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Wes Abernathy has stopped chewing. He's looking at me from over by the fridge with a face I don't want to look at.

"Dane," Wes says.

"What."

Wes looks at Lindqvist. He looks at me. He goes back to his cereal.

Lindqvist hasn't moved from the doorframe.

"Kovač," he says. "Real question. Are you a goalie, or are you running a cult?"

"Late counts as a miss."

"Yeah," he says. "I remember."

He picks up the garbage bag and goes upstairs.

I listen to him on the stairs. I listen to him stop at the top. Second door on the left. I listen to it open, and there's a long pause, longer than it should be, and I wonder if he's standing in the doorway looking at the four white squares of tape on the wall.

Then the door closes, quiet.

Jace pushes off the counter. "Dude," he says, and he's grinning, "that was amazing."

I rinse my bowl and put it in the rack.

Five-twenty-six the next morning, the pucks are already out.

All of them, lined up along the blue line in a perfect row, like teeth. My water bottles are full and sitting on top of the net. He's sitting on the bench in his gear with his helmet in his lap, eyes half shut.

"Morning," I say.

He opens his eyes and looks at me.

"Yes," he says.

That's all he says the whole session. I stop four of five. The one that gets by me is a snap shot low blocker, so fast I'm still reading the release when it's already behind me. He doesn't celebrate. He doesn't skate a loop. He doesn't tell me to think about it at my funeral.

He picks up the next puck and skates back to the line.

When it's done, I say, "One for five."

"Yes."

"Bag's in my trunk."

"Yes."

It should feel better than it does.

That night he sits at the kitchen table with a plate of Jace's spaghetti in front of him and his hands in his lap. Everyone else is already eating. Gunnar's on his second plate. Wes keeps looking at the plate in front of Lindqvist and then at me and then at his own food.

I let him wait.

I eat half my dinner. I drink a glass of milk. I ask Kasper about the new defensive zone breakout and actually listen to the answer. It's ten minutes, give or take. Lindqvist sits there the whole time with his eyes on the spaghetti, his shoulders loose, his face completely pleasant, like he's waiting for a bus.

His stomach growls. The whole table hears it. Gunnar laughs.

"Eat," I say.