Over one long stretch of days last summer, the two of them had worked on that screwball. Nate could still see his dad, standing by the barn in his old blue overalls, as he bent to demonstrate the grip. “You start out like you’re throwing a fastball,” he had told Nate. “Only when you release the ball, you snap your wrist in. That’s what makes the ball break. Pitch to a righty, he gets it down and in. The beauty’s when you’ve got yourself a left-handed batter.”

All summer—right up to the hailstorm—they’d worked on that screwball. Nate never really got it, but his dad said to keep at it. “It’ll come,” he said. “One day you’ll snap your wrist just right and there it’ll be. Your secret weapon. One day, mark my words, you’ll be out on the mound, in a tough situation, and it’ll be your screwgey that saves your hide. Goofiest pitch there ever was.”

This was the dad he was so proud of, the dad who could recite the first 136 digits of the number pi and do the Mexican hat dance in the barn, who could build anything, rattle off any batting average, answer any science question, not to mention throw a perfect screwball. This was the same dad who had shuffled across the yard this afternoon, weeping, with blood pouring down his face.

Sometime later—after Aunt Sal had served them macaroni and cheese on tray tables, to eat in silence—Nate heard Poppa’s truck pull onto the gravel drive. He could hear voices in the kitchen that told him Poppa had brought Nate’s mother back from wherever it was they’d taken her in the police cruiser. If he listened closely, he could even pick up fragments of their conversation—“hospital,” “police station,” “gun.” But when he walked into the kitchen, the room went quiet.

“Hey there, son,” Poppa said as Nate set down his dinner dishes. In the fourteen years of knowing his grandfather, Nate doubted he had ever heard Poppa put more than a dozen words together at a time.

“Your grandfather, Aunt Sal, and I are talking, Nathan,” his mom said. “Go do your homework, please.” Her face, always thin, seemed in the space of a few hours to have shattered. Deep lines creased her forehead. Her shoulders seemed barely able to hold up her dress, and her red hair hung lank over her face.

Nate closed his eyes and drew in his breath, as if he were at bat with a full count in the ninth inning and the game was tied. Summoning his power.

“I need to know what’s going on,” he said. “Where’d Dad go? Is he okay?”

Silence. Then, at last, “Your mother’s been through a lot today.” As Poppa spoke Nate’s mother disappeared through the door.