Excerpt from A Question of Mercy by Elizabeth Cox, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

When Adam woke and found his father sitting at the kitchen table, he ran to hug him. "Hey!" Calder said. "You're going to be twelve in a few days." Calder buried his face in Adam's shoulder. Clementine looked away. "And I'm taking you to buy a new bicycle. You can pick it out. Whatever you want!"

Adam's face looked lit from inside. He could not stop smiling. "We can play ball," he said. "I can throw now." Clementine understood that Adam suspected his father had left because he couldn't play ball like the other boys. "I can throw good," he said.


During those weeks at the house, Calder and Clementine lived as man and wife, and the house hummed with regular family life. Calder played ball in the yard with Adam and taught him how to ride a bike. In spite of everything, Clementine believed that Calder loved Adam, that Adam was the heartbreak of his life. But a day came when she saw his restlessness return, saw how he still wanted to deny Adam's real self. She knew he wouldn't stay. "I want you to see who he is," Clementine said. "Your son is a fine young man. He has a job at the grocery store, and he has friends. He goes to church; and people, at least some of them, are very sweet to him." "You've done a fine job with him, Clementine. A good job, but . . . "

Everything in his face said he would leave.

Four days later Calder left for the second and last time. Clementine did not believe she would welcome him back again, but for a long time she would miss him. The family was a unit of two now. Adam was hers and she would forget how the rhythm of her days had been disturbed or how she had once dreamed of a different kind of life. In a few years Clementine signed the divorce papers so that Calder could remarry, and she no longer thought about what she had wanted before Adam; she knew only that she wanted Adam to enjoy his life and to have a memory of happy times. She didn't know what patience or strength it might take to give him that memory; but she knew that everything seemed easier now, without Calder.

Adam waved to his mother on the sidewalk when he rode his bike—a royal blue Schwinn B-6 with big ballooner duck tail fenders, black wall tires, a six-hole rack, chain guard, and leather grips. He wobbled, but kept his balance. Clementine watched him ride all the way to the end of the street.

Adam

Blades of grass came up between his toes. He played a game with the other kids who called his father Coach. When the other boys hit the ball it flew in the air like a bird, then his daddy waved for Adam to pick up the bat and take a turn. His shadow had a bat too. His shadow swung its bat and the ball whizzed by him like a bee.

"Let him hit it," somebody yelled. "Let him get a hit." So the boy pitching threw the ball slow and easy and the catcher behind him said "Swing," so Adam did, but too late and missed again.

"Run anyway," someone said.

"No, he can hit it. Let him hit," Coach yelled. And with the next swing Adam tapped the ball and it bounced plop, plop a few feet in front of him, and he could see a squirrel run across the field and somebody yelled, "Run, run, Adam." Adam ran like the squirrel. He imagined he was running very fast. He didn't know why he had to run, but he knew where first base was and he ran past first base and everyone cheered. Adam smiled at the cheering and headed back to sit on the bench, but the first baseman told him to stay there and pointed to second base telling Adam, "I'll tell you when to run."

The sun was hot and Adam's father came to first base to pat him on the back and say "Good hit." The bright sun and shadows, as well as the fun of running, kept a place in Adam's memory. At the right time Adam ran to second base, but he kept on going, straight out into the back field, running while the other boys kept waving him toward third. They finally laughed, so Adam laughed too. Adam's father was not laughing as he walked Adam back to the bench. "Sit here," he said. "This'll be over in a little while." And the dark shape of his father's back got smaller and smaller as he moved further away. And it walked away more times after that day.

Excerpted from A Question of Mercy by Elizabeth Cox. Copyright © 2016 by Elizabeth Cox. Excerpted by permission of Story River Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.