“I don’t know,” David mumbles. “I might have to go to Toronto, they have a training camp there Dave mentioned.”

“Dave knows best,” she says, spearing a tomato, and they sink back into silence.

“I have to do some more work,” she says, once he’s cleared their plates. “But you can watch TV if you keep the volume low, it won’t bother me.”

“I’m tired. I’m just going to go to my room,” David says, and loads the dishwasher while he listens to her berate someone in French about some Bloc business that’s making the Prime Minister look bad. Her French is flawless, right out of the government handbook, more France than Québec. David suddenly misses Québec City, where everyone would turn their noses up at it.

When he came back after his first season in the QMJHL, his mother had described his French accent as ‘hopelessly low-brow’, and when he went back for training he asked his linemate Poulin to teach him every single bit of slang he knew. Poulin did it gleefully, pulling the rest of the guys into it until there was a team-wide ‘teach all the Anglos Québécois slang’ initiative, complete with a pawed over list of the worst insults, which the coaches rolled their eyes at but pretended didn’t exist.

David’s never used any of it outside of the locker room or the ice, but sometimes he wants to, wants to see if she would chide him or if she wouldn’t even know what he was saying.

He won’t, of course.

*

Dave ends up finding someone good for David, or at least good enough that he won’t be out of shape at the start of the camp in July. The trainer’s not a hockey specialist, but he’s willing to do his research and set David on a path that is familiar enough to tread, and he lets David push himself just hard enough to hurt and not hard enough to injure.

His mother’s not home much. He’s used to that: her long days at the office and trips across the country, around the world. People would ask him, when he was young, but not too young to know what condescension sounded like, if he knew just how important his mommy’s job was. Back then she would bring something back for him every time she left, and he has a shelf in his bedroom of souvenirs from around the world — pretty but useless.

He cooks every day to avoid the temptation to eat out, and either eats with his mother at the kitchen island, or alone against the counter if she’s not home yet, leaving her leftovers in the fridge. He jogs along the Ottawa River every morning, meets with his trainer most afternoons. His days sink into a regimented simplicity. It settles some of the anger still working through him, as long as he studiously avoids watching any playoff games, and he finds himself genuinely looking forward to the July camp, especially once Dave mentions some of the players who’ve also signed up, players David considers meaningful opponents.