She didn’t dwell on it, the same way she didn’t pine for the penthouse apartments listed in the Real Estate section of the New York Times. Some things weren’t meant to be hers, and thinking about them too much only made her feel pathetic.
“Jill,” she said, changing the subject, “are we still planning that charity skate for the end of September? I can’t remember which date we decided on.”
Her coworker just stared at her, and Lauren began to feel self-conscious. Her new top wasn’t that sexy. And there was no way Jill could know that while she’d stood in front of the dressing room mirror at Macy’s, she’d been thinking about a compliment Beacon had paid her last spring. You look good in pink. You should wear that color more often.
“He hasn’t been by yet?” Jill asked, pressing her luck. “Really?”
“No?” Lauren said, letting her confusion show. “It’s nine o’clock. Time for the morning skate. We never see players at this hour. Why would he be in here?”
Jill’s eyes widened slightly. “I just thought he’d be by to talk to you, is all.”
Lauren was tired of games, so she turned away and began the process of logging in to her desktop computer. The number of e-mails in her work account was probably astronomical, because for once in her life she hadn’t opened it while on vacation. She lifted her takeout coffee cup and took a sip.
“I mean,” Jill continued quietly, “things will probably be different for you now that he’s left his wife.”
Lauren choked on her coffee. It hit the wrong spot in the back of her throat, and she coughed violently. “What?” she hacked, trying to get a breath of air down her constricting windpipe.
“You didn’t hear?” Jill looked very pleased with herself. “He caught her cheating with the tennis instructor. He moved out the same day. I heard he rented a house on the edge of Old Westbury.”
“Oh,” Lauren managed, her eyes watering from both the coughing and from a suddenly dizzy spell. “How sad,” she said, and meant it. They had a cute nine-year-old with her mother’s smile. And poor Mike! Betrayal was so ugly.
Jill just clucked her tongue. “We’ll see how sad you are a month from now.”
The coffee turned to battery acid in her stomach. Lauren stood up and carried her coffee cup right over to the trash bin and chucked it in.
THREE
APRIL 2016
The day before the first play-offs game, Mike Beacon was right on time to pick his thirteen-year-old daughter up from Brooklyn Preparatory Academy. And when another car pulled away, he even snagged a coveted spot at the curb, sparing himself the indignity of doing laps around the neighborhood until Elsa emerged.
Kids had already begun to stream out of the imposing wooden doors, and he watched the social clots of preteens take form and then reshape. The girls all seemed to talk at once, with nobody actually listening. The boys at the center of the scrum seemed more interested in shoving each other around a little bit. One kid grabbed a retro metal lunch box out of another’s hands and then ducked behind a group of giggling girls. His victim gave chase.
Beacon just shook his head. You couldn’t pay him to be thirteen again. What a painful age. He could never please his teachers. He couldn’t please his parents. Hockey had been the only thing he did well. So he’d just kept doing it. At thirty-two, it was still the only thing that he was sure he hadn’t fucked up.
One trick pony, much?
Elsa emerged from the doors eventually. Even though his sightline was compromised by dozens of other bodies, he spotted that pink stretchy thing holding her hair in a ponytail. Then she came fully into view, her violin strapped to her back, moving slowly. And talking to another girl.
He sat up a little straighter, trying to see who it was. Not that he was picky—Elsa needed friends. They’d moved to Brooklyn only seven months ago, in September, and he still felt guilty about making her switch schools just six months after her mother’s funeral.
Shelly had been in the ground just over a year. It was a lot for Elsa to process.
But moving was the only way he could get more hours with Elsa. Her pricey new private school was just two and a half miles from their pricey new home, which was less than two miles from the practice rink and training facility. If they hadn’t left Long Island, there was no chance he’d be picking her up from school right now. He’d spend all his time on the LIE trying to get back in time just to say good night to her.
Elsa had spotted the car and was weaving through the crowd at top speed now. A moment later the passenger door opened and his daughter flung herself into the seat. She wrestled off the instrument case and slammed the car door. “Let’s go,” she said.
He didn’t, though. “Hello to you, too,” he said instead.
Elsa rolled her eyes. “Hi, Daddy. How was your day?” The question dripped with forced politeness.
“Why, thank you for asking! It was awesome!”
Her heart-shaped face broke into a cheesy grin, and he laughed. She was still his girl, at least for today. Supposedly teenagers turned into heartless monsters, but it hadn’t happened yet. Not too often, anyway.
He put the car in Drive and waited for an opportunity to pull out onto Lincoln Place. He didn’t know any other teenagers. His teammates’ children were mostly preschool-aged. Not only was Beacon a veteran player, but he’d gotten his high school girlfriend pregnant when they were both eighteen.
In fact, the first thing he’d noticed on Parents’ Night at Elsa’s fancy new school was that all the other fathers had gray hair. They were lawyers and bankers and television producers. Many of them asked questions about homework, and how to prep for Ivy League college admissions essays.
Beacon wouldn’t know an Ivy League essay if it bit him in the ass. But he had a kickass kid who was currently scrolling Snapchat and humming a concerto or an etude or a gavotte. Whatever the fuck those were.
“Hey,” he said to try to get her attention. “Good news. Hans texted me to say I’m going to be in town for your spring showcase.”
She looked up. “Awesome. I need a new dress.”
He snorted, waiting to turn onto Fourth Avenue. “He also warned me that you thought you needed a new dress.”
“But I do,” she said firmly. “Unless you want me to bare my ass to the row of second violins. All my dresses are getting too short.”
“I see.” He didn’t bother to call out for saying “ass” because he tried not to be a hypocrite when he could avoid it. “And I suppose you have a shopping destination in mind?”
“Yup. A boutique in the Village. You can take me there on Sunday. Or Hans can.” She went back to her phone.
He stole a glance at her face in profile. Every day she looked more like Shelly. She had the same curls in her red-brown hair. And she bit her lip when she was concentrating, just like her mother had.
Poor, doomed Shelly. Married the day after high school graduation to a guy who did not know what the fuck he was doing. A mother at nineteen. A hockey wife who moved from their home town in Ontario to Quebec and then to Long Island at the whim of the teams who traded him.