We wait for three agonizing hours before the neurosurgeon comes out. The waiting room is filled with Jack’s coaches and their wives, his teammates and their parents, plus dozens of his friends from school who were either at the game or heard about what happened. Everyone falls silent when the surgeon, a dark-haired, serious-looking, middle-aged man wearing scrubs, asks Caroline and me to step into a private room. My daughter, Lilly, who is a year younger than Jack and was sitting in the bleachers behind home plate when Jack was hit, grabs my hand and comes into the room with us.
“I’m told you didn’t wait for the ambulance,” the doctor says gravely as soon as the door closes behind us. “Whose idea was that?”
“Why?” I ask. “Was it a mistake?”
“Under some circumstances, it could have been. But this time, it was the right decision. If your son had bled for another ten or fifteen minutes, I don’t think he would have made it.”
“So he’s all right?”
“He’s in recovery. It’s a serious injury, but thankfully we got to it in time. We’ll keep him in intensive care for a day or two. He’s going to have a heckuva headache, but we can control the pain with medication. He’ll have to take it easy for a couple of months, but after that, he should be as good as new.”
“When can we see him?”
“He’ll wake up in about half an hour. He’ll be groggy, but you can talk to him for a few minutes.”
We thank the doctor, and Caroline, Lilly, and I embrace silently. Caroline and Lilly are crying, but I’m so relieved, I feel as if I could float on air. We walk back out to the crowded waiting room. Ray and Toni Miller, along with their son, Tommy, are standing just outside the door. When the group sees Caroline’s tears, I can sense they think the news is bad. Ray looks at me anxiously, and I smile.
Caroline walks straight to Ray, reaches up, wraps her arms around his thick neck, and squeezes him tightly.
“You saved his life,” I hear her say through muffled sobs. “You saved Jack’s life.”
PART 1
1
The moment Katie Dean began to believe she’d been abandoned by God was on a Sunday afternoon in August 1992.
It was late in the summertime in Michigan. Katie, along with her mother and brothers and sister, had returned home earlier from the First Methodist Church in Casco Township. At seventeen, Kirk was her oldest sibling; then Kiri, sixteen; then Katie, who was just two months shy of her thirteenth birthday. Kody was the baby of the family at ten. They were gathered around the dining room table, waiting for Mother to bring the platter of fried chicken in from the kitchen.
The fresh smell of Lake Michigan floated through the open dining room windows, mingling with the sweet odors of chicken and garlic mashed potatoes. After lunch, Katie and Kiri were planning to pack a small basket with a Thermos of ice water, suntan lotion, and magazines, and hike to the sand dunes above the lake, where they would spend the afternoon lying in the sun and giggling about the Nelson boys, who lived just up the road. It would be their last visit to the dunes this summer. School was starting back the next morning.
Richard Dean, Katie’s father, sat listlessly on the other side of the table, staring into a glass of whiskey. He was thin and pale, with a thatch of dark hair above his furrowed brow. He was upset, but that wasn’t unusual. It seemed he was always upset.
Richard Dean was distant, as though not a part of the world everyone else lived in. He never kissed Katie, never hugged her, never told her he loved her. He was like a ticking bomb, always on the verge of another explosion. Katie’s mother had told the children that Father was sick from the war in Vietnam. She said he’d been wounded and captured by Viet Cong soldiers near the Cambodian border in 1970 and had spent four years in a prison in Hanoi.
Katie’s father didn’t have a job, but Katie knew the family lived off money he collected from the government every month. Her mother couldn’t work because she had to stay home and take care of Father all the time. He drank lots of whiskey and smoked cigarettes one after another; Katie had seen him lock himself in his room and not come out for a week at a time. Sometimes she’d hear him screaming in the middle of the night.
Father had picked them all up from the church parking lot just after noon. He didn’t attend church, but he drove the family there and picked them up every Sunday at precisely twelve fifteen. When Father pulled into the church parking lot earlier, Katie’s mother had been talking to a man named Jacob Olson near the front steps. Katie didn’t think there was anything unusual about it-Mr. Olson was a nice man-but as soon as Mother got into the car, Father lit into her. He called her a slut, white trash. He was yelling and spitting. The veins on his neck were sticking out so far, Katie thought they might burst through his skin. When the family arrived home, the first thing Father did was open a bottle of whiskey. He filled a tall glass and sat at the dining room table while Mother, Kiri, and Katie cooked in the kitchen and the boys went about setting the table. They all stepped lightly around Father. They never knew when he might strike, like a rattlesnake coiled in the grass.
Katie was still wearing the flowered print dress Mother had made for her out of material she bought from the thrift store in South Haven. It was Katie’s favorite summer dress, light and airy and full of color. She was looking down at the hemline, which crossed her thighs, trying to imagine the pink carnations coming to life, when Mother walked in carrying the chicken.
“Here we are,” Mother said. She had a forced smile on her face. She put the platter down in the middle of the table. Steam rose from the chicken, and through it Katie caught a glimpse of Father’s face. He was already halfway through his third glass of whiskey. His eyes had reddened, and the lids were beginning to droop.
“Chicken,” Father muttered into his whiskey glass.
“Goddamned fried chicken’s all we ever get around here.”
Mother attempted to remain pleasant. “I thought you liked fried chicken,” she said, “and I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t use that kind of language around the children.”
“The chiddren,” he slurred. “Probly ain’t mine anyway.”
“Richard!” Mother yelled. She rarely raised her voice; Katie shuddered. “How dare you!”
Father lifted his chin and turned slowly toward Mother.
“How dare me?” he said. “How dare me? How dare you, you bitch! How long you been screwing Olson, anyway?”
“Stop it, Father,” Kirk pleaded from Katie’s left. Blond-haired and blue-eyed like Katie and Mother, Kirk was tall and paper thin, wiry strong but teenage awkward. Father whipped his head around to face Kirk.
“Watch your mouth, boy,” he said, “and don’t call me Father no more. Go look in the mirror. You don’t look nothing like me.”
He turned back to Mother.
“Does he, darling? None of ’em look like me. They look like… they look like… Olson!”
“Please leave the table if you’re going to talk like that,” Mother said.
Katie felt the familiar twinge of fear in her stomach. She watched as Father’s face gradually turned darker, from pink to purple.
“Leave the table?” Father bellowed. “You think you can order me around like a goddamned slave?”
“Please, Richard.” There was a look of desperation in Mother’s eyes.
“ Please, Richard,” Father mocked her hatefully.
“I’ll give you please, by God, and thank you very much, too!”
Father stood on wobbly legs, knocking his drink over in the process. Whiskey spilled out and stained the tablecloth as he stumbled off toward his bedroom. The aroma filled Katie’s nostrils, sickening her. She hated whiskey. She hated everything about it.