Page 122 of Unmanageable

She lets out a shaky breath, a half-laugh mixed with a sigh, and finally leans back into my touch. “You always know how to make it sound less heavy, Finny.”

“Just telling the truth,” I murmur.

***

Scottie climbs into the passenger seat, pulling the big jacket tight around her ribs as the heater kicks on, blowing warm air into the dark cabin. She looks out the window as I back the car out of the space.

“Are we still Gary and Bernadette tomorrow?” she asks, her voice small against the rumble of the engine.

“Until noon,” I say, glancing over at her. “After that, you have to go back to being an expensive agent who tells me I can’t buy a boat, and I have to go back to letting people throw things at my head.”

“Sounds exhausting,” she murmurs, closing her eyes. “I think Gary might have to visit me every once in a while. Just for backup.”

“He’ll be there, Scottie-girl,” I say softly, my fingers reaching over to find hers in the dark. “He’s not going anywhere.”

***

8:56 PM

Scottie-girl: Thank you.

Me: anytime

34

Scottie-girl

10:07 PM

Me: Do you ever take anything seriously?

Cash: yes

Me: Like what?

Cash: you

***

I’m sitting on a rusted metal folding chair behind the glass of the home bench, wrapped in my own wool pullover, Cash’s oversized gray winter coat, and a generic fleece blanket I found in the back of the van. The cold is a living thing; it seeps through the concrete floor and settles into my bones until my very marrow feels frozen.

Out on the ice, Cash is a massive, dark silhouette against the low-wattage yellow house lights. His goalie pads look huge in the gloom, the white leather scarred with hundreds of black puck marks from three different leagues.

He hasn’t stopped moving since his skates hit the surface.

“Too deep,” a voice says.

Coach Wade is seventy-four years old. His hips are so shot he doesn’t even wear skates on the ice anymore; he just stands out there in a pair of ancient, salt-stained leather boots.

His spine is curved like an old pine tree, and he leans his entire weight onto a wooden stick with a blade that has been shaved flat from fifty years of scraping snow.

It’s our first twenty minutes with him, and he hasn’t said more than six words.

Cash recovers from a cross-crease slide, his right block hitting the post with a hollow clack. He’s breathing like a racehorse, the sweat dripping from the chin bar of his mask onto the blue paint of his crease.

Tap.

Wade doesn’t look at Cash’s face. He just drops the heel of his stick onto the ice once.