Page 81 of Omega’s Forward

And the thing is, I know. The exact same thought’s been sitting in me since about five this morning: the one person who knew everything almost the whole time and carried it, who covered for us, drove me to the airport, told me to go when going looked insane.

“Jean-Pierre,” I say.

“Jean-Pierre,” Everett agrees. “God help us all.”

26. Everett

The season ended four months after Sam arrived.

Conference final, game six, on the road. Brody had rejoined the team by then — I made him go; a man can only pace a nursery so many times before he needs to hit something at speed for a living — and they took it as far as anyone honestly expected, and then a better-rested team with a deeper bench turned the lights out.

He came home the next morning on the first flight, and I braced for the mood I remembered, the one that used to slam gym doors and rattle plates. What I got instead was a man who dropped his bag in the hall, showered off the airport, and spent forty minutes on the sofa with his son on his chest watching cartoons with the sound off.

“Next year,” was his entire post-mortem.

So that’s where we are. Summer. The arena dark, the group chat unbearable, and my son five months old and already conducting his life at full volume, which he gets from his father, along with the hair.

Today he’s strapped to my chest in the carrier, asleep, while I take the executive elevator up to a meeting I called myself.

Priya is already in the boardroom with Belanger, papers squared, and I watch them both make the adjustment they always make now — eyes to me, eyes to the small snoring cargo, back to me, professionally unmoved. Belanger’s mouth twitches. He’s a grandfather four times over and it costs him visible effort not to say something.

“So,” Priya says. “The two-year mark is next spring. If we’re going out to buyers, the bankers want to start this summer. I’ve had three unsolicited approaches since the conference final — serious ones. I need instructions.”

This is the meeting where I sell my father’s team. I’ve had it circled for two years.

My father left me a franchise and one line of handwriting. Learn the game before you judge it, Ev. I hated that note. It was so exactly him — an instruction instead of an apology. It was homework from beyond the grave. He couldn’t say sorry, so he assigned me a sport.

Here’s the thing, though. I did it. Not for him.

And I’ve judged it. Some of it I will never love. I watched it eat my father alive, and there are nights it frightens me what it asks of the man I live with.

But I don’t take the game personally any more. Not for me. It’s something that the love of my life loves and I can love that.

“I’m not going to sell.”

Priya doesn’t move for a second. Then she draws one line through an entire page of her notes, with a ruler, which is the most emotion she’ll be showing today. “I’ll draft the announcement,” she says. “Ownership is not for sale but I’d like it minuted that I’ve earned a raise.”

“Minuted,” I say.

Belanger leans back and looks at me the whole length of the table. “Gordie used to say this club would outlive everybody who deserved it.” He taps the table twice. “Glad it’s staying in the family, Mr. Rourke.”

“Everett,” I say. “If you’re going to be running my team for the foreseeable, it’s Everett.”

“Then we’re agreed, Everett.” Two pumps and the squeeze. Sam sleeps through his first board decision, which shows excellent instincts. Half of governance is knowing when not to react.

Before I lose her to the announcement, Priya slides one more folder across. “And this arrived from the league’s counsel yesterday. You’ll want the short version.”

The short version: Cade Dorn is done. He went into the playoffs and in round one he left his feet and put a Kestrels winger into the stanchion. This time there was no discretion left in the building to spend. Indefinite suspension, upheld on appeal. His club has terminated the contract. No one is picking him up — not with the disciplinary file, and not with two years of my lawyers’ letters stapled to the back of it.

“They were very keen to emphasize the decision was theirs alone,” Priya says, dryly.

“Of course it was. Send counsel something nice.”

“I already have. I paid their bill. It was big enough.”

I think about Linus, who spent a spring in a neck brace learning to fall asleep sitting up, and who has spent this one teaching my son to high-five.

On the way out, the elevator opens on the wrong floor, and it’s Sacco.