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He picks his phone back up. I sit there with the index card still in the pocket of my track pants, the corner of it digging into my leg through the fabric.

"My mom put the puck on the mantel," he says without looking up. He turns the phone around to show me. It's a picture of a narrow wooden mantel over a gas fireplace, with a row of framed photos of a skinny kid in hockey gear, and right in the middle, on a little plastic stand, the puck with the white tape. "She built the stand out of a toothbrush holder."

"It's crooked."

"It's perfect." He looks at the picture again. "She sent it to my whole family. My uncle in Matane asked who wrote on the tape. She said the sad bear."

"The what?"

"Nothing." He's biting down on a smile. "Forget it."

Brandt catches me in the parking garage. He's leaning on the tailgate of my truck like he owns it, keys in one hand, sunglasses pushed up on his head even though we're underground.

"Cap," he says.

"Brandt."

"Good practice."

"It was fine."

"You put the kid in his place, though. The spin thing." He smiles. Brandt's thirty-three, twelve years in this league, and he smiles like he's letting you in on something. "Guys appreciated it."

"I told him to do the drill."

"Sure. That's what I said. Guys appreciated it." He pushes off the tailgate. "Somebody's got to keep the circus in the tent, right? Management won't. Moretti won't. They see a jersey that sells."

"He's a good player."

"He's a good player who makes everything about himself. Rainbow this, rainbow that. It's a hockey team, Owen. It's not a float." He jingles the keys. "Kowal thought the thing this morning was pretty funny. Before it went missing."

I unlock the truck. I don't look at him. "What thing."

He laughs, short and easy, and slaps the side of the bed twice like he's patting a horse.

"Right," he says. "What thing. See you Thursday, Cap."

He walks off toward his Escalade. I sit in the driver's seat with the door open and the key in my hand and don't put it in the ignition for a while.

Saul calls while I'm driving home. I answer on the truck's speaker.

"Good game last night," he says. "My son's got the kid's jersey already. Twenty-seven. Paid eighty bucks for it. I told him it's your jersey he should want, and he said, and I quote, 'Dad, nobody wants a grandpa jersey.'"

"Thanks, Saul."

"He's ten, you can't take it personally." Papers rustle. "Listen. They've set your deposition. Next Thursday, nine a.m., at their offices."

"I have a game Thursday night."

"You'll be done by two. I made sure." More rustling. "I want to prep you on Monday. They're going to go through the finances, all of it, and that part's fine, that's boring, you just answer and we move on. Then they're going to ask about the marriage."

"What about it."

"Why it ended."

I'm at a red light on Halsted. A guy in the crosswalk is walking a dog in a little yellow raincoat. I watch the dog until it's all the way across.

"It's a no-fault state," I say. "Why does it matter why it ended?"