On the Fly (20 page)

The team had hit a rough patch when
we’d lost Nicky to that concussion on the road trip. Hunter
Fielding was our backup this season after Jack Boyle retired over
the summer. Hunter had played fine earlier in the year, but when
we’d needed him to become our number one goaltender all of a
sudden, he’d lost his confidence. He’d been leaking goals like a
sieve, and that made the rest of us not trust him to do the job he
was out there to do.

Jim had called Shawn Nelson up from
the Seattle Storm to come serve as his backup, but he’d only played
in relief situations at the NHL level. Those instances hadn’t gone
very well. He’d been just as leaky as Fielding so far, and so
everyone else on the team was suddenly trying to do too
much.

This was quickly becoming a vicious
cycle—and there was no telling how long it would be before we
pulled ourselves out of it.

The stress of it all was getting to
Scotty. In all his years of coaching in the NHL, I’d never seen him
so visibly agitated. Granted, I’d seen him on TV much of that time
and not in person. Things like this are difficult to mask for the
cameras, though.

Scotty had just called for time-out
even though we were only halfway through the second period because
we’d gotten hemmed into our zone. The LA Kings were completely
dominating us with their forecheck, and we’d iced the puck twice in
a row. The NHL only allowed a single time-out per team each game,
and most coaches preferred to save them for the end of the
game.

Scotty hated using his before some
late moment in the third period, especially when the score was
pretty tight—like now, where we were only trailing the Kings by a
single goal.

My line—Zee, Antoine Gagnon, and
me—and two of our defensemen, Peter Nylund and Slava Lukashenko,
had all been stuck out on the ice for well over three minutes of
playing time. All season long, Scotty had been hammering home the
idea that he only wanted us to take thirty-to-forty-five-second
shifts—anything longer than that was too long. Considering that, we
were definitely in his doghouse tonight.

“
Get your fucking heads out
of your fucking asses,” Scotty yelled as soon as the five of us
who’d been on the ice reached the bench. “They’re shooting on
Fielding at will, and all you assholes can do is wheeze at the puck
while it flies past you. You’re fucking hanging him out to dry.” He
threw a clipboard at the open area behind the bench that led to the
tunnel and looked over at his assistant coaches. “You two fucking
deal with them. I don’t even want to fucking look at them
anymore.”

Bergy immediately took over. “Zee,
you’re going to do whatever the fuck you need to do to beat Stoll,
for once this whole fucking game. I don’t care how good he is, this
time you’re going to fucking be better. Gags and Soupy, you’re
going to tie your guy’s stick up so he can’t do shit. Whoever wins
the puck, you get it back to Ny.” Then his eyes narrowed on Ny. “If
you fucking ice the puck again, the whole damn team is going to pay
for it later. Don’t you fucking do it.”

“
I’m not going
to—”

“
That’s right, you’re not
going to ice the fucking puck one more time,” Bergy said,
interrupting Ny. “All five of you are going to work together,
making short, crisp passes, and you’re going to get the damn puck
out of our zone. Then you get your asses off the ice.”

The horn sounded, signaling the end of
our time-out. I could still barely get a good breath in my lungs,
but it didn’t matter. We had to get back out there.

I took my spot on the left side of the
face-off circle, lining up against Drew Doughty of the Kings. He
was one of those guys who’d cheat as much as he could until he
finally got penalized for it. Already tonight, he’d cross-checked
me at least a half dozen times, and he’d slashed the hell out of my
left leg while none of the refs were looking.

With each second that ticked by before
the linesman dropped the puck, Doughty crept closer and closer to
my side of the circle, inching into my space. I dug my skate into
the ice and jabbed my stick over his. He elbowed me hard enough
that I let up for just a second, and he got his stick free right as
the puck hit the ice.

Stoll won the draw cleanly and sent it
over to one of his linemates. Doughty slashed me again and
retreated toward the blue line. I followed him, ready to dive and
block a shot if he got the puck.

The Kings forwards cycled the puck
down low, shooting it on Hunter every chance they could. We were
all so gassed, we couldn’t keep up with them. Stoll went behind the
net with it. Ny and Luka both followed him instead of one of them
staying at the net with Hunter like they should have.

That mental lapse opened up a seam.
Stoll sent a pretty pass straight for Doughty. I dove to block the
pass, but I missed and went crashing into the boards with my legs
in an awkward position.

Doughty didn’t even settle the puck.
He one-timed it with a slap shot.

I should have been in position to
block it. That was my fucking job. My responsibility.

I wasn’t.

The shot hit the crossbar, then the
post, and then it went in the net. They were up three to
one.

I was still crumpled in a heap on the
ice, and I wasn’t sure it was a good idea to put any weight on my
left ankle.

Tuck shifted on
my lap, settling his head more fully on my upper
arm. A thin line of drool trickled from the corner of his mouth and
pooled on my sweater. He didn’t wake up. I was halfway surprised
he’d fallen asleep at all. I guess the excitement of the night and
the late hour had been too much for him, and instead of just
getting cranky, he’d zonked out.

He’d always slept like a log. Unlike
Maddie. For years, she would wake up from the tiniest movements,
the quietest sounds. I had a feeling it had an awful lot to do with
Jason and all the things he’d done to her.

I tried to pull my other arm around
enough to see my watch, but I dislodged her in the process. She’d
fallen asleep in her seat, leaning over to use me as a pillow just
like her brother was. Her head snapped up, and she blinked at me.
The garish neon lights of the Jumbotron above us and the signage
going all the way around the arena couldn’t be an easy sight for a
half-asleep little girl.

“
Sorry, hon,” I said. “I
just need to see what time it is.”

She nodded and pulled on the ends of
her sleeves to better cover her fingers. “Mr. Soupy still hasn’t
come out?” she whispered.

No, Brenden still hadn’t come, and the
game had ended well over an hour ago. My watch read 10:52—way too
late for these kids to be out, whether there was school tomorrow or
not. I’d felt like an idiot staying in the stands with my two kids
after the game finished, but I didn’t have the first clue where
else we should wait for him. He’d said he would find us, and silly
me, I’d taken him at his word. The last of the fans had trickled
out into the concourse more than half an hour ago, and I’d stopped
hearing the noises of a crowd not long after.

A lot of the people had left the game
early, even. The Storm had lost the game badly, and about halfway
through the third period the stands had started looking a lot barer
than they had been at the start. At the end of the game, most of
the fans remaining had booed the team off the ice. I’d never seen
anything like it.

Workers were going through the seats
and cleaning up the postgame mess, occasionally glancing up and
giving me strange looks. I’d be giving me a strange look, too. Why
on earth would anyone normal stick around so long after a game
finished, especially with two kids? I couldn’t come up with many
reasonable answers.

Nothing that came to mind worked, and
the truth sounded pathetic.

I looked Maddie in the eye and sighed.
“No, sweetie. He still hasn’t come. I think maybe he forgot.”
Surely he was gone by now.

“
Are we going home then?”
she asked.

There wasn’t much point in waiting any
longer. “Yeah, let’s go. Are you awake enough to walk?”

She gave me a brave nod and put on her
coat. I put Tuck’s on him, amazed that he didn’t even come close to
waking up even with all the disturbances. It would surely wake him
if I put him down so I could put my own on, so I decided to grit my
teeth and deal with the cold. It wouldn’t be too bad—we’d parked in
the garage, not in open air. I could handle it.

I draped my coat across Tuck’s back so
he’d be nice and toasty. “Can you carry my purse for me?” I asked
Maddie as I rose carefully to my feet.

“
Yes, Mommy.”

It wasn’t easy to navigate my way
through the row of seats and then up the stairs while carrying all
the dead weight of a sleeping five-year-old, but somehow we reached
the concourse without any major problems. As soon as we got out
into the open walkway, though, I heard Jim Sutter shouting my
name.

I spun toward his voice. He was
several sections down in the opposite direction of the parking
garage and practically running toward me, still wearing the same
suit and tie he’d had on at the office today. Maddie and I waited
for him to catch us. She moved half a step closer to me.

“
I thought that might be
you,” he said, slightly winded. “I was about to head home, but our
head of security told me a woman and two kids were still sitting in
the arena, like you were waiting on someone.”

“
I…” I couldn’t lie to him
about why we were waiting. There wasn’t a reasonable lie to give.
“Brenden asked me to wait for him. He must have forgotten,
though.”

“
Ah,” Jim said, and that
knowing look he seemed to always have came back to his eyes. “No, I
doubt he forgot. The coach wasn’t happy with the team’s performance
tonight, and he’s kept them late. Put them on treadmills and
exercise bikes, so they could give him the effort he believed was
lacking in their game play.”

“
Oh.” That single word
sounded unbelievably silly, for some reason. I couldn’t imagine
having played an entire hockey game and then having to work out
afterward. My body revolted just at the thought of it. Maybe he
hadn’t forgotten, though.

“
I sent word up to the
owner’s box so the other wives and girlfriends would know.” He
looked at how Tuck was gradually slipping in my arms. “Here, let me
take him.”

My head was reeling from
how easily he’d said the
other
wives and girlfriends were in the owner’s box…as
though I was one of them. “No, I can—”

With an ease that spoke of years of
doing this very thing, Jim slipped Tuck out of my arms and into
his. Maddie reached up and took my hand.

“
Come on,” he said. He
started walking back in the direction he’d come from, carrying my
son, which meant I had to go with him whether I wanted to or not. I
started walking with him, Maddie staying close at my side. Tuck
wrapped his arms around Jim’s shoulders in his sleep, which only
caused my boss to smile. “The team is hitting the showers now.
Brenden won’t be much longer. I’ll get you set up somewhere more
comfortable to wait for him.”

We went through a few hallways, past
security—who just nodded at Jim as we kept going—and then got on an
elevator. It took us down to a level I hadn’t been on before, where
the flooring and walls were all concrete. After a few more turns,
we entered what must be the team’s domain.

A long hallway had offices, storage,
and the medical team’s areas, and at the end was a heavy set of
double doors. Jim turned into an office before we got there, and
the two men I recognized as the assistant coaches looked up, one
from a computer and the other from a huge stack of
notes.

“
Rachel’s waiting on
Campbell to finish up. Is it all right if they wait in here?”
Without waiting for their response, Jim was already laying Tuck
down on a sofa.

They nodded and went back to their
work, almost oblivious to our presence, so I nudged Maddie inside
the office and over to a cushioned chair. I still thought we ought
to just go home, but at least the kids would be more comfortable in
here than we were waiting in the stands.

“
I’ll go pop in and let him
know where you are,” Jim said once he’d situated Tuck and
straightened up. “And then I’ll see you all tomorrow.”