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Something opens up in his face again. Slowly. Like the sun coming out from behind a building.

"You walked around the whole lake?"

"Part of it. It's a big lake."

"It's a Great Lake, Owen. You can't walk around it. It goes to New York."

"I know that."

"You'd need a boat."

"I know," I say, and he laughs, and I feel something in my chest unclench for the first time since five in the morning.

At morning skate, Webb notices the ring in about ten seconds.

We're lacing up side by side on the bench. He glances down at my hands, and then he glances again, and then he goes still, one lace in each fist.

"Huh," he says.

"Don't."

"I didn't say anything."

"You said huh."

"Huh isn't anything. Huh is a noise." He goes back to his laces. He pulls them tight, slow. "You finally take it off, or did you lose it?"

"I took it off."

"When?"

"Last night."

Webb doesn't say anything for a moment. Across the ice, Castel's doing laps with Sorel, skating backward, talking with his hands. Webb watches him go by. Then he looks at me. Then he looks back at his skates.

"Good," he says. "About time."

"That's it?"

"What else do you want me to say?"

"I don't know. Something."

He stands up, tests his edges on the rubber mat, and picks up his stick.

"Owen," he says. "I've been your friend for twelve years. I'm not going to ask you anything you're not ready to tell me. That's what friends are for." He taps the blade of his stick against my skate. "Also, you've got a hickey. Left side. Right above the collar. Pull your jersey up."

He skates away before I can kill him.

We play Toronto that night and win, three to two in a shootout. I don't take a shot in the shootout. He does. He goes in slow, fakes a shot, fakes another, and slides it five-hole so gently the puck barely crosses the line. The goalie falls over. The bench goes crazy.

He skates past me on the way back and taps his glove on my helmet, twice, the way everybody does. Nobody notices anything. Why would they?

I notice. I feel it all the way down to my skates.

My phone buzzes in my stall after the game, while I'm untaping my stick. It's Laurel.

I almost don't answer. Then I do.