Greg nodded slowly. “That’s fair.”
“And Greg?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry about the letters. I should have given them to him. Even if you relapsed. That should have been his decision, not mine.”
He was quiet for a long time.
“You were protecting him,” he said. “From me. You were right to.”
“I was protecting myself too,” I said. “From watching him get hurt. From having to explain it. It was easier to just make you disappear.” I looked down at my hot chocolate. “I think I made you disappear so well that I forgot he had a right to remember you.”
He didn’t say anything. He just nodded and looked out at the ice. After a while, he reached over and touched my shoulder once, lightly, and then took his hand back.
The last game of the season was in March, a playoff game against the Glens Falls Wolves. The same team Greg had scored on when he was ten.
