Kevin’s dad is sitting in the kitchen, now the command center, making call after call, as more and more men gather in the house. They’re all very understanding, sympathetic, angry. They are hurt. Aggressive. They’re ready for war, not because they’ve chosen it, but because they don’t believe they have a choice. Kevin’s dad’s childhood friend, Mario Lyt, is the loudest of them all:
“Do you know what? That girl’s family could have come and talked to us. They could have tried to resolve this privately. But instead they waited a whole week, until the moment when they knew it would do us the MOST harm, then went to the police with their lies IMMEDIATELY before the final! If it was actually true, why wasn’t it reported at once? Why wait a week? Eh? Should I tell you why? Because some people in this town can’t control their own jealousy!”
He could have called “that girl’s family” by their name. Andersson. But that would have been less effective. He needn’t have said anything more, because soon the theory is spreading on its own:
“This is what happens when you let a GM get too big for his boots, isn’t it? We’ve given him too much influence, he thinks he owns the club. So now he can’t handle the fact that he’s losing his own power, right? And the fact that Kevin is better that he ever was, and the board and the sponsors are going against his wishes and demanding that David take over from Sune as A-team coach. Right? So now the GM is trying to drag his family into it . . .”
*
When David arrives at the house there are three middle-aged men standing outside, as if on guard. Tonight there will be players from the junior team there instead, David already knows that. As if the house needed protecting.
“Looks like a scene from The Godfather,” David mutters.
Tails answers him. The big man looks embarrassed and therefore laughs a bit too loudly:
“Yes, it does, doesn’t it? Like Don Corleone needs our help. As if a bunch of fat sponsors could make any real difference.”
He chuckles and pats his own stomach, trying to appear nonchalant, but eventually gives up and puts a huge hand on David’s shoulder, saying:
“Oh, David, you know, we just want to support the family. You can understand that, can’t you? We just want to show that we . . . that we stand united. You can see that? I mean . . . no one knows Kevin better than you. Christ, you’ve practically raised the boy, and do you think one of the boys on your team could do what he’s been accused of? Eh? One of your own lads? You can understand why we’re here, can’t you?”
David doesn’t reply. That isn’t his job. Not his place. Because who do you start with? If you really had to choose, who do you save first? Whose word do you believe?
*
Kevin is sitting on his bed. He looks small beneath the posters on the wall—his hoodie looks too big for him. He’s spent two nights in the police station. It doesn’t matter how comfortable the bunk is or how friendly the staff is to you: when you hear the door lock from the outside before you go to bed, it does something to a person. That’s what he tells himself. That he has no choice, that it isn’t his fault, that this may not even have actually happened. His parents’ house is full of men who have known him since he was a child. They know him. All his life he has been special, chosen, has been expected to do something out of the ordinary. So they don’t believe this of him, how could they even entertain the possibility? They’re not going to let him down. And if enough people stand behind you, you can start to believe almost anything that comes out of your mouth.
That’s what he tells himself.
*
David closes the door behind him, stands in front of the bed, and looks the boy right in the eye. All the tens of thousands of hours they’ve spent on the ice together, all the weekends on the team bus, driving up and down the country, all the gas station sandwiches and poker parties. He was a child until recently. Until very recently.
“Just look me in the eye and tell me you didn’t do it. I’m not asking for anything else,” David says.
And Kevin looks him straight in the eye. Shakes his head as he cries. Whispers with wet cheeks:
“I slept with her, because that’s what she wanted. She asked me to! Ask anyone who was at the party . . . Shit, Coach . . . really? You seriously think I could rape someone? Why would I do THAT!?”
All the “fathers against sons” days at the rink that David has spent down on the lake with Kevin and Benji. All that he’s taught them. All that they’ve shared. Next year they’ll be taking over the A-team, together. Who do you start with? If the water is freezing but you know the boat won’t be able to carry everyone to the shore? Who do you sacrifice first? Who do you protect unto the last? Kevin isn’t the only one who’ll suffer if he confesses. Everyone he loves will. That’s what David tells himself.
David sits on the boy’s bed and hugs him. Promises that everything will be okay. That he’ll never let him down. That he’s proud of him. The boat may be rocking, but it’s not letting in water. All the feet in the house are dry. Kevin turns to his coach and whispers, like he was a primary school pupil again:
“The team are training, today, aren’t they? Can I come?”
*
On a stool in her bedroom sits a mother, thinking about a childhood. How she and her husband used to come home from trips abroad when Kevin was ten or eleven and find the house in a complete mess. His father always swore, even though he never seemed to appreciate how calculated the chaos was, but his mom soon learned to understand the pattern. The same things had moved, the same pictures would be hanging crookedly, the bin full of prepared meals whose contents had obviously been opened at the same time.
When Kevin became a teenager and started having parties, his mother started to come home to a house where the boy had obviously done all he could to make it look like he hadn’t even been there. But before that, when he was little, when he proudly promised his dad that he wasn’t scared of being on his own, he always had to come back on that last evening and mess up the whole house so that no one would know he had slept at Benji’s the whole time.
*