Page 69 of The Forbidden Center

“That is generally when pickup happens.”

She climbs in and drops her bag at her feet.

I wait for the seat belt. She catches me waiting and rolls her eyes before clicking it into place.

“Are you off Thursdays now?”

“Only the afternoons. Six of them.”

“Why?”

“Because Gabi rearranged the clinic and I let her.”

She looks out the window for a moment.

Then she smiles. Small. Private. Mine only because I happened to be here to see it.

The cold from the annex is still in my coat. It came with me, along with the smell of the rink, and I have been aware of both since I left.

At the first light she takes the house plan from her bag. The green desk has acquired a lamp and something that may be a plant.

“Can we go past the house?”

“Past it, or are we conducting another exterior inspection?”

“Stop. I want to see which window is mine.”

“Then we stop.”

The light changes.

Home is the other direction.

I turn toward the house.

Chapter eleven

Colt

Dallas, Thursday, eleven seconds left in the second, and Sully sends me out for a draw in our own end because it’s the one job in this building nobody has suggested giving to somebody younger.

Their center sets up across from me on my off side. He’s a left shot the same as I am, so we’re both reaching across our bodies to get a stick on it, and he has beaten me down the ice twice tonight and would like to put a bow on the period. He slides his bottom hand low before the linesman has his arm up. I can work with a man who tells me what he’s doing.

I get low and make him hold the position until his thighs start talking to him.

The linesman drops it.

My stick goes and my bottom hand isn’t there. Not weak. Gone, somebody else’s hand on the end of my arm and they will be wanting it back, and the puck is already on its way somewhere I no longer get a vote about.

So I use my feet, because my feet are what I have left. I put my left skate across his blade and my chest into his chest and take it off him with my hip, and it squirts back along the wall to Cross, who gets it out over the line like a man with a bus to catch, and the horn goes while I’m still turning around.

Nobody in that building saw anything. A building full of people watched a thirty-eight-year-old win a defensive draw with his body.

On the bench I pull my glove off with my teeth and get my thumb in under the collarbone and go looking for it. Everything answers. Grip, wrist, fingers, all of it present and accounted for and behaving like it has never let me down in its life. That’s the part that makes a man feel insane.

Brick drops down next to me and takes the bottle out of my hand without asking, because I made the mistake of sharing a water bottle with him and he has never recognized a boundary since.

“You got him with the hips.”