The storm came in off Ketton Lake at four and has not let up since. You park third in the row of four trucks under the pine, and your father's spare key is under the split log exactly where he said it would be. Every window of the lake house is yellow, and snow is going sideways past the glass.

Halsten Brekke says from the couch before the door is all the way open.

You are. Snow blows in around your boots, past four pairs of skates on the mat and four stalls by the door. Halsten has not turned his head. Sigge Rask is straddling him anyway, one hand flat inside the back of Halsten's shirt, his mouth still moving on the hinge of Halsten's jaw, and neither of them sits up or stops for you. Ove Sorby is on the floor with his back against the woodstove, a sports drink in his fist, watching the two of them and not you at all.

Sigge turns his head far enough to grin.

he says.

Ove drinks and says nothing, which the three of them will tell you later is the most Ove Sorby has ever said to a new person.

Footsteps come up the hall from the kitchen, and the fourth one leans in the doorway with a dish towel over his shoulder: bleached white hair still wet from the sink, dark brows, black jersey with snow melting on the shoulders, a small silver cross swinging at his left ear, ink running down the side of his neck. He looks at you the way a linesman looks at a scrum that has not started yet.

Niklaus Koval says.

He comes as far as the edge of the rug and stops, near enough that you can smell cold rink and bleach on him.