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"Hi," she says. "Is this a bad time?"

"No. I'm just at the rink."

"You won. I saw." A pause. "I watch sometimes. Still."

"I didn't know that."

"I didn't want you to know." She sounds tired. She sounds like she's been crying, or not sleeping, or both. "Owen, the article. The lonely marriage thing. I need you to know it wasn't me."

"I know."

"It was my cousin Tammy. She told somebody at her hair salon, and somebody at the salon knows somebody at that website, and I didn't know she was going to say anything, I swear to God. I haven't talked to her since. I'm so sorry."

"It's okay."

"It's not okay. It was private." She stops. I can hear her breathing. "It was true, though. That's the part that— It was true, and I hated reading it, because it was true."

I sit down in my stall. Around me, guys are showering and laughing and throwing tape. Castel's across the room, doing an interview in front of a camera, talking with his hands. I turn my back to him.

"I know," I say. "It was true."

"I used to think it was me," she says. "For years. I thought there was something wrong with me. That I wasn't—enough. For you."

"It wasn't you."

"I know that now. I think I've known it a long time." She's quiet for a moment. "Are you okay, Owen? Honestly? You looked so bad in that picture from Chicago. The one coming out of the lawyer's office."

I look down at my hand. At the stripe.

"I don't know," I say. "I think I might be. For the first time in a while."

For a second I think the call's dropped.

"Good," she says finally, and she sounds like she means it. "That's good. I want that for you. I really do."

"Laurel—"

"Tell Saul the lake house is yours," she says. "I don't want it. I never liked the loons."

She hangs up before I can answer.

In the hotel bathroom, with the door locked and the shower running, I look at myself in the mirror.

I've looked at this face every morning for thirty-five years. It's the same face. Broken nose. Scar through the eyebrow. Gray starting at the temples, which I only noticed this summer, in the rental, under the bad light over the sink.

"I'm attracted to men," I say out loud.

My voice sounds strange in the tiled room. Too loud. I wait for something to happen. The mirror doesn't crack. Nobody bangs on the door.

"I'm attracted to him."

That one's easier. That one's been true for weeks. Maybe since opening night, since the kid came through the door singing with one earbud in, and I watched him cross the room and didn't know why I couldn't stop.

I get my phone out. I type into the search bar: can you realize you're bisexual at 35.

There are four hundred thousand results. The first one's a forum. Somebody wrote: I figured it out at 52. My wife and I are still best friends. It's never too late to know who you are.

I read it three times. Then I clear my search history, and I put the phone face-down on the counter, and I stand there in the steam.