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"You could ask him yourself," she says.

"I know."

"He's at home. Anand's doing surgery on Monday." She goes back to the tape. "He's not going to walk right for a long time, Rémy. He knew that every time he let us drain it and went back out there. He knew it in April, when the MRI came back and he told Moretti it was managed."

"April?"

"The MRI." She looks up. "He didn't tell you."

"He said it was wear and tear."

Dana doesn't say anything for a while. She rips a piece of tape off the roll, very slowly.

"He lied to all of us," she says. "Me. Anand. Moretti. You." She puts the tape down. "He's been lying to everybody his whole life, kid. It's what he's good at. It's the only thing he ever practiced harder than hockey."

"That's not an excuse."

"No," Dana says. "It's not. It's just the truth."

My parents take me to dinner at the place Maman found, a little French-Canadian restaurant in Lincoln Square with a hand-painted sign and plastic tablecloths and a waitress from Trois-Rivières who hugs my mother like they're cousins.

There's tourtière on the menu. Maman orders three.

There are four chairs at the table. Nobody sits in the fourth one. Maman puts her purse on it.

"He's hurt," she says, before the bread even comes. "The sad bear. We saw. On the ice."

"I know."

"It's bad?"

"It's over," I say. "His career. It was on the website this morning."

My dad puts down his fork. He's wearing his good shirt, the plaid one he wears to weddings, buttoned all the way up. He looks at me across the table.

"What about you?" he asks.

"What about me?"

"You look like somebody hit you with a truck," my dad says. "Since the airport. Since you picked us up. You smile with your mouth. Not your eyes."

I look at the plastic tablecloth. It has a pattern of little red maple leaves on it. Very patriotic. Very Canadian. I count nine leaves before I can make my mouth work.

I think about rule two. Not his. Mine. The one Sorel made me promise in front of my building. No more lying to me. I think about the lies. Six of them. Two to Sorel, one to Marc, three to Maman. I think about the index card Priya handed me: We don't comment on rumors.

I'm so tired.

"Owen and I were together," I say.

The table goes very quiet.

"Since November. Since Toronto. That picture, the one from the hotel, the one on the internet, that was us. We were together, and nobody knew, because he wasn't ready, and I said okay." I keep my eyes on the maple leaves. "He's why I came back early at Christmas. There wasn't any optional skate. I drove four hours in the snow to his lake house. I lied to you, Maman. I lied to you at Christmas, and I lied to you on the phone, and I lied to you on Thursday when I said he couldn't come to dinner."

Nobody says anything.

"It's over now," I say. "I ended it. He said something he promised he'd never say, and I ended it. So now it's over, and he's hurt, and I didn't even go to see him."

I finally look up.