Page 14 of Victory Lap

Kowalski

is there an attendance log

Ash

kowalski cares about ACCOUNTABILITY. this is culture

Kowalski

who keeps minutes

Ash

we don’t have minutes. we have MOMENTS

Kowalski

noted

Ash

see?? he’s TAKING NOTES. this is what buy-in looks like

this is a SUPPORTIVE community and we’re going to be FINE. first book is The Longest Road Trip. cowboys. amnesia. one horse. Friday

Chapter 4: Lundy

My father’s house has two of everything. That is what happens when a man coaches for twenty years and my mother is not allowed to buy a third couch. Nobody said anything about a second guest room, a second refrigerator, or an entire second house at the bottom of the yard.

The second house is why the Murrays are coming. Five of them, on the road trip Murray has been threatening the group chat with since the playoffs started. He called last week and asked if we knew a hotel near the Chicago area that could survive his children. I said we know a guest house. I heard myself say it, the we arriving before I’d approved it, and my mother made a sound from the kitchen like a point being scored.

Five weeks ago my team beat my father’s team in this city, in Game Seven, for the Stanley Cup. Now I drink coffee in his kitchen with the goalie who did it.

Nobody talks about this. It sits at the table with us like a guest who eats a lot.

My father is good at it. He has been a professional about hard rooms since before I was born. He treats Jules the way he treats promising film. Attention, and a notebook he thinks nobody sees. My mother is better than good at it. She had Jules sorted within a day, which I could have warned him about. By the second morning she’d stopped offering him things and started placing them, which is her way of saying I see you.

The morning after we arrived, she caught me alone at the counter. My mother is small and precise. She spent a career as a ballerina learning to make stillness look easy. She looked up at me with her coffee held in both hands and said, “I called it in October.”

“Mom.”

“I said it in October. I told your father. He said, Marcy, he mentions a lot of teammates. I said, not like this one. Not the same.” She patted my arm on the way past, twice, the second one for emphasis. “You’ll want to give me some credit at the wedding.”

“Nobody said wedding.”

“I also said it in October,” she said, and went to fix the flowers.

The Murrays arrive in a van that is large enough for a small army and still needs cargo space on top. Murray gets out first and shakes my hand and then my father’s, and there is a full second where decades of hockey stand in the driveway deciding what to be. Murray has played fourteen years. My father coached against him for most of them. Five weeks ago our team ended my father’s season on his own ice. Also, Murray is a guest. Also, his kids are already out of the van.

“Karl,” Murray says.

“Kyle.” My father looks at the van, the roof thing on top of it sitting slightly crooked, the little girl marching a stuffed unicorn up the walk. “Good trip?”

“Long. Beautiful.”

“Long,” his wife adds as she walks over to us.

“Lawn’s in good shape,” Murray offers, which is true and also the whitest flag ever waved.