Lena Brandt's return from injury was confirmed on a Tuesday. Harin found out through Sophie, who had heard from the ISU registration office, who had received the medical clearance documentation from the German federation, and who had called to let her know because the paperwork would affect the pairs team registration status.
Sophie said: 'This will require ISU review of your current registration. I will handle the administrative contacts and let you know what they say.'
She said: 'Thank you.'
She hung up.
She was at the kitchen table with the notebook open to a blank page. She had been about to write the preparation notes for the upcoming Monday joint session. She did not write them.
She sat at the kitchen table and thought about what she had just heard.
Lena Brandt was Cas's original pairs partner. They had been registered as a pairs team before the emergency clause, before the ISU meeting, before the nine rules and the arrangement and all of it. Lena had been injured and her injury had created the condition that produced the ninety days. She was now cleared to skate.
The ISU would review.
She sat with this for a long time.
She sat with it the way she sat with things that required processing rather than management: present, attentive, not moving faster than the information.
The information was: Lena Brandt was cleared. The ISU would review the registration. The review was a procedural question about whether the emergency clause registration or the original registration took precedence.
She did not know what the review would determine.
She also sat with the specific quality of what she was feeling, which she was not going to manage and was not going to file in a folder. She was going to sit with it and identify it accurately.
She identified it as: the specific cold quality of a thing she had believed was stable being revealed as potentially unstable. Not panic. Not the managed version of this feeling, which she would have produced if she were managing. The actual thing: a particular kind of cold in her chest.
She had been dropped before. She had been sixteen. The Achilles memory was not this memory, but the structure of the feeling was adjacent: the thing you had trusted to catch you suddenly involving a question about whether the catch was still committed to.
She sat with this for several minutes.
Then she texted him: 'Sophie called. Lena Brandt has been cleared to skate.'
She waited.
He called in two minutes.
'I know,' he said. 'Management called me as soon as the clearance went through the ISU system. I've been in back-to-back calls with them for the last hour.'
'What does management say?' she said.
'That there are ISU registration questions to resolve,' he said. He sounded like someone who was on call four, which was the version of him she had not heard before and which she was now identifying as the press conference version, the managed version.
She sat with this.
'When you've finished with management,' she said, 'I need you to tell me what you decided. Not what management decided. What you decided.'
She said it carefully. She said it in the way she said things that were precise: exactly, without embellishment.
'Yes,' he said.
She hung up.
She sat at the kitchen table and looked at the notebook, which was open to the blank page she had been about to fill with preparation notes.
She picked up the pen.
She wrote: Day 97. Lena Brandt cleared to skate. Management calls. ISU review. The crack.
She looked at what she had written.
She wrote: I am not managing this. I am sitting with it. The cold quality of potentially losing stable ground. Not panic. The actual feeling. I am letting it be the actual feeling.
She wrote: The question is what he decided.
She closed the notebook.
She sat at the table.
Outside, Montreal in December was doing what Montreal did. She looked at the window. She could see the edge of the building on Saint-Laurent from her east-facing window if she was at the right angle. She did not move to see if she could see it.
She sat.
She waited.
She was aware of the crack.
The crack went through the center of what she had been most careful about.
She did not know yet whether careful had been enough.
She sat in the Montreal December and waited for the knock.
At nine-forty-three, it came.
She went to the door.
He was in the corridor. He had been in four hours of management calls. She could see this in his face, which had the specific quality of someone who had been in rooms with people who had interests and who had been managing those interests rather than his own.
She stepped back. He came in.
She closed the door.
He said: 'I need to tell you what I decided.'
She waited.
He said: 'I decided before management called. Before the calls, before the ISU registration questions, before any of it. I decided last night in the Saint-Laurent apartment when you were there and we talked about the invitation. Both reasons, I said. Both.'
She held his gaze.
He said: 'The decision did not change when Lena's clearance came through. The clearance is a fact about a medical situation. The decision is a fact about what I want.'
She received this.
She said: 'What do you want?'
He said: 'To continue what we've built. With you.'
She held his gaze for a long time.
She said: 'The ISU review.'
He said: 'Will determine the registration logistics. Not the decision.'
She said: 'You're certain.'
He said: 'Yes.'
She sat with this.
The crack was still there. The crack was: Lena Brandt was cleared, and the ISU would review, and the registration question was real, and the management would have interests, and all of these things were facts in the world that could affect the specific arrangement she and Cas were now in.
He had said the decision was not changed by the facts. She had received this. She had received it as an honest statement from a person who had demonstrated, over eleven weeks, that he said honest things without performing them.
She believed him.
The crack was still there.
She was aware of it and was not managing it.
She was sitting with it as the real thing it was: the first test of the stability of what they had built.
She was not afraid of the test.
She was afraid of being dropped. She had always been afraid of being dropped. The parking lot conversation, the Paris comment, the lift, all of it had been about learning whether she could give weight to someone who would hold it.
She had given weight.
She needed to know whether it was held.
She looked at him.
He looked back.
'The ISU review will resolve,' she said. Not a question. A statement about what she was choosing to believe.
'Yes,' he said.
'And until it does,' she said.
'Until it does,' he said, 'we are what we are.'
She sat with this.
The crack.
The cold quality.
The test.
Both of them in her apartment in Montreal, after Fukuoka, with the crack visible between them and both of them aware of it.
She was going to sit with the crack and not manage it.
She was going to let it be what it was.
She was going to see whether what they had built was solid enough to have a crack in it without collapsing.
She was going to find out.
She was going to find out whether careful had been enough.
The crack was real.
The thing that the crack was testing was also real.
Both things.
Both real.
Both present.
She sat with both.
She was not going to look away from the crack.
She was not going to manage it.
She was going to sit in it and be in it and find out whether what they had built held.
She was going to find out.
She sat in the Montreal December with the crack between them and both of them present in it and she let the crack be real and she let herself be afraid and she let him be in the room with her.
Both of them.
In it.
The crack and the thing it was testing.
Both real.
She was going to find out.
She was going to find out. She sat at the kitchen table for a long time after she had sent the text.
She sat with it the way she had decided she was going to sit with things: present, not managing, letting the actual feeling be the actual feeling rather than the managed version of it.
The actual feeling was: the cold quality. Not panic. Not the emergency-level response she would have produced before the ninety days. The specific cold quality of something she had believed was stable being revealed as potentially unstable.
She had given weight.
The question was whether the catch was still committed to.
She had given weight one other time before in her life and the answer to that question had been no. She had been sixteen. The Achilles injury had not been the partner's fault, technically , she understood this, she had understood it for years , but the result of the fall and what came after had been the specific experience of the ground arriving suddenly and unexpectedly when she had trusted it not to.
She had spent nine years not giving full weight.
She had given full weight in Fukuoka.
She was sitting at her kitchen table in Montreal waiting to find out what the weight landed on.
She was not managing this. She was in it.
She looked at the window.
The Montreal December outside was dark, the streetlights doing what streetlights did, the city continuing at its winter pace. From her east-facing window at the correct angle she could see the edge of the Saint-Laurent building. She had identified this geometry the first week after the return: if she stood at the window and looked northeast, the building's corner was visible.
She was aware of this.
She did not stand at the window.
She sat at the table.
She opened the notebook.
She wrote: The cold quality. The question of what weight lands on when the ground shifts. I am in it. I am not going to look away from it. I am not going to manage it into a smaller shape. The crack is real. What was in the container is also real. Both real.
She wrote: He said management called him immediately. He was in four hours of calls. Management has interests. Management's interests are not the same as his interests or mine. The question is what he decided when the calls were done.
She wrote: I believe he decided. I am waiting to hear what he decided.
She closed the notebook.
She made tea.
She drank the tea.
She thought about the lift.
Specifically: the signal system. Three taps. The specific moment of transition between staying in contact with the ice and giving full weight to someone who was not the ice and was not the certain ground but was another person.
She had learned to give three taps. She had learned to give full weight.
She was in the period between the signal and the catch.
She was going to sit in this period and not manage it.
At nine-forty-one, her phone showed a text from him: 'On my way.'
Two minutes later, the knock.
She went to the door.
He was there. She could see the four-hours-of-management-calls quality in his face, which was the managed quality, the press conference quality, the version of him that appeared when he had been in rooms with people who had interests that conflicted with his own and had been navigating those conflicts.
She had never seen this version directly before. She had seen glimpses of it from the far side of press events, from the ice during public sessions where he was managing the audience's perception. She had not seen it this close.
She stepped back. He came in.
She closed the door.
He stood in her apartment in the specific configuration of someone who had arrived from a difficult four hours and who was now in the presence of the person who had been waiting for the outcome of those four hours.
He said: 'I need to tell you what I decided.'
She waited.
He said: 'I decided before management called. Before any of it. I decided last night in the Saint-Laurent apartment when you were there and we talked about the invitation and you said the thing you hadn't said in those words and I said my version of it back.'
She held his gaze.
He said: 'That decision does not change because Lena's medical clearance came through the ISU system. The clearance is a fact about her recovery. The decision I made last night is a fact about what I want. Both are facts. They are not the same fact.'
She received this.
She said: 'What does management want?'
He said: 'Management wants to protect the original contract, which specifies my registration with Lena as the primary registration. Management has legal interests in that contract that are separate from my interests and from the ISU registration question.' He paused. 'Management does not want what I want. This is not new. Management has not wanted what I want at several points in the past eight years. I have navigated this before.'
She said: 'What did you tell them?'
He said: 'That I have accepted the ISU invitation and that I am going to continue with the current registration. That any legal questions about the original contract are for lawyers to resolve and do not affect my decision about where I am skating next season.'
She sat with this.
The ISU registration question was still real. The contract question was still real. Lena's clearance was still real.
He had said: these are real and they are not the same as the decision.
'The lawyers,' she said.
'Yes,' he said. 'There will be a process. It will take time. It may be uncomfortable at points.' He looked at her directly. 'I need you to know: the process does not change what I decided. The process is the process. What I decided is what I decided.'
She held his gaze for a long time.
She said: 'Lena Brandt.'
He said: 'Is a person I skated with for four years and who was injured and who has now recovered. I want her recovery to be good. I have no further opinion about her registration status.'
She said: 'Does she know?'
He said: 'Management will have notified her team by now. This is the part I did not control today.'
She nodded.
She thought about what it meant for Lena to have received the news. She had thought about it while she sat at the kitchen table waiting. She had felt the cold quality while thinking about it, not because she was certain of the outcome but because she was aware of the possibility of an outcome where the crack widened.
She was aware of the crack.
She was not going to pretend the crack was not there.
She was going to sit with the crack and see what it was made of.
'The ISU review,' she said.
'Will take two to four weeks,' he said. 'Sophie knows the timeline. She will keep both of us informed.'
'Both of us,' she said.
'Both of us,' he confirmed.
She let out a breath.
She said: 'I am going to be honest with you about what I'm feeling.'
He waited.
She said: 'The cold quality. The specific feeling of having given weight and being in the period before confirmation that the catch is stable. I have felt this before. Not in the same context. Nine years ago, after the Achilles fall.' She held his gaze. 'I am not managing it. I am telling you what it is so you know what you are seeing.'
He said: 'I know what I'm seeing.'
She said: 'Yes. But I want to have told you.'
He said: 'You have told me.' He paused. 'Can I tell you something?'
She said: 'Yes.'
He said: 'I made the decision last night and I have not changed it since. Not in four hours of management calls. Not in the moment the Lena news came through. Not standing here with you now, with the crack in the room between us.' He held her gaze. 'The decision is the decision. What I want is what I want. Both things are stable.'
She sat with this.
The crack was still there.
The decision was also still there.
Both real.
She said: 'Then we are in the crack together.'
He said: 'Yes.'
She said: 'And we will see.'
He said: 'Yes.'
She looked at the east-facing window. Outside, the Montreal December, the streetlights, the specific cold of a city in the particular weight of an uncertain evening.
She turned back to him.
'Stay,' she said. 'The return flight debrief and the management situation , you should not be alone with it tonight.'
He looked at her.
'Yes,' he said.
He stayed.
She made more tea. He sat at the kitchen table that was her kitchen table and not his and that he occupied in the specific way of someone who occupied spaces differently when he was welcome in them.
She sat across from him.
Both of them at the table, in the crack, with the ISU review pending and the management situation real and the decision he had made also real and both of them aware of all of it.
She was going to sit with all of it.
She was not going to look away.
She was going to find out whether what they had built was solid enough to have a crack in it without collapsing.
She believed it was.
She was not certain.
She had given full weight.
She was going to find out whether it held.
The crack was real.
She was in it.
Both of them.
Together.
You've reached the end of this chapter
Lena Brandt's return from injury was confirmed on a Tuesday. Harin found out through Sophie, who had heard from the ISU registration office, who had received the medical clearance documentation from the German federation, and who had called to let her know because the paperwork would affect the pairs team registration status.
Sophie said: 'This will require ISU review of your current registration. I will handle the administrative contacts and let you know what they say.'
She said: 'Thank you.'
She hung up.
She was at the kitchen table with the notebook open to a blank page. She had been about to write the preparation notes for the upcoming Monday joint session. She did not write them.
She sat at the kitchen table and thought about what she had just heard.
Lena Brandt was Cas's original pairs partner. They had been registered as a pairs team before the emergency clause, before the ISU meeting, before the nine rules and the arrangement and all of it. Lena had been injured and her injury had created the condition that produced the ninety days. She was now cleared to skate.
The ISU would review.
She sat with this for a long time.
She sat with it the way she sat with things that required processing rather than management: present, attentive, not moving faster than the information.
The information was: Lena Brandt was cleared. The ISU would review the registration. The review was a procedural question about whether the emergency clause registration or the original registration took precedence.
She did not know what the review would determine.
She also sat with the specific quality of what she was feeling, which she was not going to manage and was not going to file in a folder. She was going to sit with it and identify it accurately.
She identified it as: the specific cold quality of a thing she had believed was stable being revealed as potentially unstable. Not panic. Not the managed version of this feeling, which she would have produced if she were managing. The actual thing: a particular kind of cold in her chest.
She had been dropped before. She had been sixteen. The Achilles memory was not this memory, but the structure of the feeling was adjacent: the thing you had trusted to catch you suddenly involving a question about whether the catch was still committed to.
She sat with this for several minutes.
Then she texted him: 'Sophie called. Lena Brandt has been cleared to skate.'
She waited.
He called in two minutes.
'I know,' he said. 'Management called me as soon as the clearance went through the ISU system. I've been in back-to-back calls with them for the last hour.'
'What does management say?' she said.
'That there are ISU registration questions to resolve,' he said. He sounded like someone who was on call four, which was the version of him she had not heard before and which she was now identifying as the press conference version, the managed version.
She sat with this.
'When you've finished with management,' she said, 'I need you to tell me what you decided. Not what management decided. What you decided.'
She said it carefully. She said it in the way she said things that were precise: exactly, without embellishment.
'Yes,' he said.
She hung up.
She sat at the kitchen table and looked at the notebook, which was open to the blank page she had been about to fill with preparation notes.
She picked up the pen.
She wrote: Day 97. Lena Brandt cleared to skate. Management calls. ISU review. The crack.
She looked at what she had written.
She wrote: I am not managing this. I am sitting with it. The cold quality of potentially losing stable ground. Not panic. The actual feeling. I am letting it be the actual feeling.
She wrote: The question is what he decided.
She closed the notebook.
She sat at the table.
Outside, Montreal in December was doing what Montreal did. She looked at the window. She could see the edge of the building on Saint-Laurent from her east-facing window if she was at the right angle. She did not move to see if she could see it.
She sat.
She waited.
She was aware of the crack.
The crack went through the center of what she had been most careful about.
She did not know yet whether careful had been enough.
She sat in the Montreal December and waited for the knock.
At nine-forty-three, it came.
She went to the door.
He was in the corridor. He had been in four hours of management calls. She could see this in his face, which had the specific quality of someone who had been in rooms with people who had interests and who had been managing those interests rather than his own.
She stepped back. He came in.
She closed the door.
He said: 'I need to tell you what I decided.'
She waited.
He said: 'I decided before management called. Before the calls, before the ISU registration questions, before any of it. I decided last night in the Saint-Laurent apartment when you were there and we talked about the invitation. Both reasons, I said. Both.'
She held his gaze.
He said: 'The decision did not change when Lena's clearance came through. The clearance is a fact about a medical situation. The decision is a fact about what I want.'
She received this.
She said: 'What do you want?'
He said: 'To continue what we've built. With you.'
She held his gaze for a long time.
She said: 'The ISU review.'
He said: 'Will determine the registration logistics. Not the decision.'
She said: 'You're certain.'
He said: 'Yes.'
She sat with this.
The crack was still there. The crack was: Lena Brandt was cleared, and the ISU would review, and the registration question was real, and the management would have interests, and all of these things were facts in the world that could affect the specific arrangement she and Cas were now in.
He had said the decision was not changed by the facts. She had received this. She had received it as an honest statement from a person who had demonstrated, over eleven weeks, that he said honest things without performing them.
She believed him.
The crack was still there.
She was aware of it and was not managing it.
She was sitting with it as the real thing it was: the first test of the stability of what they had built.
She was not afraid of the test.
She was afraid of being dropped. She had always been afraid of being dropped. The parking lot conversation, the Paris comment, the lift, all of it had been about learning whether she could give weight to someone who would hold it.
She had given weight.
She needed to know whether it was held.
She looked at him.
He looked back.
'The ISU review will resolve,' she said. Not a question. A statement about what she was choosing to believe.
'Yes,' he said.
'And until it does,' she said.
'Until it does,' he said, 'we are what we are.'
She sat with this.
The crack.
The cold quality.
The test.
Both of them in her apartment in Montreal, after Fukuoka, with the crack visible between them and both of them aware of it.
She was going to sit with the crack and not manage it.
She was going to let it be what it was.
She was going to see whether what they had built was solid enough to have a crack in it without collapsing.
She was going to find out.
She was going to find out whether careful had been enough.
The crack was real.
The thing that the crack was testing was also real.
Both things.
Both real.
Both present.
She sat with both.
She was not going to look away from the crack.
She was not going to manage it.
She was going to sit in it and be in it and find out whether what they had built held.
She was going to find out.
She sat in the Montreal December with the crack between them and both of them present in it and she let the crack be real and she let herself be afraid and she let him be in the room with her.
Both of them.
In it.
The crack and the thing it was testing.
Both real.
She was going to find out.
She was going to find out. She sat at the kitchen table for a long time after she had sent the text.
She sat with it the way she had decided she was going to sit with things: present, not managing, letting the actual feeling be the actual feeling rather than the managed version of it.
The actual feeling was: the cold quality. Not panic. Not the emergency-level response she would have produced before the ninety days. The specific cold quality of something she had believed was stable being revealed as potentially unstable.
She had given weight.
The question was whether the catch was still committed to.
She had given weight one other time before in her life and the answer to that question had been no. She had been sixteen. The Achilles injury had not been the partner's fault, technically , she understood this, she had understood it for years , but the result of the fall and what came after had been the specific experience of the ground arriving suddenly and unexpectedly when she had trusted it not to.
She had spent nine years not giving full weight.
She had given full weight in Fukuoka.
She was sitting at her kitchen table in Montreal waiting to find out what the weight landed on.
She was not managing this. She was in it.
She looked at the window.
The Montreal December outside was dark, the streetlights doing what streetlights did, the city continuing at its winter pace. From her east-facing window at the correct angle she could see the edge of the Saint-Laurent building. She had identified this geometry the first week after the return: if she stood at the window and looked northeast, the building's corner was visible.
She was aware of this.
She did not stand at the window.
She sat at the table.
She opened the notebook.
She wrote: The cold quality. The question of what weight lands on when the ground shifts. I am in it. I am not going to look away from it. I am not going to manage it into a smaller shape. The crack is real. What was in the container is also real. Both real.
She wrote: He said management called him immediately. He was in four hours of calls. Management has interests. Management's interests are not the same as his interests or mine. The question is what he decided when the calls were done.
She wrote: I believe he decided. I am waiting to hear what he decided.
She closed the notebook.
She made tea.
She drank the tea.
She thought about the lift.
Specifically: the signal system. Three taps. The specific moment of transition between staying in contact with the ice and giving full weight to someone who was not the ice and was not the certain ground but was another person.
She had learned to give three taps. She had learned to give full weight.
She was in the period between the signal and the catch.
She was going to sit in this period and not manage it.
At nine-forty-one, her phone showed a text from him: 'On my way.'
Two minutes later, the knock.
She went to the door.
He was there. She could see the four-hours-of-management-calls quality in his face, which was the managed quality, the press conference quality, the version of him that appeared when he had been in rooms with people who had interests that conflicted with his own and had been navigating those conflicts.
She had never seen this version directly before. She had seen glimpses of it from the far side of press events, from the ice during public sessions where he was managing the audience's perception. She had not seen it this close.
She stepped back. He came in.
She closed the door.
He stood in her apartment in the specific configuration of someone who had arrived from a difficult four hours and who was now in the presence of the person who had been waiting for the outcome of those four hours.
He said: 'I need to tell you what I decided.'
She waited.
He said: 'I decided before management called. Before any of it. I decided last night in the Saint-Laurent apartment when you were there and we talked about the invitation and you said the thing you hadn't said in those words and I said my version of it back.'
She held his gaze.
He said: 'That decision does not change because Lena's medical clearance came through the ISU system. The clearance is a fact about her recovery. The decision I made last night is a fact about what I want. Both are facts. They are not the same fact.'
She received this.
She said: 'What does management want?'
He said: 'Management wants to protect the original contract, which specifies my registration with Lena as the primary registration. Management has legal interests in that contract that are separate from my interests and from the ISU registration question.' He paused. 'Management does not want what I want. This is not new. Management has not wanted what I want at several points in the past eight years. I have navigated this before.'
She said: 'What did you tell them?'
He said: 'That I have accepted the ISU invitation and that I am going to continue with the current registration. That any legal questions about the original contract are for lawyers to resolve and do not affect my decision about where I am skating next season.'
She sat with this.
The ISU registration question was still real. The contract question was still real. Lena's clearance was still real.
He had said: these are real and they are not the same as the decision.
'The lawyers,' she said.
'Yes,' he said. 'There will be a process. It will take time. It may be uncomfortable at points.' He looked at her directly. 'I need you to know: the process does not change what I decided. The process is the process. What I decided is what I decided.'
She held his gaze for a long time.
She said: 'Lena Brandt.'
He said: 'Is a person I skated with for four years and who was injured and who has now recovered. I want her recovery to be good. I have no further opinion about her registration status.'
She said: 'Does she know?'
He said: 'Management will have notified her team by now. This is the part I did not control today.'
She nodded.
She thought about what it meant for Lena to have received the news. She had thought about it while she sat at the kitchen table waiting. She had felt the cold quality while thinking about it, not because she was certain of the outcome but because she was aware of the possibility of an outcome where the crack widened.
She was aware of the crack.
She was not going to pretend the crack was not there.
She was going to sit with the crack and see what it was made of.
'The ISU review,' she said.
'Will take two to four weeks,' he said. 'Sophie knows the timeline. She will keep both of us informed.'
'Both of us,' she said.
'Both of us,' he confirmed.
She let out a breath.
She said: 'I am going to be honest with you about what I'm feeling.'
He waited.
She said: 'The cold quality. The specific feeling of having given weight and being in the period before confirmation that the catch is stable. I have felt this before. Not in the same context. Nine years ago, after the Achilles fall.' She held his gaze. 'I am not managing it. I am telling you what it is so you know what you are seeing.'
He said: 'I know what I'm seeing.'
She said: 'Yes. But I want to have told you.'
He said: 'You have told me.' He paused. 'Can I tell you something?'
She said: 'Yes.'
He said: 'I made the decision last night and I have not changed it since. Not in four hours of management calls. Not in the moment the Lena news came through. Not standing here with you now, with the crack in the room between us.' He held her gaze. 'The decision is the decision. What I want is what I want. Both things are stable.'
She sat with this.
The crack was still there.
The decision was also still there.
Both real.
She said: 'Then we are in the crack together.'
He said: 'Yes.'
She said: 'And we will see.'
He said: 'Yes.'
She looked at the east-facing window. Outside, the Montreal December, the streetlights, the specific cold of a city in the particular weight of an uncertain evening.
She turned back to him.
'Stay,' she said. 'The return flight debrief and the management situation , you should not be alone with it tonight.'
He looked at her.
'Yes,' he said.
He stayed.
She made more tea. He sat at the kitchen table that was her kitchen table and not his and that he occupied in the specific way of someone who occupied spaces differently when he was welcome in them.
She sat across from him.
Both of them at the table, in the crack, with the ISU review pending and the management situation real and the decision he had made also real and both of them aware of all of it.
She was going to sit with all of it.
She was not going to look away.
She was going to find out whether what they had built was solid enough to have a crack in it without collapsing.
She believed it was.
She was not certain.
She had given full weight.
She was going to find out whether it held.
The crack was real.
She was in it.
Both of them.
Together.
You've reached the end of this chapter