Page 74 of Blind Spot
I dropped the puck to him at the line and cut toward the goal. He passed it to me, and I sent it back, knowing exactly where he’d be. He buried it five-hole on a forty-year-old dad who never had a chance.
Everyone whooped. Rook turned around with a wide, dumb, unprotected grin. He pointed his stick at me, and I pointed mine back.
We played until the dads were done. We gave the coach his sticks back, and he only asked for autographs in return.
Rook bumped his shoulder into mine on the way to the bench, and we sat unlacing rental skates, breathing hard and not talking.
***
Rook’s father’s recliner had a permanent dent in the man’s shape.
I found that out because I went to sit on the couch, and he stopped me with a hand and a tilt of his head toward the big chair in the corner. It was angled at the TV, with a lever on the side and worn leather on the arms.
“Sit there,” he said.
I looked at Rook. He shrugged. The leather was still warm from the man who’d just left it. I didn’t push back, and the Lab reorganized itself across my feet.
“Dad doesn’t give anyone that chair,” Rook’s sister said, dropping onto the couch with a mug of something. “I sat in it once when I was fourteen, and he stood in the doorway until I moved.”
“Tide was coming in,” his father said. He lowered himself onto the couch beside his wife with the dignity of a man surrendering a throne.
“What does he watch out there?” Rook’s sister asked. “He won’t tell me anything. I ask what he does on days off, and he says nothing. Locked safe.”
“Documentaries,” I said. “Things with maps in them. He’s been reading the same Civil War book since August.”
“The maps.” She put her face in her hands. “Oh, the maps.”
“Three remotes. He has a system. I’m not allowed to touch the system.”
“You’ve just described our entire childhood.”
I was enjoying myself. She handed me lines, and I handed them back. Rook sat in a hard chair he’d picked on purpose and watched me turn into someone his sister liked.
“And the baking show,” I said, because I couldn’t leave it alone. “Don’t let him fool you. He knows their names. He has a guy every season, and he gets upset when his guy goes home—“
“We watched that because of you,” Rook said.
We both turned and looked at him. He was right. Nobody made it a moment. That was the Maine of it.
“He cried once at a wedding cake,” Rook’s mother said, and his sister gasped.
Rook said, “I didn’t,” and we moved on.
***
Rook’s mother set out five mugs at breakfast. I almost missed it. I was telling his sister about Medve.
On the drive up, he’d told me his mother might do this.Sometime on the second day, she’ll put out an extra mug. That’s how you’ll know.
The flight home was nothing special. I slept on his shoulder, which I’d never been allowed to do, and woke up over Lake Michigan with a crease in my cheek. He said I’d snored, and I insisted that was slander. He said he had it on video.
Rook drove. The truck was where we’d left it. Chicago in early December was gray, flat, and familiar. I had every billboard memorized. Cross’s jaw was still enormous on the one by the Edens. I waved at it out of habit.
“That’s everybody,” I said. “Your people. My people. Mark. Heath and Kieran.”
“Everybody but the world.”
“The world’s the big one.”
