CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
RHETT
Week Four
We are eliminated on home ice.
The final score is two to one. Their winning goal deflects off my skate with six minutes remaining.
I spend the last shift trying to correct a bounce that has already happened.
The horn sounds.
For several seconds, I remain bent over my stick while the other team celebrates. The crowd stands, uncertain whether to applaud or escape disappointment.
The old belief rises immediately: You failed. Everything unstable will now leave.
I look toward the photo bay.
Empty.
Nora is in Finland. The marriage is over. The crowd will go home. Sponsors will calculate. None of it is caused by one puck.
I straighten.
At center ice, I shake hands with the opposing captain. Then I return to our bench and wait until the last teammate leaves.
In the locker room, players cry, curse, stare at floors. I do not tell them sacrifice guarantees reward. It doesn't.
"This hurts because it mattered," I say. "Do not turn pain into proof that the season was wasted. We will review the hockey tomorrow. Tonight, go home to the people who know you without skates."
The sentence reaches me as I say it.
I no longer have Nora at home.
I still have people.
Mom. Lucas. The team. The children at the rink. Myself, increasingly.
After media, I find twelve missed messages. None from Nora.
I shower, change, and drive home.
The penthouse is dark. I place my gear by the door and allow the loss to exist without numbing it through video.
At three in the morning, my phone rings.
Nora.
"I watched," she says.
Her voice is thick with sleep.
"It was one in the morning there."
"Three. The game went long."
"You should be sleeping."
"Stop managing my circadian rhythm. Are you all right?"
No reporter asked that without meaning performance.
"No," I say.
"Good."
I almost laugh. "Good?"
"You lost something you wanted. You are allowed to be bad for a while."
I sit on the kitchen floor, back against the cabinets. "The puck went off my skate."
"I saw."
"I keep replaying the angle."
"Do you remember the contact sheet I sent?"
"Six misses."
"And one goal. But the story was the return."
"There is no next game."
"There is a next season. And tomorrow. And a foundation budget meeting you will try to escape."
I close my eyes.
"I miss you," I say.
"I miss you too."
"I wish you were here."
The sentence frightens me because it contains need.
She does not leave.
"I wish I could sit on the floor with you," she says. "I would not tell you the loss doesn't matter."
"What would you do?"
"Steal your cereal."
"You hate my cereal."
"Grief requires carbohydrates."
For an hour, we talk about the game. Then about nothing. She falls asleep with the call connected.
I listen to her breathe across the ocean.
The season ends.
The world does not.