Chapter 15: Family Day

The silk fit me exactly, and I hated that.

My mother zipped it for me in the arena tunnel and smoothed the shoulder seams with her palm.

"You don't have to," she said.

"I know."

"Then go and be seen."

She went up the stairs to the family seats, her cardigan buttoned wrong, and I stood in the cold concrete with one thing in my hand.

The tape was home in my mother's drawer. I had brought the card.

Ten years, Lee. Always yours. T.

Nate stood next to me in his Stags warm-up jacket.

"I'll be at the boards," he said. "If anyone touches you, I'm over them."

"You're not allowed to hit him."

"I'm not going to hit him. I'm going to stand very close."

I almost smiled.

Then I walked out.

The arena was full. Families in jerseys, kids with face paint, a drumline by the Zamboni door.

A red carpet had been rolled out across the ice to center, and at the end of it stood a podium with the Stags logo.

Travis was there in a charcoal suit. Shelby sat beside him on a white chair, in a cream coat, her hand on her stomach.

Dolores stood behind them in green wool and red lipstick, smiling at the cameras.

Shelby was halfway through her speech.

"I've been through so much these last weeks," she was saying, with her eyes shining. "I only want to protect my little one."

Then someone in the front row saw me.

The sound moved through the crowd in a wave, a low hum that grew.

On the big screen above center ice, my own face looked down at me above the green silk.