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It would see everything.

"He'll say no," I tell her. "He's very private."

"Ask him anyway."

"Okay, Maman."

"Promise?"

"I promise," I say, and it's the third lie this month, and this one's to my mother.

The last game before the break is on the twenty-third. We win. It's eight in a row now.

I pack my bag for Rimouski in Owen's gray apartment, which isn't so gray anymore. There's the rug. There's the fern. There's a string of Christmas lights I put up around the window last week that he pretends to hate and never turns off.

He's sitting on the couch under the green blanket, watching me stuff sweaters into a duffel.

"My mom says to invite you," I say, without looking up.

"For Christmas?"

"She's making tourtière. My dad wants to show you his truck."

He doesn't say anything. I zip the duffel and finally look at him.

"What would you tell them?" he asks. "About why I was there?"

"That you're my captain. That you'd be alone."

"That's all?"

"That's all." I sit down on the rug in front of him. "That's all, Owen. Nobody has to know anything."

"Your mother would know."

I don't argue. She would.

"Next year," he says.

"Next year?"

"Next Christmas." He looks at me. "The season's over in June. Next Christmas is after that."

I stare at him. Ostie. He remembered the list.

"Rule one," he says. "Until the season's over. I read the list. I remember it."

"You mean it?"

"I mean it."

I don't say anything else. I climb up onto the couch next to him, under the blanket, and put my head on his chest, where I can hear his heart. It's steady. It's the steadiest thing in the world.

Before I leave, I take the pink laces out of my skates and put them in the side pocket of the duffel. I don't know why. They just seem too loud, lately.

He watches me do it. He doesn't say anything.

But on the plane to Montreal, somewhere over Michigan, I get a text. It's a photo of the fern in its cat pot, with the Christmas lights on behind it.