Page 8 of Thin Ice

"I'll be fine, Mom."

"I know you will." She said it quickly. "He'll be off by dinner, seven."

"Sharp," I said, raising my eyebrows.

My mother smirked, and I headed up the stone stairs.

My room was on the second floor, lakeside, and walking into it was like walking into the past.

Nothing had moved. The trophies stood on their shelf in height order — junior states, the club four, the school eight — polished, spaced, aligned. Somebody dusted them on a schedule. The Kingswell pennant hung over the desk. The framed photographs in their grid: a boy in a navy blazer at a podium, a boy shaking hands with a senator, a boy in a boat with a medal, smiling the trained smile in every single frame.

I stood in the middle of it with my bag on my shoulder and understood that I was part of the display in this museum. Alexander Harrington: The Early Years. Every object chosen, every angle approved. I'd placed seventh in a junior single at fourteen and third at Canadian Juniors at sixteen, and those trophies existed somewhere in a box. Only the wins made the shelf.

The boy in these photographs had never lost anything. That's how you knew he wasn't real.

I unpacked the way I'd been taught. Shirts on hangers, kit in the bottom drawer. Liam's hoodie came out last. Burgundy, Riverside Crew across the front in cracked white letters, washed soft.

I hid it under my pillow and got ready to go down for dinner.

***

My father came to the table at 6:58, sat at 6:59, and at seven exactly the housekeeper brought the first course.

"Alexander." He shook my hand. He'd shaken my hand since I was eleven. "Good drive?"

"Fine. Clear roads."

"Good."

He looked well. Rested, tanned from somewhere, silver hair cut that week. He poured the wine himself — a Barolo, decanted.

We performed the meal. Conversation as agenda. He opened with the market, moved to a colleague's son at Goldman, touched my grades — I gave him the 3.9 and he nodded like a line item clearing. My mother contributed warmth at the intervals warmth was scheduled.

Then, over the lamb: "The Charles." He held his glass by the stem and looked at me over it. "Fourth."

"Fourth," I said.

"In a double. With the Riverside boy." The phrase sat on the tablecloth between us. "A program record, I'm told."

"Both programs."

"Mm." He drank. "Top five is significant. Fourth is not third."

"No," I agreed. "It's fourth."

He set the glass down. "We should discuss the spring while you're here. Next semester's arrangements."

"Arrangements?" I asked, playing ignorant.

"Your enrollment. Your program." A small motion of his hand, sweeping crumbs off the cloth. "There's paperwork that ought to be settled by the New Year. Deadlines are deadlines." He looked at me directly. "We'll sit down properly this week and go through it all then."

Paperwork. Deadlines. This week. But Eldridge's voice was still in my ear. The athletic endowment. The boathouse renovation fund. The scholarship pool. Everything.

Was the paperwork all of it? Or was this the top layer, and the review was underneath it, waiting for the moment I said no?

I couldn't tell. My father had spent thirty years in rooms where the thing on the table was never the thing on the table, and I'd been trained inside the same rooms, and I still couldn't tell whether I was looking at paperwork or at the lid of something I hadn't been shown yet.

I put more lamb on my fork.