Page 47 of The Husband Hour
Matt pulled a bench in front of his desk. Lauren sat on the end of it, as far away from him as possible. Clicking his keyboard, eyes on the screen, he said, “I don’t bite, you know.”
She said nothing. The screen filled with an image of Rory, young Rory, wearing his LM hockey uniform. She recognized the Havertown Skatium. He raced down the ice, and she could imagine the intense look of concentration on his face even though the camera didn’t capture that view. He raised his stick and launched the puck in the air; it landed just beyond the goal line. Rory pulled his left arm sharply in, bent at the elbow, his fist tight. The familiar gesture brought tears to her eyes.
“I could show you the Dean Wade interview,” Matt said.
“Actually,” she said, feeling nervous, wondering if now that she wanted something from him, he might turn her down, “I was wondering if you interviewed Emerson Kincaid.”
Just saying his name felt taboo, as if, like in the film Beetlejuice, the mere act of uttering it would conjure him.
“The older brother?” Matt said casually, as if he were, in fact, a movie character, not someone real, not Lauren’s former brother-in-law, not someone who had the power to cut her down or even change her world with a few choice words.
“Yes. Did you talk to him?”
Matt shook his head. “I tried to. The only response I got was a legal letter threatening to sue me if the film exploited or misrepresented Rory, the Kincaid family, or the U.S. military. If I remember correctly.” He smiled wryly.
Yeah, that sounded like Emerson.
“Oh,” she said. She didn’t know if she was relieved or disappointed.
Matt clicked around his keyboard, and a still frame of Dean Wade, Rory’s former NHL teammate, filled the screen. Dean had the all-American good looks of a Midwestern farm boy, though he was actually from Vancouver. The sight of his face brought Lauren back to a different life. She could imagine sitting across the table from him and his wife, Ashley, at their favorite Mexican place in West Hollywood. She could hear Dean calling her “the missus,” something he did even before she was married to Rory.
Everywhere they went, she could feel the eyes of envious women. Lauren would talk about it with Ashley, how it felt to be the recipient of glares like daggers. They were the lucky ones, the chosen, and she could hear the unspoken words: Why her?
Matt played the video. He asked Dean questions off camera, general stuff about the team, when he’d started, how the other guys felt about Rory joining the Kings. How he felt about Rory personally.
The last time she’d seen Dean in person had been the day of Rory’s memorial service, and it was jarring now to hear his voice. She tuned in and out, half listening to Dean talk about Rory’s first season with the Kings, half fighting off a flood of memories.
“So that hit he took in December, the game against the Blackhawks. That seemed pretty bad but they said it wasn’t a concussion, am I getting that right?” Matt asked him.
Lauren focused intently on his answer.
Dean nodded. “You’re right—that was the party line. But I’ll tell you, he got his bell rung that time. I know what the doc said, but I was with Rory that whole night. He was out of it. I mean, he was a tough guy, but none of us can shake off a hit like that.”
Matt asked him another question, about how Rory had played the next game. Lauren interrupted the video.
“He’s wrong,” Lauren said. “I flew to LA that night and Rory was fine. The doctors said he was fine.”
Actually, he hadn’t been fine. But Rory didn’t want to admit he was injured. And now Lauren felt obligated to portray the incident as he would have wanted.
“Did you go to a lot of games his first season?” Matt asked.
“I saw him play whenever he was in DC or Philly, and I flew to LA for a few home games.”
Watching him play at the Staples Center, surrounded by eighteen thousand rabid fans, was surreal and thrilling. When he skated onto the ice just before the national anthem, his signature number 89 on his back, it brought tears to her eyes.
The Kings had retired his number three years ago. She’d declined to attend the ceremony.
The truth was that the NHL had been an adjustment for him. For as long as she’d watched him play, he’d always been one of the top players on the ice at any given moment. But things were different in the NHL; he was competing with guys who had all been the best where they came from. Sometimes Rory rode the bench, and this bothered him deeply. But Rory was Rory, and he figured out how to get more ice time by simply throwing his size around.
Lauren read every article written about the games, had every mention of him memorized. He gained a reputation as a double threat, a player who could score but could also fight. Still, it was never easy seeing him get into fights. Or, like that night in 2009, seeing him on the receiving end of a bad hit. It was all part of the game, and certainly part of the game at the pro level. Still, whenever anyone touched him, she felt a burst of indignant fury, even though he was always okay. That night, in the seconds between his contact with the boards and him hitting the ice, she told herself it was okay—it always was. But that time was different because he didn’t get up.
“Like I said,” she told Matt, “I flew out there the night he took that hit from the Blackhawks. And he was fine.”
Watching from her Georgetown apartment, she’d panicked when he didn’t stand up from the ice. The TV broadcast cut to commercial. Frantic, Lauren called Ashley Wade. Ashley was from Canada and, like Lauren, had been with her husband since high school. Except Rory wasn’t even Lauren’s husband at that point. Which was why she knew she wouldn’t get a call, would be in a complete information blackout.
When Ashley’s phone went straight to voice mail, Lauren called the airline and booked the next flight out of Dulles.
Landing in LA, she found out that Dean had stayed the night at Rory’s. The team doctor didn’t think it was a concussion, but Dean wanted to be on the safe side.
