"This is impressive," I said, taking it all in.
"I practice every day," Casey said, pulling out a binder filled with what looked like hand-drawn plays. "Grandpa Coach draws these for me! See, this is a power play. The guys go here and here, and then someone shoots!" She pointed enthusiastically at the diagrams, clearly proud even if she didn't fully grasp all the strategy yet.
"Your grandfather really knows his stuff," I said.
"He played in college. Never made it to the NHL, but he says that doesn't matter. What matters is loving the game and respecting it." Casey looked up at me with those impossibly blue eyes. "Do you still love it? Even after… you know, the bad stuff?"
The question caught me off guard. Kids her age rarely understood nuance, didn't know how to ask the hard questions.
"Yeah," I said honestly. "I do. Even when I mess up, even when I'm angry at myself, I still love the game. It's the one place where everything makes sense."
"That's how I feel, too," Casey said quietly. "Sometimes kids are mean at school, or I don't understand my homework, or I miss my dad…" She paused, then continued quickly. "But when I'm skating, none of that matters. It's just me and the ice and the puck."
Her dad.
The words hung in the air. Holly had mentioned Palisade had a daughter, but she'd never said anything about a partner. Never mentioned Casey's father at all. I'd assumed Palisade had moved on with someone else after our night together, but now…
Where was he? And why wasn't he here?
"That's exactly it." I kept my voice steady, filing the questions away for later. "Hockey's pure. You put in the work, you get results. Simple as that."
"Except when you make mistakes," Casey said.
"Especially when you make mistakes. That's when you learn the most." All my mistakes flashed through my mind. But so did Casey's words.
I miss my dad.
A kid this obsessed with hockey, and her father wasn't around to see it? To teach her? To watch her practice in the driveway?
Where the hell was he?
She cocked her head, her fist under her cheek as if considering my words. "Did you make a lot of mistakes when you were learning?"
"Tons. Still do." I thought about the reporter, the accident, the rage that had defined too much of my life. "Big ones. Small ones. Every kind of mistake you can imagine."
"But you kept going, right? Even when you made mistakes?"
"Yeah. I kept going."
"That's what makes you great," Casey said simply. Then she looked up at me with shining eyes. "Do youreallythink I could be a hockey player someday? Like a real one?"
The question hit me harder than expected. So much hope in her voice, so much determination.
"I think you could be anything you want to be," I said honestly. "But if hockey's your dream? You've definitely got the passion for it. That's the most important part. Talent matters, but passion separates good players from great ones."
"Really?"
"Really."
Casey's smile could have lit up the entire house.
"Casey, homework!" Palisade called from downstairs.
"Coming!" Casey carefully closed her binder, treating it like a sacred text. "Will you come back sometime? Maybe you could teach me some stuff?"
"I'd have to ask your mom first."
"She'll say yes," Casey said confidently. "She's been way happier this week. Aunt Holly says it's because you're working at the clinic, even though Mom pretends to be annoyed about it."
