“I never said I didn’t appreciate it. I said it’s not what I want.”
I slow down. The marketing offices are around the next corner and the hallway carries sound further than you’d think so Mackie’s voice is coming through clear.
Then I hear a man’s voice and realize who she’s speaking to. “The media department went out of their way to set this up. They put your name in front of?—”
“I know what they did, Dad. And I’m grateful. But I told them I’m more interested in the PWHL side and they said they’d look into?—”
“The PWHL.” The way Jack says it isn’t dismissive exactly but it’s close. It’s the way someone says a thing when they’re trying to understand why you’d choose the smaller version of something when the bigger version is right there. “Mackie, do you understand what is being offered to you?”
“That’s not the point.”
“Then what is the point? Because from where I’m standing it looks like you’re turning down the opportunity so you can?—”
“So I can do the thing I actually want to do? Yeah. That’s exactly what I’m doing.”
The smart move is to keep walking. To go to the locker room, get changed, and pretend I didn’t hear any of this. This is between Mackie and her father, and I’m the last person who should be near their conversations right now.
But my feet have stopped. I can hear both of them, and I can’t move.
“The PWHL is three years old,” Jack says, and his voice has dropped like he’s working to stay calm. “I know people who have contacts at every major network and these are doors that most people spend a decade trying to?—”
“I don’t WANT those doors.” Mackie’s voice cracks and I hearher trying to keep it steady and failing.. “I want to cover women’s hockey. I want to tell those stories.”
“That’s idealistic.”
“That’s what I want.”
“What you want and what’s smart aren’t always the same thing, Mackie.”
I come around the corner.
I don’t plan it. My feet just move, and then I’m there, and Jack and Mackie are standing in the hallway outside the media office and they both turn and look at me and the air in the hallway changes.
Jack’s face resets. It goes from the tight, frustrated expression he was wearing to the one he shows the team and it happens so fast I almost miss it.
“Almardon.” He nods.
“Hey, Anderson. Hey, Mackinnon.” I say her name the way I’d say any teammate’s kid’s name and it sounds so wrong. “Sorry, didn’t mean to?—”
“You’re fine. We were just talking.” Jack claps me on the shoulder as he moves past. “Nice work on the road, kid. Same thing tomorrow.”
“Yes sir.”
He walks down the hallway and I can still feel the weight of his hand on my shoulder and he just called me kid and it sounded exactly the same as always and I don’t know why that makes it worse but it does.
Mackie is leaning against the wall with her arms crossed and her jaw set and her eyes are bright in the way that means she’s either about to cry or about to destroy something because with Mackie it could go either way.
“You heard that,” she says.
“Some of it.”
“He thinks I’m throwing away an opportunity.” She pushesoff the wall. “He thinks he’s handing me the career he would have wanted for me and I’m saying no to it for—I don’t even know what he thinks my reason is. He probably thinks I’m being stubborn.”
“Are you?”
She looks at me. “Don’t.”
“I’m not. I’m asking.”
