“Then find out,” I said.
He was quiet for a minute. Then he said, “And I want to keep learning to sharpen skates. Dad says I’m good at it. He says not a lot of people have the hands for it.”
“You can do both.”
“Yeah.” He almost smiled. “I can do both.”
Monday afternoon, I drove him to the rink at four thirty.
He sat in the passenger seat with his hockey bag on his lap, bouncing his knee. When we pulled into the lot, he didn’t move for a second.
“What if I’m terrible?” he said. “I haven’t been on the ice with the team in two months.”
“Then you’ll be terrible,” I said. “And then you’ll get better.”
He laughed. He opened the door. He got out and swung his bag onto his shoulder, and then he leaned back in and looked at me.
