Her mother opens the door before we even knock.
I see where Winnie gets it—the blue eyes, the warmth, the way she smiles like she already likes you. She pulls Winnie into a hug first, then turns to me, and I brace for the handshake, the polite-but-measuring look, the standard meet-the-boyfriend routine.
Instead, she hugs me too.
I stand there for a second with my arms at my sides like an absolute idiot before I remember how hugs work and put them around her.
“We’ve heard so much about you,” she says, pulling back, beaming. “I’m Carol. Come in, come in — dinner’s almost ready. Gary’s in the living room.”
Gary.
Right. She might as well have just told me there’s a dragon in the living room.
The living room is warm and comfortable, the walls covered in framed photos. No dragon. I catch a glimpse of Winnie at maybe seven or eight, gap-toothed and grinning on a beach somewhere, and I want to stop and look at it, but I don’t have time because Gary is standing up from his armchair, and he is not small.
Not as tall as me, but solid. The build of a man who was probably an athlete thirty years ago. He’s got Winnie’s coloring and the eyes of a man who is currently running some kind of internal calculation.
He shakes my hand. Firm. Holds it a beat longer than necessary.
“Banks,” he says.
“Mr. Garrett. Good to meet you.”
He looks at me. I look back. Winnie, beside me, is very still in the way of someone who’s watching something that could go several directions. Haywire being one of them.
“Sit down,” he says.
We sit.
Carol disappears into the kitchen. Winnie follows to help, which — I clock that, I clock her leaving me here, and I give her a look over my shoulder that I hope communicatestraitor, and she gives me a tiny smile that communicatesyou’re fine, and then she’s gone.
Gary leans back in his chair. “So. Hockey.”
“Yes, sir.”
“How long you been playing?”
“Since I was six.”
“Where’d you grow up?”
I keep my voice even. “Different places. I was in the foster system. Moved around a lot.”
Something shifts in his expression, just briefly. He hadn’t been expecting that. He recalibrates. “Hockey kept you out of trouble?”
“Hockey kept me sane.” I pause. “I didn’t always stay out of trouble.”
He looks at me for a long moment. “At least you’re honest.”
“I try to be.”
“Derek wasn’t honest.” He says it flatly, watching for my reaction. “You know about Derek?”
“I know enough.”
“He hurt my daughter.”
“I know that too.”
