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A ll adults have days when we feel completely drained. When we no longer know quite what we spend so much time fighting for, when reality and everyday worries overwhelm us and we wonder how much longer we’re going to be able to carry on. The wonderful thing is that we can all live through far more days like that without breaking than we think. The terrible thing is that we never know exactly how many.

***

When the members of her family are asleep, Kira still goes around the house and counts them. Her own mother always did that with her children, Kira and her five siblings, counting them every night. Her mother said she didn’t understand how anyone could have children and not do that, how anyone could live without being terrified of losing them at any moment. “One, two, three, four, five, six,” Kira would hear her whisper through the house, and each child would lie there with his or her eyes closed and feel that they had been seen and acknowledged. It’s one of her most treasured childhood memories.

Kira is driving from little Beartown to the larger town beyond the forest. Her commute to work takes longer than most people could bear, but it feels surprisingly quick to Kira, since she has the sense of having crossed the entire universe when she gets out of the car. Even though the larger town is many times smaller than the city where she was born, it’s a different world from the one among the trees. A larger world with colleagues to be spurred on by, friends to discuss culture and politics with, opponents to analyze and fight against.

She is often told that it’s odd that a woman who doesn’t understand hockey ended up marrying a hockey player, but that’s not entirely fair. She finds the game perfectly logical, it’s just the intensity of the training she doesn’t understand. The adrenaline, the hunger teetering on the brink of fear, throwing yourself off the edge of the abyss and either floating or being swallowed up—Kira understands all that. She experiences it in the courtroom, in negotiations. Law is a different sort of game with a different set of rules, but you’re either a competitive person or you aren’t. Like they say in Beartown: Some people have the bear in them.

Perhaps that’s why Kira, who up to the age of nineteen had never lived anywhere with fewer than a million inhabitants, has been able to make a home for herself among the forest-dwellers in spite of everything. She understands their love of the fight, she shares it. She knows that one of the funny things about fighting for success—and God knows, Kira fought her way through her legal training alongside kids from rich families who never had to do the washing up in the family restaurant in the evenings—is that you never really stop fighting. You never stop being scared of falling from the top, because when you close your eyes you can still feel the pain from each and every step of the way up.

***

Peter already has a pain in his stomach when he steps into the president’s office. It’s messy, littered with old photographs and cups; there are some expensive bottles of drink on a table in one corner, golf clubs, and a half-open wardrobe containing a spare suit and clean shirts. They’re going to be needed—the president is sitting at his desk eating a sandwich the way a German shepherd would try to eat a balloon filled with mayonnaise. Peter tries to stop himself from wiping down both the desk and the president with napkins, and at least manages to stop before he gets to the president.

“Can you close the door?” the president mutters as he chews.

Peter takes a deep breath and feels his guts tie themselves in knots. He knows that everyone in the town thinks he’s naive, that he doesn’t understand where this is going. But he’s really just good at hoping. He closes the door and gives up on that.

“We’re going to appoint David as coach of the A-team,” the president says, like a training video in how not to be diplomatic.

Peter nods bitterly. The president brushes some crumbs from his tie.

“Everyone knows how close you and Sune are...,” he adds by way of an apology.

Peter doesn’t respond. The president wipes his fingers on his pants.

“Don’t look like that, for God’s sake, as if I just stole the presents from under your Christmas tree. We need to put the good of the club first, Peter!”

Peter looks down at the floor. He’s a team player—that’s how he would describe himself. And the starting point for that is always understanding your own role, and its limitations. He’s going to have to tell himself that plenty of times today, force his brain to control his heart. It was Sune who persuaded him to become GM, and it was Sune’s door that was always open to him when things got tough.

“With all due respect: you know I don’t agree about that. I don’t think David’s ready,” he said quietly.

He doesn’t make eye contact with the president and looks around the walls of the office instead, as if he were looking for something. The only time he avoids eye contact is when something feels extremely unpleasant. Kira says he starts “shooting imaginary clay pigeons” as soon as he finds himself in any sort of conflict. He can’t even point out that he’s been given the wrong change in the supermarket without breaking into a cold sweat and wanting to curl up into a ball. The wall behind the president is decorated with pictures and pennants, and one of them—ancient and faded—reads “Culture, Values, Community. ” Peter feels like asking the president what he thinks that means now that they’re about to fire the man who built up everything surrounding them. But he stays quiet. The president throws up his hands.

“We’re aware that David pushes hard, but he gets results. And the sponsors have made a significant investment... for God’s sake, Peter, they saved us from bankruptcy. And we’ve got a chance to build something big now, using the products of the junior team.”

Peter looks him in the eye for the first time and replies through gritted teeth:

“We’re not supposed to develop ‘products.’ We don’t manufacture anything at all. We nurture human beings. Those guys are flesh and blood, not business plans and investment targets. The youth program isn’t some factory, regardless of what some of our sponsors seem to think.”

He bites his lip hard and stops himself. The president scratches his stubble. They both look tired. Peter looks down at the floor again.

“Sune thinks David is pushing the juniors too hard. I’m concerned about what might happen if he’s right,” he mutters.

The president smiles. And shrugs his shoulders.

“Do you know what happens to coal if you apply enough pressure to it, Peter? It turns into diamonds.”

***

The Andersson family never plays Monopoly, not because the parents don’t want to, but because the children refuse. The last time they tried, Kira ended up holding the board over the open fire, threatening to burn it unless Peter confessed that he had been cheating. Their parents are so competitive that Maya and Leo simply refuse to play. Leo loves hockey because he loves being part of a team, but he would probably have been just as happy being in charge of the equipment as he is being a center. Maya chose the guitar. You can’t compete at playing the guitar. Maya’s last sporting memory is of the time she lost a game of table tennis when she was six because another girl ran into her and knocked her over, and how the youth-group leader who was supposed to hand out the medals had to lock himself in a cleaning cupboard so Kira wouldn’t find him. Maya had to console her mother all the way home. After that she announced that she wanted to learn to play a musical instrument.

Nothing has made Kira more proud or more envious than when she heard her daughter plug in an amplifier for the first time and play David Bowie in the garage with her dad on drums. She hated and loved Peter because he had the sensitivity to learn. So that he could be close to Maya.

The four members of the family are so improbably different, and even if Kira never stops reminding them that Peter actually confessed to cheating at Monopoly, she nonetheless thinks about that Monopoly board every now and then and feels... ashamed. Not a second has passed since she had children without her feeling like a bad mother. For everything. For not understanding, for being impatient, for not knowing everything, not making better packed lunches, for still wanting more out of life than just being a mother. She hears other women in Beartown sigh behind her back: “Yes, but she has a full-time job, you know. Can you imagine?” No matter how much you try to let words like that run off you, a few of them stick.

She’s ashamed to admit it to herself, but getting to work feels like a liberation. She knows she’s good at her job, and she never feels that way about being a parent. Even on the best days—the tiny, shimmering moments when they’re on holiday and Peter and the children are fooling about on a beach and everyone is happy and laughing—Kira always feels like a fake. As if she doesn’t deserve it, as if she just wants to be able to show a photoshopped family photograph to the rest of the world.

Her work may be demanding and tough, but it’s straightforward and logical. And being a parent is never like that. If she does everything right at work, things usually go as planned, but it doesn’t matter if she does absolutely everything in the universe correctly as a mother: the very worst can still happen.

***

The weight on Peter’s chest feels too heavy for him to be able to get up from his chair. The president tries to look authoritative:

“The board wants you to tell Sune the news and deal with the interviews with the press. It’s important that we demonstrate that we’re all united regarding this decision.”

Peter rubs his eyebrows with his knuckles. “When?”

“Right after the juniors’ final.” Peter looks up in surprise.

“Don’t you mean after the semifinal? Tomorrow?”

The president shakes his head calmly.

“No. If they lose the semifinal, David won’t be getting the job. The board will select someone else instead. In which case we’ll need another couple of weeks.”

Peter’s world wobbles on its axis.

“Are you kidding? You’re seriously contemplating firing Sune and then bringing in someone from outside ?”

The president opens a small bag of chips, eats a handful, and wipes the salt on his jacket.

“Come on, Peter, don’t be naive. If the juniors win the final, we’ll get an incredible amount of publicity. The sponsors, the council, everyone’s going to want to join in. But the board isn’t interested in ‘almost’... Just look at us, look at the club...”

The president throws up his hands a bit too quickly, but carries on talking through the ensuing shower of crumbs:

“Don’t be a hypocrite, Peter. You haven’t devoted all those hours to this team for ‘almost,’ you didn’t become GM for ‘almost.’ No one really cares if the guys put up a good fight, they’ll only remember the final result. David is completely inexperienced as an A-team coach, but we can overlook that if he wins. But if he doesn’t... well, you know the rules: either you win, or you’re an also-ran.”

For a long time they just look at each other, the club president and its GM. They say nothing more, but they both know: if Peter doesn’t fall into line behind the board and the sponsors, he, too, can be replaced. Club first. Always.

He leaves the president’s office, closes the door behind him, and stands forlornly in the hallway with his forehead against the wall. One harsh lesson that Peter had to learn very quickly when he became GM was that everyone was always unhappy with him. That was hard to accept for someone who has always wanted to keep people happy. It was Sune who told him not to let it bother him, and that his talent for compromise would get him a long way. Then he was able to listen and make difficult decisions with his head rather than his heart.

Perhaps Sune didn’t have his own dismissal in mind when he said that. Perhaps he changed his mind when he got older. Perhaps Peter himself has changed, he doesn’t know. But he does know the rules, everyone knows the rules. You’re either a particular type of club, or you’re one of all the rest.

Not that any of this feels the slightest bit better as a result. All he knows is that he keeps disappointing people. Always.

***

On one corner of the desk in Kira’s office there’s an increasingly cramped collection of family photographs. One is of her and Peter taken the day they moved to Canada, when he’d only just gotten his NHL contract. She happens to notice it just as she’s putting her briefcase down and smiles. God, they were so young then. She had only just qualified as a lawyer, and was pregnant, and he was going to be a superstar. How easy everything was back then, for a few magical weeks. She stops smiling when she remembers how quickly the smiles in that picture had faded.

Peter broke his foot in preseason training, and when he returned he had to fight his way up through the farm team league, only to break his foot a second time when he was finally allowed to play again. After four NHL games. It took him two years to work his way back after that. Six minutes into his fifth game he fell and didn’t get back up. She screamed out loud, despite swearing while she was growing up that she would never make a fool of herself for any man. She sat through nine operations, she doesn’t know how many hours of rehab, physiotherapists, and specialists. All that talent, all that sweat, all leading up to nothing but tears and bitterness in a man whose heart wanted so much more than his body could handle. She remembers when the doctor told her Peter would never be able to play at elite level again, because no one dared tell Peter directly.

They had a young son at the time, and a daughter on the way. Kira had already decided that she would be called Maya. For several months they had a dad who was present without being present. There are no former hockey players, because they never quite reach the same temperature as the rest of us. It’s like trying to rehabilitate returning soldiers: they drift about aimlessly when they don’t have anyone to fight with or for. The whole of Peter’s life had been divided into times and schedules and bus trips and locker rooms. Meals and training sessions and even regulated times for sleep. One of the toughest concepts to teach someone like that is “everyday life.”

There were days when Kira thought about giving up and asking for a divorce. But she remembered one of the stupid slogans written on scraps of paper all over Peter’s room when he was growing up: “The only time I’m not moving forward is when I’m taking aim.”

***

Peter is alone in the hallway. The door to Sune’s office is closed. It’s the first time in twenty years that Peter has seen it like that, and he’s never been more grateful. He thinks about the words on the wall of the president’s office: “Culture, Values, Community.” He remembers something Sune told him during preseason training a lifetime ago: “Culture is as much about what we encourage as what we permit.” For Sune the coach, that applied to making them run through the forest until they threw up, but for Sune the man it also applied to life.

Peter gets some coffee and drinks it, even though it tastes like something has crawled into the cup and died there, then stops in front of the team photograph from their silver-medal season, the club’s greatest triumph. There are copies of the picture all around the building. Robbie Holts is standing next to him in the middle row. They haven’t so much as spoken to each other since Peter came back to Beartown, and hardly a day goes by without Peter wondering what life would have been like if they had changed places. If Robbie had been the more talented one, if he had gone to Canada, if Peter had stayed here and worked in the factory. How different life would have been then.

He remembers one morning in Canada when Kira pulled him out of bed before the children woke up. Forced him to sit and look at them as they slept. “They’re your team now,” she whispered, over and over again, until tears from his eyes started to run down her cheeks.

That year they built a new life, stayed in Canada, and fought their way through every battle that came their way. Kira got a job in a law firm, Peter worked part-time selling insurance. They made it work, they settled, and then—just as Kira started to make plans for the future—came the nights when they realized something was wrong.

***

All through their childhood boys are told that all they need to do is their best. That it will be enough, as long as they give their all. Peter looks himself in the eye in the photograph; he’s so incredibly young. He met Kira for the first time the evening they lost that last game down in the capital. The fact that they’d made it as far as that was a miracle, but that wasn’t good enough for Peter. For him it was more than a game, it was a chance for a small town to show the big city that not everything can be bought. The papers in the capital had patronizingly decided to label the game “The Call of the Wild,” and Peter had looked each of his teammates in the eye and roared: “They may have the money, but hockey belongs to us!” They gave it everything they had. It wasn’t enough.

That evening the team went out to celebrate winning silver. Peter sat on his own all night in a little family-run restaurant next to the hotel. Kira was behind the bar. Peter broke down in tears in front of her, not for his own sake but because he wouldn’t be able to look his town in the eye again. Because he’d let them all down. It was a pretty weird first date, but he’s able to smile about it in hindsight. What was it she said to him? “Have you ever considered not feeling so sorry for yourself?” That made him laugh, and he didn’t stop for several days. He’s fallen for her every day since then.

And once, a long time afterward, when Kira had been drinking and was a bit too loud, the way she gets after too much wine, she held his ears so tightly that he genuinely thought they were going to come off, and when he lowered his head to hers she whispered: “You adorable stupid idiot, don’t you realize that’s when I fell in love with you? You were a lost little kid from the backwoods, but I knew that someone who was second-best in the country but was still crying because he was worried about disappointing the people he loved, that person was going to turn out to be a good man. He’d be a good father. He’d protect his children. He’d never let anything happen to his family.”

***

Kira remembers every inch of the descent into darkness. The greatest terror of every parent, waking up and listening out for small breaths. And every night you feel so foolish when you hear them, as usual, for worrying about nothing. “How did I become someone like this?” you think. You promise yourself that you’ll relax, because of course you know that nothing’s going to happen. But the following night you still lie there wide awake, staring up at the ceiling and shaking your head, until you tell yourself, “Just tonight, then.” And you creep out of bed and put your palms to your children’s little chests to feel them rising and falling. And then one night one of them falls and doesn’t rise again as strongly.

And then you fall. All the hours in the waiting room at the hospital, all the nights on the floor beside the boy’s bed, that morning when the doctor told Peter because no one dared tell Kira. They simply fell. If they hadn’t had Maya, would they have been able to go on living? How does anyone do that?

Kira was so pleased when they moved away; she could never imagine that she would feel so happy to move back. But they could start again there. She and Peter and Maya. And then Leo came along. They were happy, or at least as happy as a family can be when it’s burdened by a grief too large to be absorbed by time.

***

But Kira still doesn’t know how to deal with it.

***

Peter puts his hand on the glass of the frame. Kira never stopped making his pulse throb in his throat; he still loves her the way you do when you’re a teenager, when your heart swells in your chest and makes you feel like you can’t breathe. But she had been wrong. He couldn’t protect his family. And not a single day goes by without him wondering what he could have done differently. Could he have made a deal with God? If he had sacrificed all his talent? Given up all his success? His own life? What would God have given him in exchange? Could he have changed places in the coffin with his firstborn son?

***

At night Kira still goes around the house, counting their children. One, two, three.

***

Two in their beds. One in heaven.