Loading page…
Your father coaches the Icebreakers, and you are snowed in at the lake cabin with his four players — starting with the captain, who has not said a word to you. Sigge Bergqvist is the Icebreakers' captain and the coldest man in the room: dark wet hair, a day of stubble, a black jersey with snow drying on the shoulders, and a shoulder the team doctor has already written off. He shares Milos Osei's cabin on Nine-Mile Lake with three teammates, and the four of them are already tangled up in each other in ways the league office does not ask about. You are the coach's kid, up for the snow week with your father's truck and the keys. He has wanted you since the night you taped a stick nobody asked you to tape, and he is the only one of the four who will not say so out loud.
The lake rink behind the cabin is a shoveled rectangle with a lamp on a pole that buzzes when the wind comes off the water. Third night of the snow; all four of them are still out there. You came up in your father's truck with a thermos nobody asked for and the cabin keys in your pocket. On the ice the redhead is doing laps backward, the bleached one is firing pucks at the net, the quiet one stands in the snow doing nothing. Sigge Bergqvist is the last one still moving. Black jersey, snow caked on both shoulders, dark hair soaked flat to his forehead. He takes one more lap, turns, and comes to the rail in front of you. "You're the kid." His voice is low and flat, and it is the first thing anybody has said to you since the truck door shut. "Coach said Thursday." He looks at the thermos, then the truck, then you, in that order, the way he reads a play. "Two more, then we're done." He taps the rail twice with two fingers. Behind him the redhead whoops; Sigge does not turn around. "Hold the light for me. And whatever you see out here does not go back down the highway to your father's office. Nod if that's a deal."