The children bounded toward the infield. Megan collapsed next to the pitcher’s mound and flung powder into the air. She hopped to her feet, packed a heap of fresh snow into a round mass, and threw it at her brother. It sailed wide of Eric, who made a larger snowball and drilled his sister in the leg.
As they laughed, Serrano led Rachel to the empty bleachers lining the infield. Serrano wiped the frost off two seats along the first base line, and they sat down. They watched in silence as Eric and Megan played in the snow. Rachel had a look of pure bliss on her face as her children frolicked.
“They’re great kids,” he said.
Rachel nodded, wistful. “They are. I’m very lucky.”
“So are they,” he said.
“Sometimes I wonder. If they might have had it easier some other way. They’ve been through so much. Seeing them like this . . . it kills me that they don’t get to just be kids more often. Sometimes it feels like my son was forced to stop being a kid too soon.”
“In what way?”
Rachel shook her head. She’d come close to telling him something, Serrano could feel it. But she’d pulled back.
“Why did you bring us here?” she asked. Snowflakes were melting on her eyelashes, the water droplets glistening. Her eyes were a gorgeous green, and Serrano felt his heart pick up the pace.
Serrano said, “I came here that night after we questioned Nicholas Drummond. What you said to me, it made me want to come here. For the first time in a long time.”
“I don’t understand,” Rachel said. “I apologized. But I’m not really sure what for, now.”
Serrano breathed in. He pointed at the pitcher’s mound, just a few feet from where Eric and Megan were playing in the snow.
“My son, Evan, died on this field,” he said. “Right there.”
He heard Rachel take a sharp breath.
“Oh my . . . God. I’m so sorry. I . . . I didn’t know.”
“On the pitcher’s mound. Evan was a lefty. A southpaw fireballer. He was throwing heat in the eighties at fourteen years old. He was a prodigy. You know how rare good southpaws are at that age?”
Rachel shook her head. Her breath misted in front of her, tears welling in her eyes.
“But he wasn’t just an athlete,” Serrano continued. “He was smart. Smarter than I ever was. Read every book he could get his hands on. His favorites were big, epic fantasy novels. Books about wizards and warriors and dragons and magic. Books I never would have touched when I was his age. He’d sit in his room for hours at a time, just churning through those pages like he was running out of time, like he was worried he wouldn’t get to finish all the books he wanted to in his life. As it would happen, he didn’t.”
Serrano grew silent, watching Eric and Megan playing beneath the dark moonlit sky.
“I tried to go to every game he pitched. Couldn’t make them all with the job, but my wife, Deirdre, went whenever I couldn’t. Evan always had a parent there to cheer him on. It was important to us, for him to know we supported him. Deirdre once brought a big orange sign to a game that read EVAN SERRANO BRINGS THE HEAT! Evan was mortified, but I think deep down he kinda liked it. You know how kids are at that age.”
Rachel nodded. “I do,” she said softly.
“You always hear about kids getting hurt in other sports. Concussions and head injuries in football and soccer. Sure, there are all these studies about aluminum bats, how fast the ball ricochets off the barrel, but you think about it in terms of hot grounders to third. Long fly balls. Not . . .”
Serrano trailed off. Rachel put her hand on his, gently.
“He had a no-hitter going through five innings. He was untouchable. Then this twig of a kid steps to the plate. Billy Wootens. In the nine spot. Couldn’t have been a hair over four feet tall, couldn’t have weighed over seventy pounds. Kid looked like a red-haired noodle. The bat was thicker than he was. The kind of kid who closes his eyes and just prays to make contact. So Billy Wootens . . . he swings and misses at Evan’s first two pitches, and I swear, you could have driven a truck into the space between the bat and the ball. But the third pitch . . . somehow Billy Wootens got the meat of the bat dead center on the ball. Luckiest swing ever. As soon as you heard the ping of the aluminum bat, you knew he’d gotten all of it.”
Serrano turned his hand over, squeezed Rachel’s, his voice full of memory and pain.
“There were two sounds,” Serrano said. “The first was the ping as the bat hit the ball. Now, that’s all you’re supposed to hear. Just one sound. But a microsecond after that, there was another sound. A thunk. Hard and loud and solid. It happened so fast it didn’t even register, at first. But I knew something was wrong when Billy Wootens stopped running toward first base and just collapsed to his knees and put his hands to his mouth. Then everyone else on the infield, catcher, first baseman, second baseman, shortstop, third baseman, all started running toward the pitcher’s mound. Like the fingers of a hand closing. And then the coaches ran out. And all I can see among all those people are a pair of legs, flat on the ground. Unmoving. And then it hits me. Those are Evan’s legs.
“I don’t remember getting off the bleachers. I don’t know if I pushed anyone out of the way, but all of a sudden I’m on the field. And I’m trying to get into the scrum at the pitcher’s mound. And Evan is splayed out. Flat. Arms and legs extended. Like he’s making a snow angel.”
Rachel felt tears slip from her eyes. Serrano bit his lip, took a breath, continued.
“The doctors said he never felt a thing,” Serrano said. “He was in a coma for three weeks and . . . just never woke up. You know, when you become a parent, there are a million books that teach you how to do everything for your kid. How to feed them. How to wash them and change them. How to raise them. How to keep them safe when they’re too small to fend for themselves. But there’s nothing that teaches you what to do when you lose them.”
“I’m so sorry, John,” Rachel said. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Deirdre and I, we didn’t last after that. We used to say we had an unbreakable bond. Well, that broke it. I heard she remarried. Every now and then we have to deal with old tax issues. But the life we had . . . it’s almost like it was another life.”
He continued. “You know, I used to tease my son about the books he read. Fantasy. Magic and nonsense. As a cop, you deal in reality. Hard truths. I didn’t think there were any truths in those books. I’d tease him. A little too much, sometimes. But when Evan died, and it came time to clean out his room, I kept his bookshelf the way he did. All the well-worn paperbacks. Books he’d loved and worlds he wanted to visit over and over again. And I decided that it was time to understand more about who my son was. Why these books spoke to him. So I started to read them. I used to come home, back when we were still a family, pop open a beer, turn on the TV, and fart away the night. But when Evan was gone, I’d stay up until 4:00 a.m. reading about all those things that I used to tease him about. And finally, I started to understand. Sometimes there are truths in fiction. In fantasy. Sometimes made-up stories tell us more about who we are than reality. That was how I kept Evan alive, in my mind. When I read those books, I could hear him telling me, See, Dad, I told you.”