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This time Mack sees it too.
Tova is awake when I get home.
Astrid sits at the island with her laptop open and a mug beside it. She looks up when I come through the kitchen, and her eyes pass once over my right shoulder before reaching my face.
Then she returns to the laptop.
Tova is sideways on the sofa in pajama pants, one sock on and one sock missing, watching my third period again.
I stop behind the couch. “You know how it ends.”
“I’m checking something.”
“That sounds serious.”
“It is. Be quiet.”
“You were given a clear instruction,” Astrid says from the island, without looking up.
“Great marriage,” I tell her.
Tova rewinds until the faceoff comes back onto the television. She lets it run, stops it, and goes farther back, and I stand there behind my own couch being studied by a twelve-year-old.
“What are you checking?”
“You.”
“Excellent choice.”
“I knew you were going to say that.”
“Then we’re both getting better at this.”
She ignores me and runs the clip again.
The winger comes over the boards.
Tova pauses the screen.
“How did you know?”
I come around the couch and look at the frozen image. Their winger is near the boards, their center bent over the dot, me opposite him.
“That we were going to win?”
“No. That.”
She points at him.
“He showed me.”
“He did not.”
“He did.”
“He didn’t point. He didn’t say anything. I watched this three times.”
I sit on the back of the sofa.
