***
Two days passed. We beat Nashville at home in a game that didn't require me to think. I ran my shifts. Recorded my points. Went home to an apartment where the marine biology textbooks remained stacked on the bedroom dresser, spines uncracked since January, accumulating the dust of abandoned plans.
Minnesota came to town two days later. Heath was back in the lineup. Coach Markel had reinstated him without ceremony.
He played hard. He took a hit along the boards in the second period that I heard from across the ice
Heath got up. Slower than the Columbus game.
Our line didn't connect. The passes arrived a half-beat late or a half-step off, timing that had been instinctive for months now required conscious thought. That meant it was slow. Hockey at this level didn't forgive conscious thought.
We weren't bad together. We were adequate.
Adequate was a poor substitute for what we'd done before.
4-1 final. Markel's post-game was five words. "Effort. Not talent. Find it."
I undressed. Jersey folded once. Shoulder pads unbuckled left, then right.
Heath removed his helmet and gloves. A bruise was forming along his left side—the hit from the second period. Purple at the center, already yellowing at the edges.
He stood.
For three weeks, he'd been consistent. He moved through the locker room on a track that didn't intersect with mine.
Tonight he deviated.
He walked past my stall toward the showers. I sat half-undressed, tape scissors in my hand. He stopped.
Heath looked at me.
In two seconds, I understood. The message arrived fully intact.
I'm still here. I'm not done being angry. And I'm not done with you.
He turned and walked to the showers.
The tape scissors were still in my hand. My hand closed around them too hard. The blades snapped shut on nothing.
I drove home. Entered the condo that still had Heath's presence embedded in its surfaces—the couch cushion holding a compression pattern from his weight and the bedroom door he'd closed behind him three weeks and four days ago.
The rest of the condo was mine, and mine looked like this: clean counters, a single mug in the drying rack, the stack of Scripps and URI brochures squared against the edge of the kitchen island where I'd left them in November as though graduate programs were decorative objects.
The laptop sat beside them. Closed since the night I'd signed the extension.
I opened it. Brought up a blank document.
The cursor blinked.
I typed.
What I'm scared of:
That I'm my father. That I looked at someone I love and decided I knew better. That I chose for him the way Patrick chose for me—because the alternative was trusting him with information that might lead to a decision I couldn't control.
That controlling the outcome was the point.
I stopped. Put my hands flat on the counter. Felt the cool surface against my palms.
