He was quiet for a second. Then tension eased in his face, and I saw him more relaxed than I could remember.
“You don’t owe me anything,” he said.
“I know. That’s why you’re getting all of it. It’s not a negotiation anymore.”
“Can I ask you what I asked before?”
He didn’t have to specify. I knew what he meant. I nodded.
“Anyone in mind for after?” Kovac asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
He didn’t follow up. He waited, letting me get to the next piece of information on my own.
“Lucas Varga,” I said.
The words came out evenly. It felt like the most natural thing in the world to say.
“You can write that down,” I said. “It’s on the record now.”
He didn’t write it down. He leaned back and looked at me.
“Thank you,” he said. “But I can remember that.”
He opened the notebook.
“I might need to write other things down. Mind?”
“Go ahead.”
He started with a straightforward question. “The retirement line. ‘Waiting until after.’ Was that ever true, or was it always cover?”
“True when I first met you.” I turned my cup. “That was before Varga. I figured I’d do the rest of my life when nobody was watching. Then he appeared, and the line kept working, so I kept saying it.”
Kovac wrote a couple of words.
“And now?”
“Now I’m thirty-six and he’s thirty.” I gave him more than I’d planned. “I spent five years promising him the life after. He never wanted after. He wanted it now. I was slow to catch on.”
Kovac asked a few more questions about who else knew and then set his pen down.
“What’s he like? This is off the record. I’ve watched Varga on the ice and at the press table on TV. I know there’s a lot of performance, and I’m not sure I’ve never seen the man under it.”
“He talks,” I said. “All day, about everything. You see that. It’s not an act, but there’s a quiet version. That one is mine only.”
He reached for the pen, but then decided against it.
“Thank you,” he said.
“I’ve got one question for you.”
“Go ahead.”
“You told me before that you had a secret source. Will you share who it was now?”
Kovac chuckled softly. “I guess it won’t do any harm. I talked to your sister.”
