Page 9 of Thin Ice

I couldn't stop. Three days in, and it had already gotten past the professional part: how he played and the economy of his movements. That didn't explain my smile every time I glimpsed his face without a helmet on.

I watched the grinding part of the game they gave the veterans, defensive minutes that never made highlight reels, and the coach used Nolan for all of them. When the other team's best line came out, Nolan met it, and they got nowhere. Late in the second, up a goal, he killed off a penalty and then, instead of coming to the bench for his rest, stayed out for the next shift. A young player who would have relieved him had taken a puck off the foot and couldn't go.

At the other end, Misha stole the game. He made saves he had no business making, flashing his glove out to catch pucks that were already past him. Afterward, he'd tell the reporters the game was good. For Misha, that meant he knew he was unbeatable.

The goal that put it away came off a rookie's stick. Jamie Loughlin, twenty-two, read a lazy pass, picked it off, and was gone. He came in alone, waited out the goalie's first move, and slid it under the blocker as the pad dropped.

The first man to reach Loughlin, folding him into the boards, was Nolan. A twenty-two-year-old had done something wonderful, and Nolan Mercer wanted to be the first to congratulate him.

I had to look away.

The horn blew, and the crowd fell silent, quiet enough to hear the Steamers yelling and their sticks hammering the ice. They poured over the boards. It was their first Cup Final since 2001.

A Steamers trainer near me pulled out his ringing phone. He laughed and turned it around to show somebody. He shouted about tugs sounding off on the river, three long blasts each. Fans stormed the downtown streets. Fifteen hundred miles away, a city was coming apart, and the man at the center of it was in the handshake line, gripping forearms and leaning forward with a grin.

***

It was nearly three a.m. when Kate Halloran called me back.

Most of the team was still celebrating in the lobby and the hotel bar. I'd retreated to my room and settled into a chair by the window, scrolling through news stories about the game.

She didn't say hello. "You'll have seen the game. I couldn't keep it in."

"Tell me."

"Your player, Mercer." Her voice was firm. "I watched the TV cameras in love with that man, and I thought about my father in his room dialing and dialing and getting a machine. I decided I'm done being careful about who I sound crazy to. So I'm going to tell you the thing I wouldn't tell you on the tarmac, and you're going to tell me whether I'm a grieving idiot."

"I'm listening."

"The last real conversation we had was two days before." She steadied her voice. "He was lucid. It was one of his good days near the end. He took my hand and said he'd done a bad thing by staying quiet. I said, 'Dad, you never did a bad thing in your life,' and he got agitated. He never did that. He said there was something he should've told one of this kid's old teammates a long time ago. The kid was named Hawkins."

I repeated it back calmly. "Something he should've told one of Hawkins's old teammates."

"That's it. I can't say it without—" A short, broken sound. "The home heard a dying man rambling about a hockey kid from a hundred years ago. I heard my father, who never carried one thing home in thirty years, spending his last clear afternoon trying to unpack guilt. He wasn't rambling. He was settling an account."

"Who was Hawkins to him?"

"A boy who died." Her voice was flat. "He was a young player, a rookie, who dropped dead in a hotel thirteen years ago. Dad was there for it. He was the equipment manager, and he'd seen generations of rookies. This one stood out. It cost him something."

"And the teammate he was trying to reach was Mercer?"

"He didn't say a name on that last day. He just said one of Hawkins's old teammates." A breath. "I packed up his room. I found the call log on his cell and copies of two certified letters, sent care of the St. Louis Steamers. There's exactly one player on that whole Carolina roster who's wearing a St. Louis jersey right now with cameras pointed at his face."

"Kate. I don't think you're a grieving idiot. I think you've been right about this from the start. I'm coming to Raleigh to see you. I'm not going to let this sit."

"After the season," she said. "Your boys have a cup to win." Her voice turned gentle.

"After the season."

Chapter four

Nolan

Fans met us at the airport, thousands of them, with faces pressed against the terminal glass. It was a wall of blue turned out for a team that was chasing its first Cup in forty years. We landed in the early afternoon, the day after the clinch.

The city was already going crazy, and we still had a series to play. At the barricade, a kid, maybe ten, sitting on his father's shoulders, held out a jersey and a marker.

"You blocked two shots in the third," he said. He spoke like a scout filing a report.