Adam put his hands over his face and leaned forward. “Oh, God, help my daughter. Please, Lord! Please help my little girl!”
The patrol car pulled up to Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital’s emergency room entrance.
Adam ran in the door. He heard voices to his right and saw Victoria, two nurses and a doctor standing by her. One nurse had her arm around Victoria. Adam dashed down the hallway. When she saw him, she collapsed against his chest.
Two others stood nearby, heads bowed—Captain Caleb Holt and another fireman. Holt’s white shirt was bloodstained.
Adam held Victoria. Beyond the hospital staff he saw Nathan and David, now joined by Shane.
No one looked Adam in the eye; no one offered words of hope.
Their body language screamed a message he couldn’t bear to receive.
“I want to see her,” Adam said.
They led him toward a room with medical equipment scattered in frantic disarray. He saw what seemed to be a mannequin from a children’s clothing store.
The sheet had a few red spots on it. Adam hoped it was someone else’s blood, someone else’s little girl. Then he saw, carelessly thrown on the floor, a sheared, bloodstained, blue polka-dot sundress—the same one she’d worn five days ago when she’d asked him to dance. A sheet partly covered the body.
Other girls must own the same dress. It doesn’t have to be Emily.
Victoria wept as she leaned over what was left of her daughter. Adam, still denying it, finally saw the little girl’s face. In that moment the weight of the world fell on him.
The doctors had to be wrong. Adam reached to feel her pulse. He waited for just one heartbeat, a single twinge of movement, a blip on that vacant screen, any hint of life. But though he pressed his fingers harder and harder on her wrist, he got nothing back.
No. No. No.
Every bone in Adam Mitchell’s body melted. He began sobbing.
His little girl was gone.
Chapter Thirteen
Adam Mitchell would wake up from this nightmare.
He had to.
Pictures of Emily and dozens of colorful bouquets surrounded a small white casket. Every seat in the church was filled with uniformed officers, friends, and family—all wishing for some way to dull the Mitchells’ grief.
Part of Adam appreciated the church folk. Part of him didn’t want to appreciate anything related to church because church was God’s thing and God had taken his daughter.
Three days had passed, and Adam Mitchell had heard countless words of comfort. So many that he was numb to them. He’d heard Romans 8:28 spoken by well-meaning people, but he was not about to accept that God was going to work his daughter’s death for good. No statement provoked more anger than that one.
Adam, Victoria, and Dylan sat in the front row of the church auditorium. He looked around to see familiar faces, including Sheriff Gentry and his wife, Alison, and Caleb Holt with his wife. Holt had been the first to reach the scene and administer first aid to Emily.
Adam stared at the coffin. Coffins are for people I didn’t know or old people ready to die. Jeff Henderson had been an exception. But Jeff had made his choice. Emily hadn’t. Nine-year-olds shouldn’t die. Period.
Victoria focused straight ahead, eyes wet. Dylan leaned forward with his elbows on his legs, hands clasped in front of his chin, head down. Adam had tried once at home to talk with him, but they were too out of practice.
The room was packed with people at various degrees of grief. Some had experienced the bottomless depth of this kind of a loss. Others could only imagine. None could ease the pain of the Mitchell family’s shattered hearts. Relatives sat behind them, but not even their presence seemed to comfort. They might as well have been strangers.
Adam’s thoughts wandered as the room darkened abruptly. Images, accompanied by soft music, appeared on the huge screen. Victoria had assembled photos of Emily as a newborn at the hospital. Of six-year-old Dylan holding her carefully, afraid she might break. And now she has.
Sweet, wonderful, unbearable images of Adam walking with her on the beach, of him holding her up in a tree, carrying her on his shoulders. Photos he had taken of Emily with Victoria, planting tomatoes in the backyard, and playing with Dylan on the swing Adam had built.
Suddenly Adam became aware of the lyrics. The daughter was asking her father to help her practice dancing. “So I will dance with Cinderella while she is here in my arms . . . I don’t want to miss even one song ’cause all too soon the clock will strike midnight and she’ll be gone.”
He heard Emily’s voice: “Oh, please, Daddy, please!” I missed the song. I missed my chance to dance with her.
Still beating himself up, Adam looked back at the screen to see Emily at birthday parties and by the Christmas tree, with new dolls and playhouses, where she’d pretend she was a mom and had babies. And now she never would. And playing soccer at the Legacy Sports park and taking ballet lessons and at a piano recital. Adam felt captivated by her smile with its otherworldly innocence.
She’d asked him, just a few months ago, what heaven was like. His response was “I don’t know. The Bible says it’s a good place; I know that.” What a lame answer. He’d never even bothered to learn. Now she knew. But he still didn’t.
What was that photo on the screen? When was it taken? Her graduation from kindergarten? Wait, of course, he’d intended to come, but there was a shoplifter at Walmart. He had to go. No. He didn’t have to go. He’d chosen a bleary-eyed teenager on crack over his own daughter.
There were more events he didn’t remember—photos of parties or dinners he’d been late for. Each of them stung like a hot poker. There was the family of four on vacations, at sporting events, on the back lawn. The slides ended with a picture of the whole family in which Emily’s smile stole the show. Then a Bible verse: “Jesus called them to him, saying, ‘Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God’” (Luke 18:16).
Nice words. But, God, why would You let this happen? Why not stop that miserable drunk? Why not let him come through that intersection ten seconds earlier or ten seconds later? How am I supposed to believe You care?
Pastor Jonathan Rogers got up behind the pulpit, eyes puffy. “I won’t pretend this is easy. The Mitchell family has been part of our church for many years. And Emily . . . was a delight. She is a delight.
“At a moment like this, silence seems to be the only expression that fits. What can we, as mere men, say to a grieving and shattered heart? We speak today because we have a living hope.
“Death is life’s greatest certainty. Of those who are born, 100 percent die. But death is not an end. It’s a transition. Death dissolves the bond between spirit and body. Ecclesiastes 12:7 says, ‘The dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.’ But I stand before you today to declare that we have a living hope and that causes us to rejoice greatly. Death is simply a doorway to another world.
“Death will come whether or not you’re prepared for it. Talking about death won’t hasten it. Denying death won’t delay it.
“Death brings us face-to-face with our Creator. There is a God, and all of us will stand before Him. Hebrews 9:27 says, ‘Man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment.’ The question we each must answer is, are we ready for death? Little Emily was ready.”
Adam agreed with the words. But he felt he should be able to stand on them. He couldn’t. The ground had caved in beneath him.
The pastor said, “The greatest memory I have of Emily is when I sat at home with her mother and father and watched her dad get on his knees with her and help her invite Jesus into her heart.”
Adam remembered that day praying with Emily, and he clung to it. Yes. He’d done something right as a father.
“You see, our hope today is founded on the fact that Jesus is no longer entombed. He lives. And because He lives, Emily lives. And because He lives, the grieving, broken heart has hope and
reason to rejoice. Little Emily loved Jesus. I don’t have the slightest doubt that she’s with Him.”
A half hour after the service, Victoria had received and given comfort from more people than she thought she knew. When she was hugged by someone she was certain she’d never seen before, she gripped Adam’s arm and said, “I have to get out of here.”
Adam searched for Dylan. A friend’s parent told him their son had left with him. Adam got Victoria out to the car, and they both sat there. Adam laid his head on the steering wheel.
“Will we get the stuff on the tables back?” he asked. “All the pictures and Emily’s notebooks and soccer trophies?”
Victoria didn’t seem to understand the question. Adam felt childish. He didn’t know why he had asked her. She needed his help. But he had nothing to offer her.
He felt like he was floating in an unreal world, disconnected. He felt everything—but knew nothing.
Adam had seen many people die, children included. But this wasn’t someone else’s daughter. It was his. Adam wasn’t watching the news. He and his family were the news.
The afternoon of Emily’s funeral lasted a month, a month in which he’d aged three years. He felt hungry, but not for food. The emptiness was one he couldn’t fill.
Did he want to go on living in a world without Emily? No. Would he ever want to? He couldn’t imagine it.
Adam Mitchell had some things he wanted to say to the Almighty.
We go to church; we put money in the offering plate. We try to live decent lives. Is this how You repay people who believe in You? She was my little girl. You had no right to take her from me!
The next day was a blur. People kept bringing food, flowers, cards.
When the last visitor left, he withdrew to Emily’s room—all little girl, with its purple feather boa on the footboard and its pink and purple patchwork bedspread. He saw the sign above her bed as if for the first time, and fresh waves of grief washed over him: My prince did come. . . . His name is Daddy.
Where was your prince when you really needed him? And where was God?
Victoria shuffled into the doorway and found Adam leaning against the bed, holding a picture of Emily. She walked in and sat down, crossing her legs like she used to as a teenager. But the lines etched in her face over the last four days made her look older than thirty-eight.
After a long, empty silence, she said, “Make sense of this for me.”
Adam didn’t know what to say.
Victoria cried. “I feel like I’m in a fog or some type of black hole, and I really want to get out.”
Adam’s vacant eyes finally showed empathy.
Victoria was distraught. “Were we wrong to let her go to that party? If I had said no, she would still be here.”
Adam shook his head. “Victoria, how could we have known?”
“Why was she the one who had to get killed? Why is that drunk still alive?”
Adam stared at Emily’s picture. Finally his thoughts found their way to his voice. “There are so many things I didn’t say. I should have been a better father.”
Victoria turned weary eyes toward him. He half expected her to reassure him, saying, “No, you were a good father.” Instead she said something else, something startling: “Adam, you’re still a father.”
He felt the stab. But he realized its truth. He had one child left. Only one.
Instead of holding the picture of his daughter who wasn’t here, why wasn’t he holding his son who was?
Adam got up and walked down the hallway to Dylan’s room. He tried to turn the doorknob, but it was locked. He knocked three times. No response.
He turned to the doorframe across the hall, reached up, and felt a small, straight key. He stuck it in Dylan’s doorknob and popped the lock open.
Dylan was on the floor, headphones on, playing a video game.
In a mirror on the wall, Adam saw the reflected face of his son. A stoic face as empty as Adam felt. He entered the room and sat down next to him.
Dylan turned, paused the game, and removed his headphones. “How did you get in here?”
“I know where the key is.”
“Were you calling me?”
“I just wanted to see how you were doing. Are you okay?”
“Is anybody okay around here?”
Adam sat quietly, trying to choose the right words. “Is there anything you want to talk about?”
“Why do you want to talk? Everybody who comes into this house just keeps saying the same things over and over.”
“They’re just trying to help, Son.”
“Well, they’re not.”
Adam felt not only his boy’s grief, but his hardness. No one teaches you how to grieve until you need to, and by then, you don’t want any lessons.
“Dylan, we’re all hurting. We need each other.”
Dylan stared at the frozen image of his video game. “You don’t need me.”
Did my son just say that?
Adam stared into nothingness.
“Can I play my game now?”
Adam felt a wave of hopelessness. Finally, not knowing what else to say, he said, “Yes.”
I’ve lost my daughter and my son.
He got up and walked out the door. Behind him, Dylan put his headphones on and went back to a world where he was in control. A world where good defeated evil, and nobody’s sister died.
Adam gazed into Emily’s room and saw Victoria lying on the bed, holding Emily’s stuffed dog.
He stood alone in the hallway, leaning against the cold wall.
He felt like he should hold someone.
But he needed someone to hold him.
Chapter Fourteen
The Gangster Nation assembled on the fringes of Gillespie Park with Rollin’ Crips on their mind. One of their gangstas, Ice Man, had been put away by a Crip. TJ took it personally.
He convened the gang here to plan moves, tactics, and strategies for kicking a rival gang. Thirty homeboys showed, not his full set, but TJ couldn’t afford to take his dealers off the streets tonight. Junkies would get their stuff, and he didn’t want them getting it from his competition.
Derrick studied the fashions, which baseball caps were worn, whether they were backward or tipped to one side, and if so at what angle. He saw a variety of do-rags, an old-timer with a hairnet—dude looked like he was thirty-five, ancient for a gangbanger. Some had long hair combed straight back into a tail or braided at the neckline.
Derrick saw many tattoos, variations of Gangster Nation tracks. Some serious soldiers dressed in combat black to blend into the night. Though it was almost dark, most of them wore shades.
The girls, outnumbered two to one, wore variations on the guys’ clothes, mostly darker colors. They wore heavy makeup with excessive dark eye shadow.
Someone blasted music celebrating sex and violence and cop killin’.
TJ’s father had been part of the Gangster Nation twenty years earlier, but his son never knew him. He’d learned of his daddy’s rep from his mother. TJ’s father never married her. They sent him to Lee State Prison at age twenty-two. Released after three years, he died in a street fight six weeks later.
TJ, at twenty-eight, was a survivor, a veteran with charismatic charm, an entrepreneur with a thriving drug business that centered on crack cocaine but had expanded to everything from weed to the lucrative prescription drug market.
A Turkish rope of heavy gold hung around TJ’s neck; its crown pendant with tiny diamond studs shimmered even in the gloom, a match for his huge gold belt buckle.
Diablo stood behind him next to Antoine, TJ’s minister of defense. They wore gray work gloves for handling weapons and doin’ work—which tonight meant taking people down.
“Soldiers watchin’ for 5-0?” TJ asked. “We got to do some discipline.”
Antoine grabbed a boy younger than Derrick, maybe sixteen.
“Somebody say you snitchin’ on us, boy,” TJ said to Pete.
“No way, man,” Pete
said, voice trembling.
“Cops been talkin’ to you?”
“They talkin’, but I ain’t listenin’.”
“Well, maybe you talkin’ and maybe you ain’t. So we gonna give you a reminder of what happens if you do.”
Derrick watched in fascinated horror as they beat and kicked the boy until he was almost unconscious. It didn’t seem right if they weren’t sure he’d been snitchin’. But Derrick stepped forward and got in a few licks, just to make sure everyone knew he was part of the family. Being jumped in meant taking any treatment the gang leaders chose to dish out.
TJ greeted Derrick, flashed the gang sign, and watched Derrick’s return. He nodded his approval.
“You long way from OG. You still just a baby gangsta, a tiny. You gotta promote the set, recruit for it, buy and sell for it, be willin’ to die for it. You down?”
“Yeah,” Derrick said, filled with pride and terror.
“You strapped, little homey?”
Derrick nodded.
“You been practicin’ with that deuce-deuce?” TJ asked.
Derrick nodded again. Truth was he’d only shot it four times when his gramma was at work. He’d fired it into some phone books in the basement before it jammed. Seeing all the weapons tonight had frightened him. But he knew he didn’t dare let on.
TJ showed him his sawed-off shotgun. “Boomstick’s easy to carry and sprays fast, so you don’t have to be too accurate. Problem is, if you has to shoot more than fifteen feet, you not gonna get a funeral out of it. But you can still do some damage, man. Maybe next time you shoot the boomstick. You wit’ me?”
“Righteous, man. I wit’ you.” Derrick’s voice cracked.
The riding party filled six cars and took off. Derrick trembled as he sat next to Antoine. Lights off, they cruised to a house where the Crips were hangin’ and slangin’, a dozen on the outside, as many inside. All celebrating the GN’s funeral.
TJ jumped out of a car. Taking quick aim, he shot out two streetlamps with his gauge. Glass fragments rained all over TJ, exhilarating him.
Shadowy forms ran in confusion in the front yard. One gangster let loose with what sounded like a cannon. Boom! Boom! Boom! Someone yelled, “Nation!”