I sat in the cab with the engine off for two minutes, counting my breath.
Three in.
Hold for four.
Out for five.
I did not turn to look at the kitchen window. I did not let myself do that. I started the engine. I reversed out onto Birch Street and drove back to the rink.
The day unfolded.
I worked with the goalies — one-on-one time with the kid, who was nervous because the system was coming and the kid had heard the wordhistoricon the weather app. I took him through thirty pucks. Nothing fancy. The fundamentals of keeping your glove shoulder up and your hip locked and your eyes on the release point instead of the hand that released it.
“Why am I looking at the fingers,” the kid said.
“Because the hand lies. The shoulder tells you the type of shot. The hip tells you how deep it’s going. The fingers tell you nothing.”
The kid worked through thirty pucks like the end of the world was not arriving in eight hours.
By noon, the text had gone out. All staff and players bunk at the rink. Bring families if necessary. The diner was confirmed closed until further notice. I saw this information come through on my phone without opening the message entirely. I felt Maddox look at me from across the rink. I did not look back.
I worked through the afternoon with the team’s backup goalie, a man named Chen who had played two seasons in the AHL before a shoulder injury had ended his forward momentum. Chen was good. Chen was the kind of good that would have made it if the shoulder had held. We worked in silence, the way I preferred to work — observation, correction, demonstration, repetition.
The afternoon light was disappearing by four o’clock. Not setting. Disappearing. The clouds had gone from gray to purple to charcoal, and the wind had started to arrive in gusts that rattled the rink’s high windows.
At six o’clock the first snow fell.
It came down in thick flakes that stuck to the windows and refused to slide off. It came down like it had a purpose. Like it was trying to bury something. I watched it from the locker room window — really just a frame of glass in the metal wall — and felt the temperature drop just from looking at it.
At six thirty it had stopped being singular flakes and had become a sheet. The parking lot was disappearing. The cars were becoming lumps. The world was going white.
At seven o’clock the wind had picked up enough to scatter the snow across the parking lot in drifts that were already three feet high and rising. The drifts had shapes now. Waves. They looked like water that had frozen mid-motion.
I stood at the rink window with my coat on, not moving, just watching the weather arrive. The cold was coming off the glassin waves. I could feel it trying to get to me. The arctic air was not subtle. It wanted to kill things.
Behind me, Beckham was taking bed count. Fifteen people were staying the night. Three kids under twelve, crying because they understood something bad was happening. One woman who was Sue from the inn, who had made the decision that her north wing residents were safer at the rink than at the inn because at least the rink had generators and structure and a plan.
The diner manager — that was what Maddox had called her in passing — was not here, because the diner was closed and she had gone home.
She had gone home to the furnace that was not going to keep a house warm when the power went out.
She had gone home to the apartment over the garage where there was now a generator and two space heaters and three jugs of water and a pyramid of canned food arranged by a man who should not have left his position as assistant coach at a D-League franchise to buy supplies for a woman he did not know.
I had done it anyway.
I had looked in her eyes when she ordered coffee and seen something that broke the part of me that was supposed to stay whole.
I stood at the window and watched the snow accumulate and did not think about the choice I had made. I did not think about what happened when a woman in a house without heat spent a winter storm awake in the dark. I did not think about what it would feel like if the generator ran out of fuel and she woke up cold. I did not think about the phone numbers on her fridge — the propane company, her number, the other woman’s number, the non-emergency line that was never used.
I turned away from the window.
I went to the back office where Beckham had set up the overnight logistics. I said, “I’m not staying.”
“What.”
“I’m not staying. I’m going home. The storm is bad but not impassable yet. I’m going to go. You will have one less person to feed.”
Beckham set down his clipboard slowly, like he was moving through something thick.
