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Captain’s Orders on the Ice

Page 19

by Ellis Rhodes

After he goes home, I lie on the floor in the dark with the TV off and the lights of the city coming in through the window.

I get my phone back from where Sorel exiled it. I don't open social media. I open the team group chat, where guys have posted nothing but a thumbs-down emoji from somebody on the fourth line and a reminder from the travel coordinator about Monday's flight.

Then I go to Hale's name, the direct message button next to it, which I've never pushed.

I type I'm sorry about tonight.

I delete it.

I type Your knee ok?

I delete that too, and I type I'm sorry, just that, and I hit send before I can think about it any more.

The little word Delivered shows up under it. Then nothing.

I put the phone on my chest and look at the ceiling. It really is a sad ceiling. There's a crack in the plaster over the window shaped like a hockey stick, or a river, depending on how tired you are.

Twenty minutes later my phone buzzes against my sternum and I nearly throw it across the room.

Head up on the boards, it says. Get some sleep.

That's all. No emoji. No it's fine. Half of it is what he told me my first day in the room, word for word, typed with full stops at the end like he's writing on a puck.

I read it until the screen goes dark.

Then I plug in my phone, and I try to do what he says.

Chapter Five

OWEN

The deposition ran until four-forty.

Saul said two. Saul was wrong. Laurel's lawyer is a woman named Deborah Kline with reading glasses on a beaded chain, and she spent the first three hours on the finances, which was boring the way Saul promised. Then she took off her glasses, folded them, set them on the legal pad, and asked me when I first knew my marriage was in trouble.

I said I didn't know.

She asked if there had been anyone else.

I said no.

"No one," she said. "In twelve years."

"No one."

"Not an old girlfriend. Not someone on the road. Not a flirtation that went a little too far."

"No."

She wrote something down. She had very neat handwriting. I could see it upside down from where I sat, and I couldn't read a word of it.

"Mr. Hale, did your wife ever express concerns about intimacy in the marriage?"

"Objection," Saul said. "Relevance."

"It goes to the breakdown of the marital relationship."

"It's a no-fault state, counselor."