"Tony… he…" Wes's voice caught on whatever came next, the words sticking in his throat. He stared down at the photos.
The silence that followed was heavy. I didn't try to fill it. Wes's posture told me that whatever he was wrestling with needed space rather than questions.
He finally spoke again. "Anyway, we were kids. Felt like kings."
He stood abruptly. "Need more coffee." He moved toward the screen door. "Thanks for showing me these."
I sat on the porch for a long time after Wes disappeared inside, listening to the distant sounds of him moving around the cottage—the clink of a spoon against ceramic and the soft thud of cabinets opening and closing.
It was late in the morning, the sun rising high overhead. I decided to follow the path back to the abandoned rink.
The rink looked different in the brighter sun—less mystical and more matter-of-fact. Rust collaborated with plants to reclaim what humans had abandoned.
I settled onto what remained of the players' bench, a weathered plank that had been bolted between two posts and somehow survived decades of New England weather. The wood was warm under my legs, heated by the sunlight.
I pulled out my field notebook. At the top of the page, I wrote:Memory and place—how physical spaces hold onto community history.
My original research proposal had been full of clinical language about economic decline, population loss, and infrastructure decay. It was all true and measurable, perfect for the kind of academic paper that would satisfy my degree requirements and maybe earn a footnote in someone else's bibliography.
As I sat and stared at the rink, I wondered whether I'd been asking the wrong questions.
It's not just about what gets abandoned,I wrote.It's about what lingers. This rink hasn't seen a game in years, maybe decades, but it's still alive in some way. I need to look beyond the ecological processes happening here and examine what this place meant to the people who used it.
I sketched the layout from memory, trying to map where the face-off circles would have been and where the penalty boxes might have stood. Somewhere in Whistleport's town records—or maybe in the basement of the local newspaper office—there were probably team rosters from the years this place was active.
I found myself thinking about my relationship with hockey—how it had always been Ziggy's passion that I'd borrowed, never quite my own. Even now, my strongest hockey memories weren't about the game itself. They were about friendship.
For Wes, though, hockey appeared to mean something different. It was deeper and more complicated, tied up with memories that hurt too much to examine directly.
A gentle breeze rustled through the birch tree that had grown up through the center line, making the leaves shimmer like green coins. Somewhere in the undergrowth, a chipmunk chattered at an unseen rival.
I closed the notebook and sat for a while longer in the quiet, watching shadows lengthen across the cracked asphalt. Tomorrow, I'd start asking different questions. Not only about what had been lost but also about what could be restored. About moving beyond the economics of decline toward the possibility of return.
Perhaps the most essential elements of my research wouldn't be about documenting endings. They would be about finding ways to begin again.
Chapter six
Wes
My coffee mug warmed my palms while I pretended to examine the horizon. Every few seconds, my attention drifted to the cottage behind me, listening for the sounds of Eric waking up.
We were two days out from the storm, and the air felt sharp and clean. Salt spray misted up from the rocks below, and a lobster boat's engine puttered against the tide somewhere in the distance.
The screen door's familiar squeak announced Eric's arrival before I saw him. He emerged carrying a silver thermos and a canvas tool bag slung across his shoulder. His hair stuck up at odd angles, and his unguarded smile spread across his face when he spotted me.
"Morning." He settled against the porch railing, close enough to smell his shower soap. "Did you sleep okay? It's so quiet out here when a storm isn't blowing."
I grunted something that could pass for an answer. He twisted the cap off his thermos, releasing steam with hints of cinnamon and vanilla.
"I was thinking." He paused to sip from the thermos. "About that rink. The clearing I found yesterday."
"What about it?"
"I'd like to go back. Clean it up a little and get a better sense of what it was like when it was active."
The word "no" formed on my tongue, ready to end the expedition before it started. When I arrived on Ironhook, they'd already abandoned the rink. I came to the island partly to create a clean separation from my hockey-filled past. Some sleeping dogs needed to stay down.
Eric must have read my expression because he held up one hand. "I'm not asking you to come with me. I know it's..." He searched for the right words. "I know it's complicated for you."
