Page 144 of Knottingley Ever After
Oh, my God.
“She would,” Vance continues, very evenly, “have been the first Omega goalie ever signed in the league. Had the skating incident not happened.”
My breath stops for real this time. Jude’s hand, in mine, tightens.
“What,” I manage, very small, “happened to her.”
Vance does not, immediately, answer.
He looks down at the carpeted floor of the corridor between us for a small beat. He looks back up. His eyes are, against every assumption I would have made about a man in his shoes, briefly the eyes of a person who has, professionally, lost someone he respected.
“She died,” he says, slow. “On an outdoor practice rink. Set up.”
“Set up,” I echo.
“The upper administrative tier of the league at that time did not, on the record, want an Omega goalie in the senior structure. This was, I should clarify, several years before the Knot-Pucking League Organization had developed the infrastructure to publicly intervene in this kind of situation. Before social media made it untenable for events of this nature to be brushed under the rug. The dispute that led to the incident took place onthe ice itself. Witnesses present at the time were, by professional pressure of various kinds, encouraged not to provide complete statements. She went through a thin patch. She did not come back up before the safety crew reached her. The official report readequipment failure and skater error.The unofficial report, which I have personally seen in private circulation, reads otherwise. There are, today, considerably more rules on the conduct and condition of any outdoor practice surface used by an Omega athlete than there were in that calendar year. That is, in the small dark professional irony of the sport, the legacy she left.”
I have, in this corridor, with a melting cone of stolen salted caramel in my hand, started to cry. Quietly. The small wet pull of a person who has not, for some hours, expected to be doing the small wet pull in a hotel hallway.
Coach.
Coach Declan O’Rourke.
All of it. All five years of it. The protocols. The ghosting. The grueling four-a.m. drills. The protectiveness. The not letting any agent into the building.
“Some of us,” Vance adds, quieter, “were given to understand, on the back end of certain hospital records that had to be filed for legal reasons, that she may also have been carrying their pack’s first pregnancy at the time. That is not, on any official record, confirmed. I will not pretend it is. But it has been, in certain small private circles, the assumed undercurrent of his withdrawal from the senior coaching circuit for the better part of half a decade.”
My free hand, the one not holding Jude’s, comes up and wipes, fast, at my cheek.
Jude’s thumb, against the back of my hand, runs a small slow steady arc.
“Miss O’Shea.” Vance reaches into the inside breast pocket of his suit jacket. He produces a small business card, heavy stock, the precise off-cream colour of the kind of stationery that signals, at distance, that the man producing it has not, in fifteen years, had to apologize for his fees. He extends it to me.
I take it.
“You will,” Vance says, evenly, “be in net against one of the senior-tier conference rosters tonight. Whatever the outcome of that game, if you, or any small subset of your pack-house here, decide that the time has come for proper professional representation, I would consider the meeting a personal favor.”
He looks at Jude.
“Captain. You know my reputation. You can walk Miss O’Shea through how I operate at your leisure. There are, in this industry, men who paint me as the small house villain. I am content with the painting. When you want to win, you have, in the end, to be willing to be hard, and to be focused on getting to the top.”
Jude’s nod is small.
“And,” Vance adds, almost as an afterthought, turning to leave, “do tell Coach O’Rourke I hope he is in good health. And that his current position is, on my last reading of the registry, still secure.”
Jude stops, mid-pivot back to the elevator.
“Still secure.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Explain that.”
Vance pauses. His brow does the small considered thing.
“You are, perhaps, a touch young to follow the small senior administrative politics of the league. The current rule, on the books for the past nine months. Unpartnered Alphas over thirty-five, with no registered Omega and no registered pack standing, are now subject to professional penalty. If they have not, bythe end of the calendar year of their thirty-sixth birthday, established a formal pack registration or an individually registered Omega, they lose their coaching credentials. Coach O’Rourke is, on the registry, six weeks out from that deadline.”
Six weeks.
