CHAPTER EIGHT
RHETT
Day Four
Dr. Sloane Harper's office contains no hockey memorabilia.
I distrust it immediately.
The team psychologist sits in a gray chair with a yellow notebook balanced on one knee. She is younger than I expected, perhaps thirty-five, with steady brown eyes and the patience of someone who charges by the hour.
"Elena said this meeting was mandatory," I tell her.
"Elena said an evaluation was mandatory. Staying after the first ten minutes is your choice."
I look at the clock.
"Nine minutes," she says.
"Do people find that trick effective?"
"People who call basic informed consent a trick usually need more than ten minutes."
Lucas would like her.
I sit.
She asks about sleep, appetite, concentration, alcohol, and whether I have thoughts of hurting myself or anyone else. I answer because Elena will receive fitness conclusions, not details, and because the image of the broken lens in Nora's studio has been sitting behind my eyes all morning.
"I wanted to go to her," I say.
"Why didn't you?"
"She told me not to."
"And how did that feel?"
"Like leaving her unprotected."
"Was she unprotected?"
"No."
"Then what did your presence protect?"
I know the answer. I do not like it.
"Me."
Sloane writes something.
"What?"
"You answered honestly. I am marking the occasion."
I lean back. "I don't manipulate Nora."
"I didn't say you did."
"You implied that going to her would have been about making myself feel useful."
"Would it?"
My father left when I was eleven.
The sentence appears in my mind with no warning.
I have not spoken it aloud in years because it sounds too small to explain anything. Men leave families every day. Children survive. Mothers work. Rent gets paid late and then on time and then late again.
I learned to skate before dawn because rink time was cheaper. I learned to tape my own stick because replacing it was not. I learned that if I scored enough goals, adults smiled at my mother instead of looking at her with pity.
Useful boys did not get abandoned.
Useful men did not get replaced.
"My father left when he lost his job," I say.
Sloane waits.
"He said he couldn't stand being another person my mother had to carry."
"How old were you?"
"Eleven."
"And what did you decide?"
I stare at the clock. The ten minutes have passed.
"That no one would ever have to carry me."
She does not tell me it was not my fault. I would have stopped listening if she did.
Instead, she says, "How has that decision served you?"
"It got me here."
"And how has it harmed you?"
Nora in the rain.
Nora's ring on the dresser.
Nora asking whether loving me required volunteering to be hidden.
"It made needing someone feel like a debt," I say.
Practice begins an hour later.
The first playoff game is tomorrow, and the arena has the restless violence of a storm about to arrive. Coach runs special teams until our lungs burn. I miss a pass I have completed ten thousand times. Lucas catches the puck against his chest and skates over.
"You're thinking too loudly," he says.
"That's not a thing."
"Your eyebrows are screaming."
I circle back to the line.
After practice, reporters wait three deep outside the locker room. Tessa gives me the option to use the private exit.
"No," I say. "But only hockey questions."
The first three are about the game. The fourth reporter asks whether Nora will attend.
"Ask her," I say.
"Are you worried the scandal will affect your performance?"
"My performance is my responsibility. Nora is not a scandal."
"Do you expect her to forgive you?"
My teammates go still behind me.
"No," I say.
The reporter blinks. He expected a slogan.
"No?"
"Forgiveness is hers. The work is mine. Next question."
That clip spreads faster than the practice report. Tessa shows me the numbers, perhaps to warn me that accountability can become branding if I am not careful.
"Do not read the praise," she says.
"I wasn't planning to."
"Good. Half the internet has decided you're the patron saint of remorse because you formed a complete sentence."
At the hotel, a package waits at the desk.
For one frantic second, I think of the broken lens.
It is my mother's handwriting.
Inside is a photograph from my wedding day. Nora and I stand outside the courthouse beneath a sky so bright we are squinting. She wears a pale blue dress and carries grocery-store flowers. I am looking at her instead of the camera.
On the back, my mother has written:
You were not ashamed that day. Decide when you became afraid.
I call her.
June answers, "Are you eating?"
"Hello to you too."
"That means no."
"I ate."
"Protein bars are not a meal."
I sit on the edge of the bed. "Did Nora call you?"
"No. I called her and she did not answer. Good for her."
"Mom."
"Do not ask me to defend you. I love you too much to help you lie to yourself."
I turn the photograph over again.
"When did I become afraid?" I ask.
Her voice softens. "When you realized you had something more important than winning."
That night, I place the photograph beside the hotel lamp.
I sleep badly.
But I sleep without rehearsing an argument that would make me innocent.