I’m watching her the way I always watch her - tracking her movement, reading her body language.
She’s not showing any weaknesses.
Instead, she steals the puck at the blue line, drives to the net, and puts it past their goalie before anyone can react.
Two - nothing.
The crowd is louder now. Some of them are standing.
She skates past their bench on her way back to center ice, and I see their players watching her. Not with fear this time. Something else.
Respect.
The third period, they pull their goalie. The kind of move that says they’d rather lose swinging than lose quietly.
We hold them off. Chen stops everything that comes near him. And Shaw - Shaw is everywhere. Controlling the pace like she’s been doing this her whole life.
Because she has.
The final buzzer sounds. Three–nothing.
We win.
The crowd is on its feet now. Not the full roar of a championship game, but something else - something that sounds like the beginning of something.
I find her at center ice. She’s standing there, stick in hand, looking up at the stands.
“Not bad,” I say.
She doesn’t look at me. “This game will probably be disqualified once the investigators find out.”
“I know.”
“None of this is going to count.”
I step closer. “It counts. Every single shift has counted.
She doesn’t answer. But she doesn’t pull away when I take her hand.
The crowd is still cheering.
34
LEONORA
The house smells like chicken and stuffing again.
The same smell that’s been greeting me since I was a kid, the same warmth, the same feeling of something that hasn’t changed even when everything else has.
“Leonora? I’m in here.”
I drop my bag by the stairs and walk toward the kitchen.
“Mom.”
She crosses the kitchen and pulls me into her arms.
“You’re home,” she says.
