My mom mimes zipping her lip. “Your grandmother and I have been making custom Direwolves jerseys for everyone to wear.”
“No help from that husband of yours, of course,” Gran says drunkenly.
Maxie silently offers Dad the rum bottle.
“Did you make a Rhode Islanders one for Ellie?” Jace teases and starts trying to peel the foil back on the roast beef.
“Oh, surely you can sit with the family just this one game, snickerdoodle?”
“She’ll get fired, Mom, if she does that,” Angie says.
“Yeah, again,” Maxie adds.
“Oh, you remember Leo Niedersachen? He just retired from Boston,” my dad tells me as my mom shoos us to ferry the piping-hot dishes to the dining room. “His wife just had their third child, and their nanny moved back to France. I told them that you were great in childcare, Ellie, and were looking to get back in the field.”
“Wonderful!” Mom claps her hands. “You can be a nanny and sit with us at the game.”
“Yeah, thanks, Dad. I’ll send him an email tonight.” And not show up to work tomorrow.
It still seems like a bad dream—Dana handing me the keys to the hockey castle. They’re still hidden at the bottom of my tote.
We sit down for dinner. I load up on the cheddar potatoes, making a little well and drowning my potatoes in gravy.
“You want some potatoes with that gravy?” My dad delivers the standard joke, pretending to offer me more potatoes as all at once, everyone’s phones go off with the Google News alert sound.
My siblings and dad all reach for their phones in unison.
“No electronics at the table,” Mom scolds.
“But it could be big hockey news!” Jace cries.
“Yeah, that’s my hockey news notification,” Adam protests.
“They need to know what’s going on in the industry, Trina,” my dad, Nate, says.
Yeah, I’m sweating. I have a bad feeling about this. “No phones at the table, guys.” I try to wrestle them out of my siblings’ hands. “I never see you guys. It will be nice to have dinner with normal people, not just Mom and Dad.”
“Oh my fucking god!” Angie yells, her voice rising on the last word.
“Language, girls.”
“You cunt!” Maxie’s got a huge grin on her face.
“So cunty,” Angie drawls.
“Cu—C-wordy,” Jace self-corrects as he and Adam scroll through their phones. “This is, like, a big-dick, fucking ballsy move.”
“Maxine!” Mom swats her with a towel. “Look what you started.”
My dad is looking at me like he’s angry, hurt, betrayed.
“Where’s that bottle of rum?” I ask desperately.
“Got you, girlie.” Granny Murray scoots her chair back.
“You’re an NHL coach,” Nate finally spits out.
I wrench the bottle from Gran. “The food’s getting cold.” I chug rum into my glass and sit down, banging my knee on the table.
