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K ira and Peter are sitting on the little step outside the house. They’re not touching each other. Peter remembers this distance so clearly. There were some days when he thought that grief was the only thing keeping them together, that Kira stayed with him even though he didn’t deserve it because she didn’t have anyone else to share the memory of Isak with. But other days, the opposite happened. Their grief split them apart, became an invisible barrier between them. It’s back now.

“It’s my fault,” Peter whispers.

Kira shakes her head hard.

“Don’t say that. It isn’t your fault. It isn’t hockey’s fault. Don’t give the bast... Don’t give... Don’t make excuses for him!”

“The club has nurtured him all his life, Kira. My club.”

Kira doesn’t answer. Her fists have been clenched so tight for so long that the marks her fingernails have left won’t fade for several days once she finally opens them. Throughout her whole working life she has lived for justice and the law, has believed in fairness and humanism, has stood against violence and revenge. So she is now using all of her inner strength to fight off the feeling that is overwhelming her now, but she can’t stop it, it just sweeps in with full force and destroys everything she believes in.

She wants to kill him. She wants to kill Kevin.

***

Ann-Katrin and Hog are standing in the parking lot waiting for the team bus to get back from the final. Ann-Katrin will always remember how it sounds, the silence in the town tonight that still hums like a dense buzz of voices, the darkened houses all around where she just knows people are awake, phones and computers sending words to each other, more and more angry, more and more vile. People don’t talk much in Beartown. Even so, sometimes it feels like it’s the only thing they do. Hog touches her arm gently.

“We have to wait, Ann-Katrin. We can’t get involved in this until... we really know.”

“Peter’s one of your best friends.”

“We don’t know what happened, darling. No one knows what happened. We can’t get involved.”

Ann-Katrin nods. Of course they can’t get involved. There are always two sides to every story. You have to listen to Kevin’s version. She tries to convince herself of that. By every god and heaven and all the holy mothers of eternity, she really does try.

***

Ana is standing on the floor with her hands covering her face in shame. Maya is sitting in bed, shocked, and the remains of the computer are spread about the room. Kira goes in and takes each of their hands in hers.

“Ana, you know how much I love you. Like one of my own.”

Ana wipes her face as big drops fall to the floor from her nose. Kira kisses her hair.

“But you have to go home for a little while, Ana. We need to be... on our own as a family.”

Maya wants to protest on Ana’s behalf, but she’s too tired. When the front door closes again, Maya lies down and goes back to sleep. And sleeps and sleeps and sleeps.

***

Peter drives his daughter’s best friend home. The houses are all dark, but he can still feel eyes looking out of the windows. When Ana gets out he wishes he could say something, be a wise parent offering comfort and encouragement and instruction. But he has no words. So all that comes out is:

“It’s going to be okay, Ana.”

Ana tugs her jacket tight around herself and pulls her woolly hat down over her forehead, and tries to look like she believes it, for his sake. She doesn’t succeed. Peter can see the girl shaking with silent rage, and thinks back to a time, several years ago, when Kira and Maya had had an argument. Their daughter had one of her first teenage outbursts, and Kira was left sitting in the kitchen, crushed, sniffing: “She hates me. My own daughter hates me.” Peter held his wife tight and whispered: “Your daughter admires you and needs you. And if you ever doubt that, just look at Ana. Of all the people your daughter could have chosen as her best friend, she’s picked one who’s just like you. One who wears her heart on her sleeve.” Peter feels like getting out of the car and giving Ana a hug now, telling her not to be frightened, but he’s not that sort of person. And he’s too frightened himself to be able to lie.

***

When the car has gone Ana creeps into the house and wakes the dogs, then takes them as far out into the forest as she can. Then she sits there with her face buried in their fur and cries. They breathe on her neck, lick her ear, nudge her with their noses. She will never understand how some people can prefer other people to animals.

***

The Ovich family house has no empty beds tonight. Gaby’s two children are sleeping in their uncle’s bed, Adri and Katia in their mother’s, their mother on the sofa. The daughters insist that they can sleep on the furniture in the living room, but their mother yells at them until they back down. When Gaby gets back from the hospital with Benji early the next morning, his sisters and mother look at his crutches and his foot in a cast and hit him over the head and shout that he’ll be the death of them and that he means the world to them and that they love him and that he’s an imbecile.

He sleeps on the floor beside his bed, below his sister’s kids. When he wakes up the pair of them have both moved down with their covers and have curled up next to him. They’re sleeping in their hockey jerseys. Number “16” on the back.

***

Kira is sitting on the edge of her daughter’s bed. When Maya and Ana were children, Peter used to joke about how different they were, especially when they were asleep. “When Maya’s slept in a bed you don’t even have to make it afterward. When Ana’s slept there you have to start by moving it back to the right side of the room.” Maya would wake up with the body language of a sleepy calf; Ana like a drunk, angry middle-aged man who was trying to find his pistol. The only thing anyone could think of that the two little girls had in common was how protective they were of their names. Maya has never been more angry than the first time she realized there were other children with her name, which is saying a lot seeing as she was at the age when it was perfectly normal to demand that the plastic handles on her cutlery always matched the color of the food, or to have a tantrum at bedtime because “Daddy, my feet are the same size and I DON’T WANT THAT!!!” Nothing made her more angry than the fact that she wasn’t alone in being called what she was called. For both her and Ana, a name was a personal possession, physical property in the same way as lungs and eyeballs, and in her world all the other Mayas and Anas were thieves. These girls wanted to be anything but ordinary.

***

People grow up mercilessly fast.

***

Peter closes the door without a sound. Hangs the keys to the Volvo on the hook in the hall. He sits in the kitchen with Kira for a very long time without a word being spoken. Eventually Kira whispers:

“This isn’t about us now. It’s all about how she’s going to get through this.”

Peter stares fixedly at the table.

“She’s so strong,” he says. “I don’t know what to say to her; she’s already stronger than me.”

Kira’s fingernails dig fresh grooves in her skin.

“I want to kill him, Peter. I want... I want to see him die.”

“I know.”

Kira is shaking as he crosses the force field and holds her, and they whimper and sniff together, holding back hard so as not to wake the children. They will never stop blaming themselves for this.

“It’s not your fault, Peter. It wasn’t hockey’s fault. What is it they say... ‘it takes a village to raise a child’?” she whispers.

“Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe we picked the wrong village,” he replies.

***

The juniors are picked up from the rink by their parents. They go home in silent cars to silent houses where the only lighting comes from an assortment of screens. Before dawn, Lyt goes over to Bobo’s. They don’t talk much, just share the feeling that they have to do something. Have to act. They walk through the town, picking up more juniors outside their homes. Like a black swarm they move between gardens, fists clenched under the dark sky, wild eyes staring out across empty streets. Hour after hour, until the sun goes up. They feel threatened, feel that they’re under attack. They want to shout out to each other what this team means to them—loyalty and love—and how much they love their team captain. But they don’t have the words, so they try to find other ways to show it instead. They walk side by side, like a menacing army. They would dearly like to rescue something. Damage something. Destroy. They’re on the hunt for an enemy, any will do.

***

Amat gets home and goes straight to bed. Fatima sits quietly in the other room. The next morning they take the bus to the rink. No one says a word there either. Amat puts his skates on, picks up his stick, and skates furiously across the ice, hurting himself by crashing into the boards at the other end. He doesn’t allow himself to cry until he’s sweating so much that no one can see.

***

In a house a mom and a dad are sitting at a kitchen table.

“I’m just saying... what if...?...?” the mother says.

“Do you believe that of our SON!? What sort of mother are you if you can seriously BELIEVE THAT OF OUR CHILD!” the father roars.

She shakes her head in despair, staring down at the floor. He’s right, of course. What sort of mother is she? She whispers, “Of course not,” of course she doesn’t believe that of their son. She tries to explain that everything’s just so mixed up, no one’s thinking rationally right now, we just need to try to get some sleep.

“I’m not going to sleep as long as Kevin’s being held by the police, you can be very fucking clear on that point!” the father declares.

She nods. She doesn’t know if she’s ever going to sleep again.

“I know, darling. I know.”

***

In another house, another mom and another dad are sitting at another kitchen table. Ten years ago they left Canada and moved to Beartown, because it was the safest, most secure place they could think of. Because they so desperately needed somewhere in the world where it felt as if nothing bad could happen.

They’re not talking now. They don’t say a word all night long. Each of them knows what the other is thinking anyway. “We can’t protect our children.”

***

We can’t protect our children we can’t protect our children we can’t protect our children.