Chapter 11: Houston

I took out my phone and took one picture of the screen.

My hands were perfectly steady. I'd learned that from him too.

Then I walked out of the white office and down the back stairs before Kinsley finished her call.

At midnight Stevie and I sat at our kitchen table with a bottle of cheap red wine and the Glacier Center lease.

It was a public document. Stevie had found it on the city's website in ten minutes.

"Two hundred and six pages," she said. "I hate this. I'd rather tape a hundred ankles."

"Find the part about leaving."

She found it on page one forty.

She read it out loud, slowly, with her finger under the words.

"The Club may terminate this lease without penalty if paid attendance for the regular season falls below eighty-five percent of capacity."

We looked at each other.

"Eighty-five," Stevie said. "What are we at?"

I already had the team's attendance sheet open on my laptop.

It had sat on the staff portal in plain sight all season.

"Last year, ninety-four. This year, so far..."

I scrolled.

"Eighty-one."

Stevie put her wine down.

I got a pad of paper and drew a line down the middle.

On one side I wrote what my father had done since August.

Fifteen-dollar Tuesdays, gone.

Free kids' clinics, members only.

Ticket prices up thirty percent.

The radio ads, cancelled.

The team kitchen, gutted, so the team would play tired and lose.

Stevie read the list upside down.

"It's not bad management," she said.

"No."

"He's emptying the building on purpose."

"So he can break the lease, and take the team to Houston, and get four hundred million dollars from Texas for doing it."

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