But I was his mother. I had to know.
I walked to the door. The sign on it said Maintenance. I could hear voices inside, low, and then a laugh. Sam’s laugh. The real one, the one I hadn’t heard in a long time.
I grabbed the handle and opened the door.
Sam was sitting on an overturned bucket with a skate in his lap. Beside him, at a workbench under a hanging lamp, a man in a gray work uniform was bent over a skate sharpening machine, his back to me.
Sam looked up and saw me. All the color drained out of his face.
The man turned around.
It was his father.
For a second, nobody moved.
The machine was still whirring. Sparks came off the blade in a thin orange spray. Greg reached over without looking and flipped the switch, and the room went quiet except for the hum of the lamp.
