Soren was quiet for a second.
“Okay,” he said, and his expression settled into something easier. “Help yourself to pizza. I need to check on Micah's flashcards.”
I'd helped myself to pizza, found a stool at the counter, and spent the interim listening to the apartment — the low sound of a TV, Poppy's voice carrying from somewhere down the hall with the particular rhythm of someone talking through a problem, the creak of the building doing what old buildings did. It was louder than my house and smaller and the furniture didn't match and there were three different sizes of shoes by the front door.
Soren came back into the kitchen, checked the coffee pot, and refilled his mug. “Micah's study system is a disaster. He colour-codes by topic but then loses half the cards and has to recopy them. I've been trying to get him to just use an app for two years.”
“He's tactile,” I said. “Some people retain better by writing.”
Soren looked at me. “How do you know that?”
“University of Toronto. Engineering degree.” I took a drink of coffee. “You do a lot of memorisation-heavy coursework — figure out pretty fast what works.”
He stared at me. “You have an engineering degree.”
“Graduated before the league drafted me.”
“You never mentioned that.”
“It didn't come up.”
“Rook.” He set his mug down. “You graduated from U of T and you're saying it like a footnote.”
“It is a footnote. The hockey paid better.”
He laughed, genuine and slightly disbelieving, shaking his head. “I always figured you were smart. I didn't figure that smart.”
“You didn't figure I'd go to university?”
“I figured you'd go straight to the league.” He was quiet for a second, and his voice shifted register just slightly. “I wanted to go,” he said. “Had a partial scholarship from Ryerson. Music program. Deferred it twice before I finally had to let it go.”
The pizza was good. I didn't taste it.
“The kids,” I said.
“Yeah. The kids.” He didn't say it with resentment. Just with the flatness of a fact he'd made his peace with a long time ago. “Timing doesn't always care what you want.”
I didn't say anything to that. There wasn't anything to say that wouldn't land wrong, and I'd learned early enough that Soren didn't need people trying to fix the things he'd alreadysurvived. But I filed it away — set it somewhere specific and quiet in the back of my mind where I kept things I intended to come back to.
“Soren!” Poppy's voice came from down the hall with the particular pitch that meant she was addressing the apartment generally and expecting the right person to respond. “I need a second opinion on this thesis statement.”
“In a minute,” he called back.
“It's time-sensitive.”
“History is not time-sensitive, Poppy.”
“The assignment is due tomorrow, so actually?—”
He pushed off the counter with a sigh that was entirely performative, the sigh of a man who would absolutely go look at the thesis statement and had already decided to while he was still sighing about it. He looked at me. “You don't have to?—”
“Let me see it,” I said.
He looked at me for a second. Then he tilted his head toward the hallway.
Poppy's room was what I'd have expected from the youngest sibling of a musician — drum practice pad on the desk, concert posters on the walls, a corkboard covered in photos and paper scraps and a sticky note that just saiddon't be a cowardin her own handwriting. She was sitting cross-legged on her bed with her laptop open and a notebook in her lap and she looked up when Soren appeared in the doorway.
Then she clocked me behind him and her expression recalibrated fast.
