Page 27 of Home Ice

I lowered the phone immediately, a stupid move, because it made it look like something.

“Max?” Varga said.

“No. His brother.”

Varga said nothing. He looked at me for about a second and a half.

“Huh,” he said.

Then he went back to the card game and accused Trier of cheating by face-timing with his cat for advice.

We approached Winnipeg, flying over ground I knew well: white and flat, sectioned into squares by the roads, with shelterbelts running along the north edge of every quarter the way they do at home. The customs agent who took my passport looked at it and then at me and said his brother-in-law farmed by Nokomis, and that my dad was a hard man on a curling rink. I nodded and told him that was true.

At the hotel, I read Niko’s messages one more time.

I typed an answer.

Rafe: Ok so if half the board fights you no matter which way you push it, how do you cut a joint in something like that?

The Winnipeg arena was two-thirds full forty minutes before puck drop, and there was a hand-painted sign at the glass during warmups—MIKKELSEN, ROSEWOOD SASK—held up by a woman about my mom’s age. She had two kids with her in coats zipped to the chin, and behind them, in a jersey with my number on it, cousin Dana’s Colton.

I signed the sign, asked Colton about his mom’s hip, and told the woman I’d tell my dad she said hello. Then the horn blew, and I was back to all my attention on hockey.

***

They came at us hard in the first, four of them in the corner at once, and Rook took a hit at our blue line that folded him into the boards. We were down by one after the first.

Second period, they gave us an entry to work with. They’d watched film, and they knew about the bump-back at the line. I came up the wall on my second shift, and their weak-side D was already cheating to the middle to take the pass away before I’d finished crossing the red line.

He was two strides early.

There was a lane, and it was closing. He’d committed his hips to a pass I hadn’t made yet, and there was a door standing open behind his shoulder where he used to be.

I cut inside him and got to the dot before he could turn around, and I had a look at the goalie’s far pad. I sent the puck there, and it ricocheted off the inside of the post into the net.

Cross got to me first and grabbed the back of my helmet. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s the read.”

On the bench, Coach Markel looked down the line at me and said, “Same look next time.”

We won three to two. Heath got the winner on a rebound with six minutes left. Rook blocked two shots in the last ninety seconds, and he got up slow after the second.

In the locker room afterward, Varga organized the van to the steakhouse. Trier read his sister-in-law’s post-game analysis of the Dallas contest aloud in an announcer voice, and I pulled my phone out of the cubby.

Mom had sent a picture of the television with my goal frozen on it and her thumb in the corner of the frame. Then I had messages from Mark.

Mark: Great goal. That entry read is going to be a clip they show in coaching seminars for the next ten years.

Mark: Small thing, no rush, and please read the whole message before you answer.

Mark: The Hendricks Foundation gala is February 14th. Black tie, Palmer House, about 600 people, the whole city’s there. They came to us this morning specifically asking for you and Max together. It’s a good room and a good cause, pediatric cardiology, the thing the club’s been attached to for years. Two hours, photos on arrival, one table, no speaking, home by ten.

Mark: It’s the 14th so I want to say out loud that we know it’s Valentine’s, and if that makes it feel like a lot, that’s a completely fine reason to say no. Would you be willing?

I read to the end of the fourth message.

Rafe: sure, happy to

Mark: You’re the best. Genuinely. I had a whole backup plan and I don’t need it.