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"She's a good person. She's been a good friend to me, and Hazel is like a niece to me already." She paused. "But Janine's been through a lot. More than you know. And I was there for the divorce, Alex. I watched the whole thing with Cheryl. So I'm just... I'm worried."

"You have nothing to worry about," I said.

She studied me for a long moment. Then she stepped forward and put her arms around me.

"Don't screw this up," she said.

"I won't."

She held on for another second. Then she let go.

I drove home in the dark. The equipment box was on the bottom shelf where it had always been. I stood in front of it. The lid had a thin layer of dust on it, and the tape was still holding.

I crouched down and pulled it from the shelf. The tape was brittle and cracked when I pulled the corner.

The skates had already started to crack along the ankles, the leather dried out from years in a sealed box. The gloves were stiff from not being worn. The only things still usable were the helmet and the shin guards, and at the very bottom of the box was my jersey, folded flat, HOLLOWAY across the shoulders.

I held it up. The fabric was wrinkled but the lettering was intact. I rolled it back into a ball and set it in the box.

I was going to need new skates.

CHAPTER 10

Hockey Practice

ALEX

I'd driven past the rink a hundred times in ten years and never once pulled into the lot.

It sat two blocks from the station, on my route to work. I knew the building from the outside. The faded banner over the entrance, the parents hauling gear bags through the same doors I used to walk through, the cold that leaked out every time someone held one open too long. I'd look at it from behind the windshield and keep driving.

Today I hit the turn signal and pulled in. The lot was half full. Same cracked pavement, same chain-link along the far side. I backed into a spot near the entrance and killed the engine.

The first thing that hit me when the doors opened was the smell of fresh ice, rubber matting, the chemical bite off the Zamboni, and the locker room leaking into the hallway from somewhere down the corridor. And the sound of blades cutting ice, the echo of voices off the boards, a puck hitting the glass and the sharp crack it left behind.

Ten years, and nothing in this building had changed.

"Alex."

I turned around.

Janine was at the bottom of the bleachers, coffee in her hands. Her dark hair was down, falling past the collar of her jacket, and when she looked up at me her green eyes caught the flat light off the ice. She was in jeans and boots and a jacket she'd zipped to her chin against the cold.

"You came."

"I said I would, didn't I?"

I climbed the bleachers and sat down next to her, close enough that her arm brushed mine when I settled in.

"She's going to be so happy you're here," Janine said. "She's been counting the days."

"Where is she?"

Janine pointed toward the far end. "Pink helmet."

I found her at the blue line, waiting for her turn at a drill. She looked up toward the bleachers and found us, and even from thirty feet away I could see her smiling behind the cage.

We waved back.