“If this goes badly,” I say, “will you fake a fainting spell?”
“I was thinking more interpretive dance,” she deadpans. “But sure. Fainting is on the table.”
“You’re trouble, Thompson.”
“So I’ve heard.” She rises on her toes and kisses me, quick and certain. “Go tell the truth.”
I glance once more at the pages, then fold them and slide them away. “Ready?” she says, offering her hand.
“As I’ll ever be.”
We walk back toward the crowd. The coordinator points me toward the wings. Reese peels off for our table, and I catch the small smile she shoots me over her shoulder. I carry that image up the steps.
The lights are brighter on stage than they looked from the floor. The first row blurs into a band of faces. The microphone squeaks; I wince.
“Good evening,” I say, and my voice comes out steadier than I feel. “Thank you for being here for the Blades Foundation.”
The first sentences are stiff. Then I find Reese at our table—chin propped on her hand, the quiet smile just for me—and my shoulders come down a notch.
I talk about Hibbing, about a backyard rink my dad flooded when it got cold enough, about hand-me-down gear and early mornings. I talk about what a locker room can feel like when you don’t have another place that you feel like you fit in. The room shifts with me. People lean in. Coach Martinez’s mouth does something close to a smile. Sully gives me the smallest nod to go on.
“Responsibility doesn’t come from a jersey or a job title,” I say. “It’s how you show up for people and whether they can count on you.”
The notes sit, untouched. I talk about Sully without turning him into a saint—how he cut me down to size my rookie year without ever yelling, how he made the hard thing the obvious thing: do the right thing when no one’s watching.
“Kids don’t need perfect,” I say. “They need steady. They need someone who shows up, owns it when they mess up, and keeps showing up anyway.”
I’m about to pivot to talk about the reading program when a woman stands near the front. She doesn’t wave. She just speaks, clear and level, and the sound travels all the way to the stage.
“It’s rich hearing you talk about role models,” she says, “when you’ve never spent a day with your son.”
The room drops into silence so complete I hear the air conditioning kick on. The microphone picks up my breath.
She shifts the toddler in her arms so he can see me. Dark hair. A stubborn jaw. Eyes I’ve seen every morning in the mirror for years.
“His name is Tyler,” she says.
The name hits and keeps hitting. Jessica Stone. The face slots into an old memory—charity event, a lobby bar, the haze of a night I barely cataloged because I didn’t want to. My hands grip the sides of the lectern until my knuckles blanch.
“Ms. Stone,” the foundation director says from somewhere, the take-charge tone on full volume. “We can continue this privately.”
“Privately?” Jessica says, not raising her voice and somehow cutting through everything anyway. “I’ve been trying privately for three years.”
Phones rise like a field of metallic flowers. PR moves at a sprint. None of it matters. The child—Tyler—looks at me from the circle of her arms with a curious, open face that looks too much like mine to argue with.
The silence is broken by the audience murmuring.
“Did you think he knew…?”
“How long…?”
“Will he…?”
I’m frozen. I don’t have language. I look for Reese, quickly breaking my stare at the small boy’s familiar eyes. Reese’s chair is empty. My heart is thumping.
“Mr. McCoy won’t be taking questions,” PR says into a handheld mic, brisk, firm. “We ask for privacy while this personal matter is addressed.”
The foundation director tries to wrestle the program forward. The room won’t have it. People murmur, rise, sit again. Cameras flash. The boy raises a hand in a little wave because he’s three and he’s polite.
