“That sounds riveting,” I say.
“One mistake can end a career. Especially this year.”
At that, my guilt threatens to crawl its way out of the Hannibal Lecter prison cell I’ve locked it in. I swallow it back down.
“You still have to live your life,” I reply, not looking at him.
“I’ll live my life when I retire.”
“That’s only like three years away.”
“Ten,” he corrects.
“Thirty-seven? That’s grandpa-aged in hockey years.”
He gives me a contemptuous look. “Then I guess I’d better work hard to impress your father. So he thinks I’m worth keeping on the payroll.”
There won’t be a payroll,I think, nausea twisting my insides. Maybe I should take Coach up on one of those drowsy meds after all.
“Good luck. Nobody impresses him,” I say.
“In general, or is that a you specific problem?”
“You don’t know the half of it, Falkenberg.” I throw back the rest of my wine.
Falkenberg looks like he’s about to respond, but then the glowing red lavatory light switches to green.
“Fucking finally.” He practically shoots out of his chair. Is he so relieved to be rid of me?
“It’s a warzone in there,” Tremblay says as he slips through the door and scoots past, looking traumatized. Falkenberg gives him a dirty look. When the team captain passes me without another word on the way back to his seat a moment later, I’m not disappointed, I swear.
Chapter 23
Mattias
The flight attendant’s announcement wakes me, informing us that we will be landing in Stockholm soon. It hasn’t sunk in until now that I’ll be back in Sweden, even if only for a few days. I haven’t been back in three years, but somehow, it feels like no time has passed at all.
Probably because I know nothing has changed.
Last time I asked, Micke said our mother was still drinking. I expected as much. She hasn’t taken a day off since our father passed. It’s like she planted herself on that red leather sofa twenty years ago, and has dug herself too far down in it to get back up. In every memory I have of home, she’s there, tucked against the armrest and wrapped in her lambswool blanket with a bottle of akvavit on the end table and a thousand-meter stare in her eyes.
My mother hates hockey. I know it reminds her of our father, both because he loved it and because he was taking me to practice when he died. I don’t go home because my entire existence is a glaring reminder of everything she drinks to forget.
It took years of seeing a grief counselor for me to come to understand that our father’s death was not my fault. I’m alright now—as alright as Ican be. I don’t even blame the lorry driver anymore. The roads were icy, the visibility was bad, and it was an accident—a horrible, fucked up accident. I hate that in a country with so few traffic deaths, my father had to be one of them, but life isn’t fair and you can’t change the past.
I’m not telling Micke that I’ll be in Sweden. Our family functions better with an ocean between us, and there’s no reason to cause either of them extra stress, because I know Micke would try to convince her to come to the match. The closest I get to my mother these days is my name on the wire transfers I send her.
I wince as the team rolls up their window shades. I’ve got a headache, the kind I get when I sleep less than I should. I shouldn’t have lingered back there with Hearst.
She looked devastated, though. She’d tried to hide it, but it was obvious she’d been crying. Some traitorous part of me still wants to know what upset her so badly, but I resist the urge to look back, instead taking a sip of my scalding hot coffee and not caring that it burns my throat on the way down.
I was right. Stockholm hasn’t changed. Even from the shuttle window, I can tell it’s the same old stuck-up town, brimming with assholes in suits who have no shame bombarding you about the latest app they’re developing, or bragging about their newest investments—in a polite, humble, Swedish way of course. I’m more used to that sort of thing after living in LA, but at least LA doesn’t try to pretend it’s a kind place. Passing the Stockholm harbor, I hear Häkkänen and Pulkkinen in the back of the bus bitching about how our accommodations don’t have a sauna, and even if they did, it wouldn’t be up to Finnish standards. My mouth ticks upwards. Maybe it’s good that some things stay the same.
At the hotel, I’ve barely managed to shower away the travel grime and open my luggage before I hear an aggressive knock at the door. I pause the Wranglers recaps I’m watching on my laptop and eject the Monarchs flash drive where I keep all my clips, then pull on a clean pair of trousers. It’s only eight in the morning. Coach better have coffee for me if he’s already going to barrage me about the schedule—
But it’s not Coach.
It’s Hearst.
