Courageous (12 page)

Derrick wore a yellow- and white-striped golf shirt, untucked, with baggy jeans and new Nike Air Force 1s. He had a Band-Aid on his face and an obvious bruise on his jaw.

“Whassup?”

“What happened to your face?”

“Nothin’. Was just playin’ around with some friends. Check out my ride.” Derrick pointed to the freshly waxed inferno-red Magnum with nineteen-inch custom chrome wheels.

“Is that your car?”

“Nah, it’s a friend’s, but I can drive it whenever. I really came to see if you want to get something to eat with me.”

“Ummm . . .” Jade searched for words. “I’d have to ask my dad. . . .”

The door opened, and Nathan stood there a moment wiping his hands on a kitchen towel. He saw Derrick, then the car, and stepped out on the porch. Jade winced.

“Jade, dinner’s almost ready.”

Nathan turned and looked Derrick straight in the eyes. He wished he were still in uniform, carrying his sidearm, so Derrick could make a permanent association between him and lethal force.

A boy coming to see his daughter. Strike one. Nevertheless, Nathan determined to be friendly and reasonable.

“Hello, how are you?” He extended his hand. Derrick gave him a weak handshake. Strike two.

“I’m good. You must be Jade’s dad?”

“I am. And you are?”

Jade nervously spoke up. “Daddy, this is my friend Derrick.”

“Nice to meet you, Derrick. You just in the neighborhood?”

“I came to see if Jade wanted to get something to eat with me. I’ll bring her back later.”

Strike three.

“Jade, why don’t you go inside?” Nathan said. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

Jade glanced helplessly at Derrick as she closed the door.

“Derrick, I appreciate your interest in my daughter. But until she’s older, we won’t allow her to date.”

“This ain’t really a date. We just tryin’ to hang out.”

“Well, it’s important to us that she be older. And for us to know who she’s with.”

“What? You got a problem with me?” Derrick felt certain he could take down this old guy easy. But it wouldn’t score points with Jade.

Her father had more to say. “We just don’t know you, that’s all. Even when she’s older, any young man who wants to spend time with her will have to explain the purpose of the relationship.”

“The
purpose
?” Derrick said the word as if he had never heard it before, which struck Nathan as strange coming from an honor student. “It ain’t like I’m gonna take advantage of a fifteen-year-old girl.”

“Oh, I agree! You’ve got that right!” Nathan took a deep breath before continuing. “Look, Derrick, if you’d like to get to know us better, you’re welcome to join us for lunch on Sunday. We’d be happy to have you.”

Derrick acted like Nathan had invited him to dive off an oceanside cliff at low tide.

“How did you get that bruise on your face?” Nathan asked.

“That’s none of your business.”

“The moment you showed interest in my daughter, everything about you became my business.”

Derrick turned toward his car. He called over his shoulder, “You should let Jade make her own decisions!”

Nathan knew how to deal with difficult people in a calm and measured way. But this time, given what was at stake, he felt different. Part of him wanted to go after this smart-mouthed punk. He could take him down without breaking a sweat. But it wouldn’t score points with Jade.

And it wouldn’t be right.

Nathan watched Derrick drive away. Only after the car had turned off his street did he walk back in the house, telling himself to be calm, figuring someone in the family would need to be.

As Nathan closed the door, he saw Kayla still peeking through the blinds.

“I do
not
like that boy,” Kayla said. “He’s very disrespectful.”

Jade sat at the far end of the couch hugging a pillow, fighting tears. “How can he be respectful when Daddy runs him off like that?”

Nathan paused, preparing himself to speak more calmly than he felt. “Jade, if he shows no respect for us, then he won’t respect you either, sweetie.”

“Baby,” Kayla pleaded, “you’ve got to trust us. That boy has a lot of growing up to do.”

While a torrent of words ricocheted off the insides of all three heads, silence prevailed.

Kayla said, “We’d better go eat while it’s still hot.”

“Come on, Jade,” Nathan said.

“I’m not hungry!”

“I’d still like you to sit with us.”

Jade, feeling like a prisoner without options, said, “I need to use the bathroom.” She went in, locked the door, and texted Derrick: IMS my dad was so rude. TTYL.

Fifteen seconds later she was at the dinner table.

After five days of steady work, and nearly finished with the shed, Adam and Javy placed the last few roof panels. As they went, they double-checked the position of each board. Few things seemed as sweet to both men as finishing a job that qualified for a big “Well done.”

Adam said to Javy, “Let me be sure I got it. Carmen’s your wife, and your children are Isabel and Marcos?”

“Yes. Carmen teaches them at home.”

Adam thought he heard a faint sound and glanced around. He couldn’t pinpoint it.

Javy said, “And you have two kids?”

Adam nodded. “Emily, whom you met, is my sweet nine-year-old. Dylan’s my stubborn fifteen-year-old.”

Javier smiled.

“I think he’s just going through a stage. No track practice today, so you can meet him in a minute when he comes home. I think Emily’s at a birthday party.”

Twenty feet away, on the workbench, Adam’s cell phone vibrated.

Adam said, “You know that thread factory on Clark?”

“Yes, I’ve seen it.”

“I know the guys who run it. I could talk to them about a job.”

Javier froze. “You mean a full-time job?”

“Why not? I’d recommend you.”

Javier smiled. “I would be very grateful.”

Both men heard a siren and turned toward the street. A sheriff’s patrol car stopped in front of Adam’s driveway. Shane Fuller jumped out, panic on his face. “Adam, I need you to come with me right now.”

“What’s wrong?”

Shane struggled for breath. “Emily.”

“What?”

“She’s been in a wreck.”

Javier watched as Adam ran to the car with Shane and jumped in the passenger side. The car sped away, lights flashing, siren blaring. Javy could think of just one thing to pray.
“Dios, vaya con ellos.”

As the cruiser rounded the corner onto Westover Boulevard, Adam caught enough breath to speak. “Talk to me, Shane!”

“The Martins picked Emily up after school.”

“Yeah, the party. What happened?”

“Their SUV was hit by a drunk driver at a four-way stop. On Emily’s side.”

Adam stared vacantly at Shane and removed his sweaty cap.

“Nathan went to get Victoria. It doesn’t look good, Adam.”

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?