Free Nine Inches by Tom Perrotta

far as Jeanie was concerned, I’d crossed some unforgivable line and was beyond redemption.
    I accepted the loss of my wife as fair punishment for what I’d done, but it was harder to accept the loss of my kids. I had some visiting rights, but they were severely restricted. Basically, I took my daughters — they were eleven and thirteen — to the movies or the mall every other Saturday, then to a restaurant, and then back to their grandmother’s. Th ey weren’t allowed to stay overnight with me. It killed me to walk past their empty rooms at night, to not fi nd them asleep and safe, and to be fairly sure I never would.
    Once in a while Jason joined us on our Saturday excursions, but usually he was too busy with his plays. He had just fi nished his junior year in high school, capping it o ff with a starring role in the spring musical, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. People kept telling me how great he was, and I kept agreeing, embarrassed to confess that I hadn’t seen the show. My son had asked me not to come and I’d respected his wishes.
    A year on my own had given me a lot of time to think, to come to terms with what had happened, and to accept my own responsibility for it. It also gave me a lot of time to stew in my anger, to indulge the conviction that I was a victim, too, every bit as much as my wife and son. I wrote Jeanie and my kids a lot of letters trying to outline my complicated position on these matters, but no one ever responded. It was like my side of the story had disappeared into some kind of void.
    Th at’s why I wanted so badly for my family to watch the championship game on cable access. I had e-mailed them all separately, telling them when it would be broadcast, and asking them to please tune in. I called them the day it aired and le ft a message reminding them to stick it out all the way to the end.
    What I wanted them to see was the top of the sixth and fi nal inning, the amazing sequence of events that took place immediately following the beanball fi asco, a ft er both Carl and Ricky DiSalvo had been ejected from the game, and Happy Chang had been hauled o ff to the police station.
    Despite the fact that she’d been knocked unconscious just a few minutes earlier, Lori was back on the mound for the Ravens. She insisted that she felt fi ne and didn’t seem confused or otherwise impaired. She started out strong, striking out Jeb Partridge and retiring Hiro Tamanaki on an easy in fi eld fl y. But then something changed. Maybe the blow to the head had a ff ected her more that she’d let on, or maybe she’d been traumatized by her father’s arrest. Whatever the reason, she fell apart. With only one out remaining in the game, she walked three straight batters to load the bases.
    I’d always admired Lori’s regal detachment, her ability to remain calm and focused no matter what was going on, but now she just looked scared. She cast a desperate glance at the fi rst-base dugout, silently pleading with her coach to take her out of the game, but Santelli ignored her. No matter how badly she was pitching, she was still his ace. And besides, the next batter was Mark Diedrich, the Wildcats’ pudgy right fi elder, one of the weakest hitters in the league.
    “Just settle down,” Santelli told her. “Strike this guy out and we can all go home.”
    Lori nodded skeptically and got herself set on the mound. Mark Diedrich greeted me with a polite nod as he stepped into the batter’s box. He was a nice kid, a former preschool classmate of my youngest daughter.
    “I wish I was home in bed,” he told me.
    Th e fi rst pitch was low. Th en came a strike, the liveliest breaking ball Lori had thrown all inning, but it was followed by two outside fastballs (Ricky’s beanball had obviously done the trick; Lori wasn’t throwing anywhere near the inside corner). Th e next pitch, low and away, should have been ball four, but inexplicably, Mark lunged for it, barely nicking it foul.
    “Oh,