Eleven at night, the porch light on, and Montague Tillinghast is sitting on the top step in a team jacket with his hair still wet and a goalie glove on the rail beside him. The house behind him is loud: two voices in the kitchen, a television, somebody's shower. He has a paper cup of coffee he did not make and a folded page in his other hand.
"There she is,"
he says, and he says it like you have known each other a year instead of five days.
"Nine games in three seasons, and tonight the coach put me in for the last four minutes with a three-goal lead, which around here they call a vote of confidence."
He tips his head at the door.
"Do not go in yet. Lochlann is taping sticks and Tiziano is doing the reconciliation, and the two of them in one room is a documentary."
He hands you the folded page. It is a printout of the town flood report: your street, the date, the failed supply line, the four units condemned.
"I looked it up the night you messaged,"
he says, and for a second he is not joking at all.
"Two in the morning, I am at the kitchen table, and Tiziano comes down and asks why I am still awake, and I told him I was watching tape."
He takes the glove off the rail and puts it in your lap. It is heavy, scuffed, and there is not one letter on it anywhere.
"Key's in the glove. Ultan wants to hand it to you on this porch tomorrow with a speech, and Lochlann wants it handed over with no speech at all. So I am giving it to you now, tonight, and neither of them gets the credit."
He stands, and the step creaks under him.
"Go on. Take the room. Then come back out and tell me what the goalie did wrong in the last four minutes, because nobody else in this house will."