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Chapter One

OWEN

The cold tub is forty-eight degrees, and Dana won't let me out.

"Two more minutes."

"You said that two minutes ago."

"I lied two minutes ago." She doesn't look up from her tablet. "Knee."

I lift my right leg out of the water. She presses her thumb into the side of the joint, just under the kneecap, and I keep my face still because she's watching my face, not the knee. She's been reading my face since I was twenty-six.

"Swelling's down," she says.

"Told you."

"You told me it was fine in August, and in August you couldn't do a flight of stairs." She sets my leg back in the water like it belongs to her. "Doc's in at five. You're getting the shot."

"I got the shot two weeks ago."

"Tonight you get the other one. The one you pretend doesn't hurt."

"It doesn't hurt."

"Sure, Captain." She taps something on the screen. "Out. Towel. Go be inspirational."

I climb out slower than I want to. There's a way of standing up at thirty-five that nobody warns you about, where you lead with your hands and let your knees catch up, and I've gotten good enough at it that most people never notice. Dana notices. She hands me a towel without a word, which is worse than if she'd said something.

My phone is face-down on the shelf of my stall, buzzing against the wood. I flip it over. Three missed calls from Saul, and a text from my mother that just says Call me when you can, honey, which means she's seen something.

I call Saul back from the hallway outside the training room, still dripping.

"Tell me you haven't looked at anything," he says.

"I'm looking at a wall."

"Keep looking at it. The Tribune has the filing."

I lean my shoulder against the cinderblock. "What filing."

"The financial disclosure. Asset schedule, the house on the lake, the whole spreadsheet. It went up an hour ago. It's already on every hockey account with a logo."

"How?"

"Could be somebody at the courthouse. Could be somebody at her firm. I'll find out, and whoever it is will regret owning a fax machine. That's not your problem right now. Your problem is you've got media at four and they're going to ask."

"I'll say no comment."

"You'll say you're focused on the season and you ask that people respect your family's privacy during a difficult time. Word for word, Owen."

"She's not my family anymore."

He lets that sit long enough that I hear his office chair creak.

"She's your wife until a judge signs something," he says. "Word for word."

"Fine."