And looking at that photograph, I realize I'm not the only one who forgot some of the rules.
Chapter seven
Sadie
Blizzards Family Day
By the time Jillie changes her sweater for the third time, I begin to suspect I have made a mistake.
Not a small mistake either.
A large one.
The kind with professional athletes, parking passes, and a six-year-old who has been awake since before sunrise asking whether hockey arenas have dress codes.
"Honey," I say from the bathroom doorway, where I am trying to put on mascara with one hand and locate her missing mitten with the other, "it is Family Day at a hockey practice facility. Nobody is expecting fancy."
Jillie looks down at her second-best sparkly sweater, then back at me.
"But what if the hockey families are fancy?"
"They are hockey families. They probably wear jerseys."
She considers this seriously.
"Do we have jerseys?"
"No."
Her little face falls as if I have failed a national exam.
"We have clean clothes," I add. "That is also a victory."
She does not look convinced.
I barely recognize myself in the mirror. Not because I am dressed differently. Jeans, boots, soft green sweater, hair twisted back because bakery life has made elaborate hairstyles unrealistic. Nothing dramatic.
Still, something about today feels different.
Yesterday at the charity skate, I looked at a photograph and realized I was not the only one who forgot some of the rules.
Today, I am driving to Frostholm with my daughter to spend the afternoon inside Colby Reid's world.
His real world.
Not the bakery.
Not Peterson's Market.
Not a small-town fundraiser where half the people have known me since I wore pigtails and spilled cocoa on my Sunday coat.
His arena.
His team.
His life.
That should make the boundaries clearer. It absolutely does not.
