I let Peppy back out of the car to chase squirrels around the campus again while I sat on the Bond chapel steps, knees up to my chin, sore back resting against the red doors. A few snowflakes were drifting out of the leaden sky; the students had abandoned the quads. I pulled the collar of my navy peacoat up around my ears, but cold seeped in through the gash in the shoulder.

What warning signs should I have noticed in April before Monday? Was anyone else on my team at risk? I didn’t even know if the school performed physicals on its athletes before letting them compete, although a program too poor to pay for a coach and balls probably didn’t have a budget for group EKGs and X-rays.

If Sandra decided to sue me—I’d cross that bridge, but I should get a few things on paper now, while they were fresh in my mind—April fainting last summer, Sandra’s own history. “Girls faint all the time,” she’d said; she had herself, although I never remembered her doing so. Maybe she’d swooned in Boom-Boom’s arms…Surely he hadn’t slept with her. The idea of it infuriated me. But what was I doing, turning him into a saint? All these years I’d assumed he took her to the dance just to punish me, but that was because I hadn’t ever wanted to think of him having a life apart from mine. Sandra slept around, we all knew that, so why not with Boom-Boom? And he was a sports hero, not exactly leading a celibate life.

Peppy came up to nuzzle me, worried by my stupor. I stood up and tossed a stick for her as best I could. She was satisfied; she took the stick over to the grass to chew.

I realized I felt as battered by Bron and Sandra’s furies as by my physical ills. Had there ever been a time when they twined their arms around each other, looked soulfully into each other’s eyes? Sandra had been thirty when April was born, so a high school pregnancy hadn’t forced them to the altar. Something else had, but I didn’t have friends in the neighborhood who could tell me. Did he sleep around because she looked down on him? Did she despise him because he slept around? What was the chicken and what the egg behind such intense hostility?

I got slowly to my feet and called to Peppy. She came running up, pink tongue hanging, grinning with pleasure. I ran my fingers through her silky gold hair, trying to absorb some of her pure joy in the world before putting my weary body into motion again.