Two years later
The banner-raising ceremony took place on opening night of the following season, the Stanley Cup championship banner unfurled into the rafters alongside Cole's teammates one final time before the new campaign began, and Reese sat in the family section with a toddler on her lap — their daughter, Frankie, nineteen months old, named for the grandfather who'd believed in her mother before anyone else had thought to.
Frankie clapped along with the crowd, delighted by the noise without any real understanding of its significance, and Reese felt the specific, overwhelming gratitude of a life that had exceeded every hope she'd once dared to carry — not just the championship, not just the marriage, but this, an entire family built from the wreckage of a compliance review that had o
