The team trickles onto the ice in stages, the way they always do - Chen first, then Mercer, then the rest of them in twos and threes, the noise level rising incrementally until the rink sounds like itself again.
Elida arrives last. She doesn’t look at me.
She sets up at the blue line and reviews her notebook. I skate a loop and come back and she’s talking to one of the assistants. I want to do it now, before the session starts and the whole team is watching.
I pull up at the boards near where she’s standing.
“Eriksson.”
Her expression is guarded, giving me nothing.
“I want to apologize. For what I said. In training yesterday.”
“Okay.”
I wait for more. There isn’t any.
“I was out of line. What I said - about your career, about why you’re here - it was personal and it was out of order and it had nothing to do with the session.”
“Didn’t it?”
“What?”
“It had nothing to do with the session,” she says, evenly. “That’s what you said.”
“That’s - yes.”
“So, what did it have to do with?”
For a second I stand there without a ready answer because I didn’t expect her to do this, to take the apology apart.
“I was frustrated,” I say carefully.
“About the loss.”
“Yes.”
“And about the drill.”
I pause. “Yes.”
“And about being corrected in front of your team.” She says it without accusation. She closes her notebook. “You were frustrated about all of it and I was the closest available target.”
“That’s not-”
“I’m not saying it to make you feel worse. I’m saying it because if you’re apologizing, I’d like to understand what you’re apologizing for.”
The rink is filling up around us, the team spreading out, the noise of it rising, and we’re standing close enough to the boards that this is private without being secret
“I heard what you think of me. After. In the corridor outside Calloway’s office. I wasn’t… I didn’t mean to listen. The door was open.”
Her expression flickers.
“How much?”
“Most of it.”
“It wasn’t personal. And all of it was true.”
