36. Mackie
MACKIE
I drove home on autopilot. I don’t remember the drive or actually getting there, only Barrett’s voice and the sound of the building erupting behind me as the anthem started.
By the time the puck dropped I was sitting in my car with my hands gripping the steering wheel while the crowd roared for the opening faceoff.
I wasn’t in the family suite or rinkside.
I was in a parking garage pressing my forehead against the steering wheel, shaking.
I go upstairs, close my door, and lie on my bed. I can’t fall apart yet. Not until I know the score, and not until I know if the thing I broke is fixable.
The universe doesn’t owe us anything. The universe has been very clear about that.
2-0 after the second. I’m lying on my bedroom floor because the bed and the chair both felt wrong, and the floor at least has the decency to be uncomfortable in a way that matches everything else. My phone lights up.
Kara
are you watching???
also why aren’t you answering my texts
Me
he knows
my dad found us
before the game
My phone rings immediately and I answer it and Kara screams “WHAT” so loud I have to pull the phone away from my ear.
I tell her all of it, ending with Barrett sending me home like I was a child who wandered into a place she didn’t belong.
“Oh my god,” Kara says when I’m done. “Mackie.”
“I know.”
“Before the GAME?”
“I KNOW.”
“Where’s Zach?”
“Playing. He’s playing right now.”
“Where’s your mom?”
“At the game. She doesn’t know yet.”
“Mackie. Listen to me. You need to—”
“I need to wait. I need to wait until the game ends and my dad comes home. Then I need to face him, and I don’t know what to say. What do you SAY? What’s the opening line for the conversation where you explain to your father that you’ve been lying to him for eight months about the person you love?”
“You start with I’m sorry and go from there.”
“I’m not sorry for being with Zach.”
“Yeah but you’re sorry for lying.”
I don’t answer that. Kara stays on the line for the rest of the game while I obsessively check the score until the numbers stop changing.
“4-1,” I say. “Final. They lost 4-1.”
“Okay. Okay so—”
“He’s going to blame Zach. He’s going to say Zach’s head wasn’t in it. He’s going to make this about the game.”
“WAS Zach’s head in it?”
The front door opens downstairs and I hear lighter footsteps before my mom’s voice calls out “Mackie?” the way you call into a house when you already know something’s wrong. She must have left the arena right after the final buzzer.
I don’t answer. I can’t. Kara is still on the line and I’m pressing the phone against my ear so hard it hurts.
“Mackie, I know you’re here, your car is in the driveway.”
“I’m on the phone,” I call down.
I hear her footsteps on the stairs, stopping halfway up. “Are you okay?”
“No.”
An hour later, the front door opens again.
“He’s home,” I whisper to Kara. “I have to go.”
“Call me after. I don’t care what time.”
“Okay.”
“Mackie. I love you. You’re going to get through this.”
I hang up and lie on the floor and listen.
I hear my mom’s voice, low and careful. The tone she uses when she’s managing him, the hockey wife one that says I’m here and I see you and tell me what happened.
I hear my dad’s voice. I can’t hear the words, but I hear the volume rising and falling before I hear my name.
Not Mackie. Mackinnon. My full name, the way he says it when I’m in trouble. The last time he used it like that I was sixteen. I’d taken his car without asking and broken off the side mirror when I hit a mailbox.
I get up, open my door and walk to the top of the stairs.
My parents are in the kitchen. Dad is standing by the island with both hands flat on the counter and his head down. Mom is on the other side with her hands around a mug she’s not drinking from. When I come down the stairs they both look at me.
“Sit down,” Dad says.
I sit at the island and put my hands in my lap, afraid that if I put them on the counter he’ll see them shaking.
“How long did you think you could keep this going.” It’s definitely not a question.
“I wasn’t trying to keep it going forever. We were going to tell you—”
“WHEN.” The word hits the kitchen like a slap. “When, Mackie? After the Cup? After the season? After he gets a contract somewhere else and you follow him and I find out from a TEAMMATE that my daughter’s been—”
“After the playoff run ended. That was the plan. Win or lose, we were going to tell you.”
“The plan.” He laughs that same ugly laugh from the corridor. “You had a PLAN. You and your—you and him, you sat around and PLANNED how to keep lying to me.”
“We planned how to TELL you. That’s different.”
“It’s NOT different. Every day you didn’t tell me was a day you chose to lie. Do you understand that? Every morning you came downstairs and had breakfast at this table and said ‘good morning, Dad’ and you had a secret and you chose not to tell me. That’s not postponing. That’s lying.”
“And the PWHL.” He says it suddenly and the pivot catches me off guard.
“The rinkside thing. You turned down the NHL opportunity and I thought you were being idealistic, I thought you were just stubborn about the women’s league, but this whole time you were pulling away from MY world because of HIM.
Because you couldn’t do NHL rinkside and date my goalie at the same time without getting caught. ”
“That’s not why I—”
“It IS. It has to be. Because the Mackie I know, the one who grew up in this world, who loves this game, who I raised to recognize an opportunity—that Mackie doesn’t turn down NHL rinkside for a three-year-old league. Not unless there’s something pulling her away. And now I know what it was.”
“You’re wrong.” I’m trying not to yell, and failing. “The PWHL has nothing to do with Zach. NOTHING. I want to cover women’s hockey because I care about women’s hockey and I’m sorry that you can’t see the value in that without assuming a MAN had to be the reason I chose it.”
His head snaps up. “Don’t do that. Don’t make this about feminism when it’s about TRUST.”
“It IS about trust! You don’t trust me to make my own career decisions! You didn’t trust me before you knew about Zach and you don’t trust me now and the only difference is that now you have someone to blame for it!”
“I TRUSTED YOU WITH EVERYTHING.” His hand comes down on the counter and the sound cracks through the kitchen and my mom flinches but doesn’t move. “I trusted you to be honest with me. I trusted him to respect me enough not to—and you BOTH—for EIGHT MONTHS—” He breaks off, breathing hard.
“You are not to see him,” he says, low and controlled in a way that’s scarier than the shouting. “Not at the facility, not at his apartment, not anywhere. Not until this series is over.”
“Dad—”
“And you’re not coming to the games. I don’t want you anywhere near that arena. Tell the media team you forfeit your press pass.”
“You can’t DO that. I’m nineteen years old. I have a JOB at that facility—”
“Then take a leave. Tell them you’re taking a personal leave.
I don’t care what you say to them.” He straightens up and looks at me and he looks ten years older than he did this morning.
“I can’t be on the ice thinking about you in the stands watching him.
I can’t do my job if I’m thinking about that.
If you care about this team at all—about this family at all—you will give me the space to get through this series without having to see you and him in the same building. ”
I want to argue that I’m an adult and he can’t ban me from a public arena—my credential is through the team, not him—but I see my mom give a small shake of her head and I stop. I know that look. It’s the look that says “not tonight, pick your battles and this is not one you can win.”
“Fine,” I say. “The series. But—”
“That’s all.” He picks up his keys from the counter. “I’m going for a drive.”
“Jack.” My mom finally speaks. “It’s midnight.”
“I know what time it is.”
He walks past me without looking at me and the front door closes and his car starts in the driveway. The headlights sweep across the kitchen window and then he’s gone.
Mom and I sit in the kitchen. She doesn’t say I told you so or I knew or anything that would make this easier to be angry about. She just sits there with her mug and her quiet and after a while she reaches across the island and puts her hand over mine.
“How long have you known?” I ask.
“Since the Christmas party. When Zach got here you were the only thing in the room he couldn’t look at. Then Barrett came upstairs and everything on all three of your faces gave it away.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“Because it was yours to tell. And because I wanted to see how you’d handle it.” She pauses. “I was hoping you’d handle it before your father found out like this.”
“Me too.”
“He’s not angry about Zach, Mackie. Not really. He likes Zach. He’s told me a dozen times that Zach is the kind of player he wishes he’d been at that age—disciplined, coachable, good head on his shoulders. The person he’s angry about is you.”
“I know.”
“You lied to him. For a long time. And your father can forgive almost anything but he can’t forgive being made to feel stupid. That’s what he can’t get past.”
I pull my hand back and press both palms against my eyes. My whole body hurts thinking about Zach alone right now. Calling him isn’t technically seeing him, but it still feels like breaking a rule.
I call him anyway.
“Hey, Mack.” He says quietly.
“Are you okay?”
“No. Are you?”
“No. He banned me from the arena,” I say. “No games for the rest of the series.” I press my forehead against the cold countertop and close my eyes. “Zach, I’m so sorry. I pulled you into that hallway. This is my fault.”
“Don’t do that.”
“It IS my fault. You were walking out, you were focused, you were ready, and I pulled you in and kissed you ten minutes before the game because I’m selfish and I wanted one moment and now everything is—”
“Mackie. Stop.” His voice is firm in a way I don’t hear often, the way it gets when he’s done letting me spiral. “I followed you. I’ll always follow you. That’s not your fault, that’s just us.”
“I can’t be at Game 2 but I’ll be watching.”
“I know.”
“Win, Zach. Forget about my dad. Forget about me. Get on the ice and stop the puck.”
“That’s what Barrett said. Stop the puck.”
“Barrett also taught you a bowline knot, so clearly his judgment is—”
I hear him almost laugh. An exhale through his nose that doesn’t quite get there.
“I love you,” I say. “I know that doesn’t fix anything but I need you to hear it.”
“I hear it. I love you too. Go to sleep, Mack.”
Game 2. I’m on the couch with Mom sitting next to me drinking her wine.
Neither of us mentions that last week we were on this same couch watching the conference finals clincher, and I was screaming into a pillow.
Tonight everything in this house feels different, like someone moved everything three inches to the left while I was sleeping.
Zach texts me at warmups.
Zach
I’m okay
routine is holding
eating your cookies
That’s all it takes, suddenly I’m crying and wishing I could be there.
Mom glances at me. “Are you going to be okay to watch this?”
“I have to watch.”
She doesn’t argue and turns back to the screen. We watch the entire game with Zach making saves that have no business being saves. He’s playing angry. I’ve never actually seen him play angry.
Dad is hitting harder than usual. Skating faster. Taking shifts that are too long.
Their timing is off for the entire game and we lose 3-2 on a late goal in the third. The final buzzer sounds. 0-2 in the series.
The team flies out tomorrow for Games 3 and 4 and I’ll be here on this couch, watching on a screen the same way every other fan watches. Except I know things they don’t. I know what Zach’s hands feel like when they’re shaking, and I know what it feels like to be the reason we’re losing.