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CHAPTER TWO

THIS IS THE best day of Louie’s life. So far. He won’t get ahead of himself.

He’s made that mistake before.

Louie watched the Cardinals game last night. He saw Petrov go down in the first. He didn’t come back for the second or the third period. Coach Beaulieu wouldn’t comment on Petrov’s status after the game, which usually means it’s bad. So Louie was expecting that one of them would get called up.

The first thing the Cards announced this morning, though, was that they’re sending Virtanen back to their farm team in Springfield.

“Do you think Santana’s ready to come back?” one of the guys asks as they’re getting ready for practice.

Louie doesn’t look up. “Don’t think so,” he says. Santana, one of the Cardinals’ best defensemen, has been out with an injury since December and it sounded like he may not come back before the end of the regular season.

Clearly, the Cardinals made a move this morning. Got themselves a new d-man, someone who can actually replace Santana. Virtanen is good, no doubt about it, so whoever they got must be better. They’ll find out who it is soon enough.

Maybe the team also traded for a forward while they were at it. The trade deadline is looming and the Cards were actually doing pretty well before they got rattled by all those injuries. Loads of guys have gotten called up during the past few weeks. It was mostly day-to-day stuff, so they came back to Springfield quickly.

Louie wasn’t one of them. He stayed on the farm team, worked hard, scored his goals. Hat trick last week, and he’s on a seven-game point streak. He’s the AHL Player of the Week. So, when their coach comes into the room that morning and zeros in on Louie, he knows it’s his lucky day.

“Hathaway, they want you in Hartford,” he says.

The Cards want Louie in Hartford. If he’s extra lucky, they’ll want him in Hartford until Petrov comes back.

Of course, there’s a chance that he’ll join the Cards and will sit on the bench the entire time. That’s what he did last November. He was only there for two games and didn’t get to play. But if Petrov is out for weeks instead of days, Louie may get more than one opportunity to prove himself this time around.

“Nice,” Mortensen says and gives Louie a pat on the back.

Louie pulls off his pads.

Looks like he’s not joining the guys for practice.

At this point, Louie knows the drill. He’s been called up a few times. He’ll grab a suitcase full of clothes and his gear, then he’ll drive down to Hartford.

Well, Silver Lakes. That’s where the Cards have their practice rink. Same difference.

So far, he’s always stayed with one of his teammates. Back in November, Liam Hellstrom let Louie sleep in his guest room. He checks his phone, but no one from the Cardinals has reached out yet. He’ll just hope they’ll have a place for him to stay.

Louie heads back to the house he shares with two of his teammates. He’d rather live alone, but he couldn’t find an apartment he liked. This was supposed to be temporary .

Actually, all of this was supposed to be temporary.

He thought he’d have a roster spot on the Cardinals by now. His brother, who was drafted two years after him, is playing in the NHL. He’s made it. And Louie is still waiting for his turn.

This time, he has to make sure he won’t spend his entire time in Hartford on the bench. Louie has seen guys leave for the big league and never come back to the farm team. The Cardinals just decided to keep them. Like Lampinen, who got called up last season. He’s still with the Cards. He has an NHL contract now.

That’s what Louie wants.

He wants to stay. He wants this constant back-and-forth to end.

Back at the house, Louie is rooting through his closet, looking for clean clothes, when his phone starts to ring. He almost doesn’t answer, in a hurry to get to Hartford, except he’s been putting off doing the laundry, so he barely has anything to throw into his suitcase. He’ll have to go out and buy some underwear because he only has three clean pairs.

He chucks them into his mostly empty suitcase before he grabs his phone. Liam Hellstrom is calling. So he does have somewhere to go.

“Hey,” Louie says.

“Lou,” Liam replies. “I hear you’re coming back.”

“I am. Packing right now.”

“Listen, I’m about to hit the ice, so I gotta be quick… I’d let you have my guest room, you know I would, but it’s already occupied. Kid from Toronto got traded half an hour ago and I said he could stay with me before they told me you were coming, too.”

“Hey, it’s fine, don’t worry about it,” Louie says. Internally, he sighs. It’s not Liam’s fault, but Louie already hates the kid from Toronto, whoever he is. “I’m sure they’ll find me a hotel to stay at.”

“Do not worry at all, Lou, I’ve found you a place to stay.”

What a rollercoaster. “You have?”

“Yeah, you can stay with Santa. David Santana. You’re driving down, are you? Because he’s not at the rink every day, so he can’t give you a ride to practices and stuff. Actually, he may ask you to give him a ride every now and then instead. That okay? You can also have a hotel room. I’ll find out where they want to put you.”

“No, I’ll stay with Santa,” Louie says. “Thanks, Lee.”

“Of course. I’ll text you Santa’s address. It’s not in Silver Lakes but close. Next to an apple farm.”

“Sounds… idyllic.”

“Hope you like apples,” Liam says and Louie can’t tell if he means it or if he’s making fun of where David Santana built his house. “And you’ll come over for dinner this week.”

“Uh, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Liam says. “You’re not allowed to say no.”

Someone on Liam’s end of the line laughs.

Then, “Can I also come over for dinner?”

“No,” Liam says. “Just Lou.” He huffs. “Waldo wants free dinner, but he’s old enough to cook for himself.”

“I just love your wife’s meatballs,” says Waldo presumably.

“Ah. Fine. You can come. They’re good meatballs.”

They’re the best meatballs, and Louie likes Liam and staying at Liam’s house, and the Swedish meatballs his wife makes are a big part of that. Liam has two kids and the older one, Ida, used to help Louie with his workouts. She made him give her piggyback rides all over the house.

Two minutes after Louie hangs up the phone, a text from Liam comes through with an address for Santa’s house, although at this point Louie may as well drive to the Cards’ practice rink in Silver Lakes. If they’re only just hitting the ice, they’ll probably still be around by the time he gets there.

Louie grabs the shirts and hoodies the Cards gave him last November, his ancient iPod, and the sneakers he goes on runs with nearly every morning. He used to go on runs in Liam’s neighborhood; he’s not sure he’ll be able to do the same wherever Santana lives.

Before Louie leaves, he pulls out his phone to check the trade tracker .

Louie can’t help but laugh.

Ryan Harris to the Cardinals in exchange for a third-round pick.

Obviously, Louie didn’t miss the latest Toronto drama. Ryan Harris got drunk and drove his car into a ditch during a snowstorm. Although there were some debates about whether or not Harris was actually drunk. He seems to still have his license, so either he has connections or money was exchanged or the media made it up because they needed a fresh scandal.

Harris is a d-man, so at least Louie won’t be competing for a spot with him. Clearly, he’s a cheap replacement for Santana. Maybe cheap isn’t the right word. Harris is good, he just came cheap because his team presumably wanted to get rid of him.

He likely won’t arrive until later and it’s not a game day, so they won’t cross paths until morning skate tomorrow.

On the drive to Silver Lakes, Louie’s phone keeps buzzing. Texts, not calls. At this point, the Cardinals must have announced that they’ve called up Louie and his always-online brother and his connections-everywhere father must have seen.

He parks in the lot outside the rink in Silver Lakes, both sheets of ice reserved for the Cardinals this morning. It’s a nice, modern rink, only built some ten years ago, and the facilities are definitely better than the ones in Springfield.

There was some construction on the way down, so most of the guys aren’t on the ice anymore, but the locker room is teeming with people. The Cardinals’ captain, Josh Roy, is talking to the media.

“Louie, hello,” a girl says. She’s one of the social media folks. Louie cannot, for the life of him, remember her name.

“You got here so fast,” she goes on and holds up her phone. It has one of those extra shatterproof cases and a pop socket with the Cardinals logo on it. “May I?”

“Uh… sure?” Louie says. She wants to take a picture of him standing in a hallway? Sometimes Louie doesn’t understand social media. Lo oking at Instagram regularly drives him into a fit of rage.

“Liam, come here for a second please?” she calls into the room.

“I can’t!”

“Just for a second!”

“I have to… do push-ups,” Liam shouts. “A lot of them!”

Some of the guys laugh.

“Louie Hathaway is here.”

“Oh, Louuuuu!” Liam, still with his pads on, appears in the hallway and gives Louie a squeeze for the camera. “Good to see you, kid.” He follows that up with a pat on the back. “Exciting day.”

Louie nods, although he won’t be excited until he knows whether or not Coach Beaulieu is planning on putting him in the lineup tomorrow.

Coach himself appears just after Liam has waddled back into the locker room to get out of his gear. Or to do push-ups. Who knows.

“Hathaway, good to have you back,” Coach says in passing.

Is it good to have him back? Coach benched him the last time he was here, so Louie clearly didn’t make a big impression.

It’s Beaulieu’s first season with the Cards and his first season with an NHL team. Louie was in Silver Lakes for training camp last fall and fought for a roster spot, but Beaulieu sent him to Springfield after the third preseason game. Said he wasn’t ready. That’s what Coach Trenton said, too, the season before. And the season before that one.

Louie ends up just nodding at Beaulieu as he passes. He nods a lot when he’s here because he doesn’t want to say the wrong thing to someone important. Someone who decides who comes and goes, who gets to dress for a game, and who sits in the press box.

He talks to some of the guys, gets a workout in, and snags some food. When everyone else heads home, he gets into his car and looks up David Santana’s address on his phone. His house is only six minutes from the rink, but it’s not in town.

Liam wasn’t kidding. It’s right next to an apple orchard. A small store by the road is advertising their new spring decorations on an intricately decorated chalkboard, even though patches of snow are still dotting the parking lot out front.

Santa has a weirdly long driveway that ends by several garages and a house with a decorated porch. A snowman with a welcome sign greets Louie by the door. The Santanas probably get their decorations from the orchard next door. A dog barks when Louie rings the doorbell.

Oh. He probably should have asked Liam if Santana had dogs.

Louie takes a deep breath. Steels himself.

The door opens, revealing a tall woman with shoulder-length black hair. She smiles brightly. “Hi, you must be Louie, come on in,” she says. “I’m Bianca, but please call me Bee.” She looks over her shoulder. “Dave, Louie is here!”

“Hey, hey,” Santa says as he comes shuffling into the hallway. He’s still hobbling a bit. Definitely not close to coming back. “Sorry, I had to put the kid in timeout.”

“You guys have a kid?” Louie asks. He did not know that. Although he really prefers kids over dogs.

“The kid is a Labrador puppy,” Bee says, rolling her eyes.

“Oh,” Louie says.

She narrows her eyes at him. “Are you allergic?”

“No, just…” Louie shrugs. “I’ve met some dogs that weren’t, uh…” Another shrug. His great-aunt from Montreal had this wiener dog that wouldn’t stop barking at him and chasing him when he was four or five, so his mom had to lift him off the top of the couch, where he was hiding from the little demon, and carry him to the car when they left.

“He’s very sweet,” Bee says. “But if this is a problem, we can—”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Louie says quickly. He’s not scared or anything. Just not a huge fan. He can deal with it; this is still better than a hotel room.