived after everyone else had gone home, I allowed myself twenty uninterrupted minutes before climbing onto the Zamboni.
Dad knew about those solitary sessions. He pretended not to notice, provided I resurfaced the rink afterward and left the ice exactly the way the following day's practice deserved.
That was our unspoken agreement, one we'd never discussed because neither of us needed to. He understood what those minutes meant to me, and I appreciated that he never questioned them.
Dad always joked that I spent more time skating after hours than the players did during practice, and he wasn't entirely wrong.
I loved the silence within the building once the lights dimmed and conversations faded into memory.
There were no whistles, no coaches barking instructions, no teammates calling for passes or warning each other about an incoming check.
The rink belonged to me alone. It never expected explanations.
It never asked me to become someone I wasn't.
Out there, surrounded by nothing but empty seats and the faint hum of the refrigeration system beneath the ice, my silence wasn't something that needed apologizing for. It simply existed, accepted without question.
I pushed away from the boards, gathering speed effortlessly before leaning into the first corner. My edges bit cleanly into the ice as I traced the familiar routes of old practice drills, instinctively changing direction at the places where defenders would once have challenged me.
My body remembered each movement without conscious thought.
Years might have passed since I'd last worn a competitive jersey, but muscle memory had refused to surrender.
There were times like this when I could almost convince myself nothing had changed, that if I skated hard enough and long enough I'd hear Dad's whistle echo through the arena before calling me back for another drill.
Life didn't work that way.
There had been a time when everyone assumed I'd join Dad onto the ice as one of his players.
As soon as I was old enough to stand upright, a pair of skates had rarely been far from my feet.
Dad claimed I'd inherited his balance before I'd inherited common sense, and judging by the number of bruises I'd accumulated throwing myself fearlessly into every new challenge, he was probably right.
Skating had always felt as natural as breathing.
Reading the play came just as instinctively.
Dad used to laugh that I saw passing lanes before anyone else realized they existed, and even as a little kid I knew where my teammates needed me to be several seconds before they arrived.
None of that mattered once I lost the ability to speak.
No coach ever questioned what I could do with the puck.
They questioned everything that happened once the game accelerated beyond what hand signals and eye contact could accomplish.
Hockey depended upon communication. Defensemen shouted warnings.
Centers called for passes. Goalies directed traffic behind the net.
Entire games could turn on a single shouted word delivered at exactly the right moment.
I had no words.
At first everyone believed we'd find ways around it.
Coaches insisted my talent would outweigh the inconvenience.
Dad worked endlessly with me, developing silent signals and anticipating situations before they happened, convinced there had to be a solution if we searched hard enough.
For a while I believed him, but we were ignoring one unavoidable reality.
Teammates changed constantly, and they couldn't take their eyes off the puck long enough to look for my signals.
Then little by little I found myself spending longer stretches sitting on the bench while teammates who communicated more easily took the shifts I'd once expected would belong to me.
Nobody intended to be cruel. Winning mattered, and a player who couldn't warn his defense partner about an approaching forechecker or call for the puck became a liability no matter how gifted he happened to be.
By the time I turned eight, I'd stopped asking Dad when I'd play again.
Eventually...
He stopped asking too.
The realization hadn't broken either of us all at once.
It arrived sneakily, settling between us over months rather than days until one afternoon we both understood without saying anything that my future no longer lay where we'd once imagined.
Dad never treated me differently. He still laced my skates and joined me on the ice.
He stayed long after everyone else had gone home helping me perfect my stride, passing, and shooting.
Neither of us admitted the truth aloud, but we both knew those evenings had become less about preparing me for hockey and more about refusing to let go of something we'd loved together.
I circled the rink again, increasing my speed until cold air rushed past my face and the worry I'd carried into the arena gradually loosened its grip.
I wasn't trying to prove anything anymore.
Those days had ended long ago. I skated because I loved the feeling of steel gliding across impeccably prepared ice, because movement still cleared my mind better than anything else ever had, and because deep inside me lived the little boy who'd once believed hockey would define the rest of his life.
For twenty minutes each night I allowed him to exist again, untouched by disappointment or regret, before returning willingly to the life I'd built instead.
Eventually I coasted to a stop beside the players' bench, resting my forearms across the boards as I looked out over the empty arena.
Thousands of seats stretched away into the shadows, silent now but capable of becoming deafening once the season began.
Tomorrow they would begin filling again as another group of young men chased dreams that stretched far beyond Evergreen.
Dad had spent weeks talking about the incoming recruits, especially the transfer from Florida he'd worked so hard to bring here—Mason Brooks.
Even I'd heard enough to know he was expected to make an immediate impact.
Dad rarely spoke about individual players outside hockey matters, but now and then I'd catch the satisfaction in his expression whenever Mason's name surfaced.
It wasn't excitement exactly. Dad had coached far too long to pin an entire season's hopes on one player.
It was confidence. He believed the young man belonged here.
Over the years I'd learned to trust that instinct because it was rarely wrong.
Dad judged character before statistics and commitment before talent.
Plenty of gifted athletes had passed through Evergreen, but the ones he remembered most weren't always those whose names eventually appeared in NHL lineups.
They were the players who'd elevated everyone around them, making teammates better by the standards they set day to day.
I'd watched enough game footage with Dad over the summer to understand why he'd been so determined to bring Mason Brooks to Evergreen.
Even on a screen, his talent was impossible to ignore.
He skated with effortless power, saw plays developing seconds before everyone else and possessed the rare ability to make difficult things appear routine.
Barring injury, I couldn't imagine any future where he didn't become an NHL star.
On the ice he was impressive. Away from it, he was more like someone who belonged on a movie screen than in a hockey locker room.
Tall, broad-shouldered, and naturally athletic, with an easy confidence that drew attention without seeming to seek it, he possessed the kind of face advertising agencies paid fortunes to photograph.
It was unfair that someone gifted with that much athletic ability had also been blessed with looks that could stop people in their tracks.
I only hoped Dad had been right about the part that mattered most—that beneath all that talent and undeniable good looks was the kind of man who would make everyone around him better.