"Heard about the verdict," he says.
"Yeah."
"Full custody?"
"Full custody. She keeps her rights. Supervised visits if she meets the conditions. Which everyone thinks she won't."
He nods. Doesn't saygoodorcongratulations,orI'm happy for you. Just nods, like the information has been received and logged.
A long silence.
"My daughter is six," he says, finally.
I didn't know he had a daughter. I knew there was a wife—there's a photo in his stall, has been all season—but I'd never paid attention to whether there was a kid.
"Yeah?"
"Six. Just lost her first tooth." His voice is doing something I haven't heard it do before. Flatter. Less aimed. "I was in San Jose. Got the photo from her mom in the hotel room. The tooth fairy came. Whole nine yards. It sucked to miss it.”
I don't know what to do with that information.
"Yeah," I say. "That's hard."
"Most of the guys here are dads," he says. "You knew that?"
"I knew some of them were."
"Most. Carter, Williams, and Danny next year. It's a thing. We all do it. Some of us are better at it than others." He turns his head toward me, slightly, for the first time. "When you got here, I heard rumours about Pinewood. Stuff that came over with you. I'm not going to tell you what I heard because most of it was secondhand, and I was never going to ask you about it directly. But I made a decision about you the day you walked in, and I made it based on bad information, and I made it because I was looking for someone to be the problem in the room."
I don't say anything.
"That's the part I'm telling you," he says. "Not because it changes anything. Not because I want to be—" He gestures, vaguely, at the empty ice. "Friends. I'm not asking for that. I'm telling you because you have a daughter, and your life is going to be difficult, and the last thing you need is the guy at work still being a problem."
"Okay."
"So that's me telling you. You don't have to say anything back."
We stand there. The ice is empty. The arena lights hum.
"I’m really glad it went your way," he says. "The verdict. I mean it."
"Thanks."
He pushes off the boards. Adjusts the helmet under his arm.
"That girl of yours," he says. "She's something."
"Yeah."
"Don't fuck it up, West."
"Working on it."
He nods and walks toward the tunnel. Before he disappears, he stops halfway.
"Tell her—" He stops. Reconsiders. "Forget it. Don't tell her anything. We're good."
"We're good," I say.