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Captain’s Orders on the Ice

Page 154

by Ellis Rhodes

"It's everywhere. Nadia's phone melted. She says the good comments are winning. By a lot." He's quiet for a second. "Your mother's on the team's Facebook page. She commented. Under the video. That's my son. With a heart."

I put my hand over my eyes.

"There's something else," Moretti says.

I look up. He's taken his phone out of his pocket. He's looking at the screen, not at me.

"About ten years ago," he says, "I looked up Danny Lisowski. I don't know why. Couldn't stop thinking about him, I guess. He's in Brandon, Manitoba. Runs a skating school for kids. Married. Two kids of his own." He clears his throat. "I wrote him a letter. An actual letter, on paper. Said I was sorry I didn't do anything. He wrote back. We've traded a couple of emails a year since."

I can't breathe.

"He texted me an hour ago," Moretti says. "He saw the hallway clip. He asked me to give you a message."

He turns the phone around. He holds it out so I can read it.

Tell Owen I always knew he was different. It just took him a while. Tell him I'm proud of him. And tell him to take care of that kid.

I read it three times. Then I can't read it anymore, because I can't see.

Moretti puts the phone back in his pocket. He puts his hand on my shoulder, once, heavy, the way he did in Pruitt's office.

"Twenty minutes left," he says. "Maybe more. Don't cry on the broadcast, son. It's bad for my reputation."

He goes back up the tunnel. Dana hands me a towel without saying a word.

Nashville goes ahead again early in the third. Webb ties it with six minutes left on a point shot through a screen, and the building shakes so hard I feel it through the chair.

Two-two.

The horn goes at the end of regulation, and nobody on either bench moves for a second.

Overtime. Game seven. Next goal wins the Cup.

In the fifteen minutes before overtime, the guys stay in the room. I stay in my chair. Dana brings me water I don't drink.

When they come back out, Rémy's the last one through the tunnel. He stops next to my chair. He's not supposed to. Moretti's already on the bench, waiting.

He doesn't say anything. He just looks at me. His face is flushed, and his hair's soaked through, and his eyes are so bright.

I reach out. In front of Dana. In front of the security guard at the tunnel mouth, and the cameraman from the broadcast crew who's set up ten feet away and is pointing his lens right at us.

I put my hand flat on his chest. Over the logo. Over his heart.

Same place. It's always the same place.

"Go," I say.

He puts his glove over my hand. Just for a second.

Then he goes.

Chapter Thirty-Four

RÉMY

Overtime in game seven of the Final is the quietest loud thing in the world.

Nineteen thousand people are screaming. I can see their mouths open. I can see the glass shaking. But on the ice, in my helmet, it all goes far away, like I'm underwater, like somebody turned the volume down on everything except my own breathing and the sound of my skates.