"Okay," he says. "Talk."
"Luca's doing better."
"Yeah? That's good."
"He sounds different."
"Different good?"
"Different like he's there. When I talk to him. He's actually in the conversation."
"Good." Kevin lets the word sit for a beat. "And how are you?"
"I'm fine."
"I didn't ask if you were fine. I asked how you are."
I lean against the railing. The ocean is flat. A boat is moving across the middle distance, too far to identify, a shape cutting a line through the gray.
"I've been thinking," I say.
"About?"
"The season. What happens after it."
Kevin doesn't say anything for a few seconds. I can hear the bird that lives in his yard, the low call that has been there every morning for the three years he has owned the house.
"Wes. You've been thinking about what happens after the season, or you've been thinking about retiring?"
"How did you know that was the word?"
"Because the last time you sat at my table you talked about Luca for forty-five minutes and the team for three. Because the night you told told me you were walking off a road trip, I knew you something had changed."
"I didn't know that."
"I know you didn't. I'm telling you I did."
"You didn't say anything."
"It wasn't mine to say. You had to get there."
The boat is past the middle distance now. Heading south. The wake is a line on the surface that will flatten and disappear.
"I've been calling it a sacrifice," I say. "In my head. I have been framing it as the thing I would be giving up. The career, the ice, fifteen years. Like retirement would be something I'm doing for him, and if it's for him, then it costs me."
"And?"
"And that's not what it is."
"What is it?"
"It's a want. It has been a want since Aruba. Maybe before.”
The sentence stops. The next one is in my chest and it has been in my chest for thirty-six years and I have never said it out loud to another human being.
"I have been wanting this," I say. "The retirement. Him. A life that isn't split down the middle. I just hadn't said it yet."
"I have been waiting for you to land here," Kevin says.
