Read Online Summer Light: A Novel by Luanne Rice - Free Book Online Page B

of rest and fourteen years of restlessness: fourteen years of playing pro hockey without winning the Cup. He had won countless trophies, been voted MVP twice during the regular season. He had made it to the play-offs ten times, never before to the finals.
    “Remember what I told you,” Coach Dafoe said, his black eyes shark-stern as he backed away.
    “When in doubt, shoot,” Martin repeated. “Don’t let Jorgensen win.”
    “That, and don’t disappoint our mothers.”

    The first night Boston played Edmonton, Tobin’s husband and sons were busy readying a car for the soap box derby, leaving Tobin on her own. So she rode over to the Taylors’ to watch the game with May and Kylie on May’s bed with the television turned up.
    “Are you following the puck?” Tobin asked.
    “There it is.” Kylie pointed at the screen.
    “Everything moves so fast,” May said.
    “You can say that again.” Tobin laughed, and May knew she was referring to what she’d been told about dinner with Martin. Her husband and sons were into fishing and car racing, not hockey. So Tobin learned the lingo along with May and Kylie: penalties, right wings, blue line, center ice, the crease. May kept her eyes on number 21—Martin Cartier—and she felt thrilled.
    One, two glides, and Martin was in full flight, skating and slamming his way across the neutral zone and into Oilers’ territory. Skates clicking, blades slashing, the tympanic thump of bodies against the boards.
    “I wish I was there,” May said.
    “I’ll bet you do. Look—the camera’s on him. He’s staring straight into it.”
    “Right at us,” Kylie said sleepily.
    “I wonder if his father’s watching,” May said.
    “His father?” Tobin asked.
    “Sounds like they have a complicated relationship,” May said.
    Kylie snuggled against her half asleep, as she tried to stay awake long enough to see who would win. But her eyes were so drowsy, they were closing fast.
    “In what way?” Tobin asked.
    “They don’t speak.”
    “That sounds straightforward,” Tobin said. “Not complicated at all.”
    “But it’s his father,” May said, watching the TV.
    Tobin laughed. “He’d better be careful, what he tells you. Little does he know how you feel about fathers.”
    “Oh, now you’re my analyst?”
    “Always.” Tobin laughed again, but then the crowd went wild, and she and May turned their full attention to the game.
    “What happened?” May asked.
    “Something with Martin,” Tobin said, as they watched him skate across the ice with his fists pumping overhead.
    “He’s a lightning rod,” one of the announcers exclaimed as Martin scored his first goal of the night.
    “The Gold Sledgehammer,” the other said as Martin slammed into one of the Oilers, knocking him to the ice as he nailed the puck with his patented slap shot. “Cartier’s got the body of a heavyweight boxer and the killer instinct to match,” the first announcer added.
    “The Gold Sledgehammer,” Tobin said admiringly.
    “Killer instinct,” May said, watching him lock eyes with Nils Jorgensen, the Oilers’ star goalie.
    The announcers explained their rivalry. In one of hockey’s most famous fights, Martin and Nils had tangled hard, with Nils’s nose being broken and his face needing substantial repairs. In retaliation, three seasons ago, Jorgensen had clocked Cartier, leaving him with a pulverized eye socket requiring surgery to repair a detached retina. Such was hockey, but when May saw the scars on the goalie’s cheeks and chin, she felt chilled to think Martin had done it and had it done back.
    Once the TV camera zoomed in on Martin’s face, and May thought she had never seen such intensity in human eyes.
    “They hate each other,” Tobin said.
    “They do, don’t they?” May was shivering.
    “Wow, May.”
    “I know.”
    “That’s a look we don’t see every day. Martin hates Jorgensen with a passion. Should I be worried about you?”
    May had been staring at the two faces