Page 77 of Cherry Picking

There’s a long pause on the line. When she finally speaks, her voice has gone lower. “That’s better than the workshopped version.”

“Noted.”

“Good night, thirteen.”

“Talk tomorrow, pretty girl.”

We fall into it after that, calls stacked around the schedule. Montréal on the road, where we lose terribly. I call her from the hotel anyway just to be talked out of my own head. She tells me about Gerald microwaving fish in the break room and the ensuing evacuation.

Detroit at home, where the opposing fans try to boo me all night for December’s fight. Augie scores and cups his ear at them on my behalf. Washington, where Kyo gets his first career goal and cries at his stall. The whole room chants his name.

I tell Evie about it quietly from the hallway.

“He’s the baby,” she says. “Your baby.”

“He’s not.”

“You sent me a photo of him sleeping on the plane with a caption that said ‘he needs a hat.’”

“He did need a hat. It was fucking cold.”

By the end of the month, the calls have their own schedule. She’s mine on the drive home after games and the last sound I hear before bed, three hours behind, doing her dishes or sitting on her one-chair terrace while the coyotes go off in the dark.

I know her tea order and her top three least-favorite hymns. She knows my pregame meal and that I have to sit with my back to the wall in restaurants, which she calls “cowboy syndrome” and refuses to elaborate.

It’s the best January of my career, and not because of the point totals. Five points in twelve games, but Bellan’s had me out against the other team’s best line every night, and we’re winning those minutes.

I’ve also managed two appointments with Isabelle so far, both via video calls from my kitchen counter. I retreated into hockey for the first forty-five minutes because the stats were safer than the truth, and she let me stay there.

Then, in the final minutes, she finally steered us toward my brother.

We didn’t touch the betrayal. We talked about the version of him that existed before the world got messy, back when we were just two kids in the desert. She asked me to name a single thing I remembered about him that wasn’t tied to all the bullshit.

I had to sit in the silence for a long time before the first word arrived.

Categorizing him that way—as a boy I once loved rather than a trauma I’m currently surviving—absolutely leveled me for an hour after I closed the laptop. Then, slowly, the floor stopped moving.

Next appointment, I think I might stay in the deep end a little longer.

CHAPTER 22

EVIE

My dad completed the restoration on Mrs. Ferreira late last night, which leaves the cosmetics in my hands.

I clear the threshold of the funeral home by six thirty. The viewing is on the books for eleven, but I’ve learned to prefer a slow pace. Her daughter provided a reference portrait yesterday—a wedding shot from 1978—which I’ve propped against the supply cabinet.

In the frame, Mrs. Ferreira is barely thirty-eight, captured mid-laugh.

I can’t resurrect that exact version of her for the world. What I can manage is the lipstick—a stubborn shade of Revlon coral that her daughter insisted suited her perfectly.

I usually handle the pigment work for the women who pass through these doors. Dad claims I have the eye for it, but I think it’s just the artist in me refusing to leave a bad undertone uncorrected. There’s a strange, quiet peace in the process.

Tomás surfaces at seven, balancing a wooden hanger and two coffees he deposits on the far counter. Dressing a guest requires two sets of hands, so he settles in to wait out my final touches.

He stands over my shoulder for several minutes in a heavy silence, which is the international signal for I have a note.

“Too warm on the cheek,” he says.