Page 71 of The Lies We Play

He sets the brush down. He doesn't turn around.

“All right, Livia.”

I open my contacts.

I scroll past names I see every day. Past the institute. Past my mother. Past the dentist. Past the man I have been having coffee with for three years.

I scroll to a number I have never deleted and never used.

A US number.

Saved ten years ago, under a name I have not let myself say since.

My thumb hovers over it.

Bella stays still.

The portrait of the woman with the dog continues not to blink.

Outside, in Florence, the bells start.

Chapter Twelve

Creed

Now . . .

The cab smells like rain, coffee, and whatever pine-scented cleaning product New York cab drivers use when they want to convince passengers that no one has ever thrown up in their back seat.

I don’t buy it.

I sit behind the driver with one hand around a paper cup gone lukewarm and the other rolling a quarter across my knuckles. Over. Under. Catch. Repeat. The coin belonged to no one important until forty minutes ago, when I fished it out of the console in the team car because my hands needed something to do and I was tired of tearing at the tape around my wrist like a rookie with nerves.

The driver’s name is Manny. He told me that when I got in, along with three facts I didn’t ask for: he grew up in Queens, his ex-wife hates hockey, and his cousin once sold a used treadmill to a Night Hawks assistant coach who tipped badly. Probably Bobby, he’s a cheapskate.

I said, “Yeah.”

He took that as encouragement.

People often do.

“So what do you think?” Manny asks, glancing at me in the rearview. “You really retiring?”

The question follows me everywhere now.

Reporters throw it at me in hallways. Analysts dress it up as concern. Coaches pretend they aren’t measuring my ice time like it’s a pulse. My body asks it every morning before I get out of bed, every time my hip complains, every time my shoulder catches wrong, every time a kid ten years younger than me recovers from a hit faster than I blink.

You really retiring?

Like retirement is a door.

Like I know what’s on the other side.

I roll the quarter over my index finger. “You a Night Hawks fan, Manny?”

“Depends who’s winning.”

“Smart.”