Page 75 of The Lies We Play

Then it rings again.

Same number.

I pick it up before I decide not to.

“Yeah?”

Nothing.

Not silence exactly.

Breath.

One slow inhale. Uneven. Held too long before release.

My body goes cold before my mind catches up.

I know that breath.

No.

That’s not possible.

Ten years is a long time. Ten years changes a man. Ten years takes a voice and drags it through grief, money, medicine, family, whatever story people tell about survival when the truth is too ugly to sit with at dinner. Ten years can make memory a liar.

But breath is older than memory.

The person on the other end tries to speak.

Fails.

I don’t move.

Hockey is half waiting. People think it’s speed because that’s what looks good on highlight reels. But the game is waiting. Reading. Holding. Knowing the difference between a man who has the puck and a man who is about to have no choice but to give it up. You wait in the slot. You wait at the blue line. You wait for the mistake. You wait for the hit you know is coming and decide whether it’s worth the pass.

So, I wait.

The breath comes again.

Closer this time.

Like whoever is holding the phone has pressed it harder against his face because standing upright has become optional.

My fingers tighten around the device and commit before I can be a coward. “Hal?”

The line breaks open.

Not with words.

With the sound of a man losing the room around him.

A chair scraping. A hard inhale. Something solid knocking against wood or glass—a knee, an elbow, a shoulder against a wall on the way down. Then nothing but that breathing again, except worse now. Ruined. Dragged through a place I have lived for ten years and never managed to leave.

My knees almost give.

I put one hand on the counter.

The other one is still curled around the quarter. I can feel the ridges of it pressing into my palm. I don't let go. I have not let go of small hard objects since I was twenty-six years old, and I'm not going to start now.