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SIXTY-EIGHT

I SIT ON THE couch in our family room, a child’s head on each of my shoulders, Grace and Lincoln still sniffling and moaning as I stroke their hair. When I broke the news, when I told them that “Daddy got hurt and the doctors are trying to fix him,” they cried, then calmed, then cried again. The combination of abject fear and hope has produced more shock than pure sadness. Their lives have been turned upside down in the span of those eleven words, and they don’t know how to process it.

I don’t know, either, but I have to be the rock. I have to hold it together — the phrase that has become my mantra, that I have reminded myself of over and over — Hold it together .

Give us good news, I silently pray. We haven’t been religious as a family, but I do believe, and I am praying to the God I have neglected all these years to show my family mercy, to bring my children’s father back to them.

And to bring my husband back to me? I can’t decide that right now. I have to prioritize, and what all this means for David and me going forward does not even come close to the top of the list. I’m trying to juggle so many other things, trying to stay ahead of what’s coming, to make sure the kids get through this alive and with at least one parent.

Is he gonna die? Do you think he’ll live? Why did this happen?

Each of those questions — and derivations thereof — they have asked me repeatedly, hoping for different and better answers each time. Your daddy’s strong; I think he’ll be okay was the best I could do, unable to channel David’s unbridled optimism, afraid to overpromise. In the next few hours — I’m being told the surgery will be completed no earlier than an hour from now — we may be getting very bad news, and I want the children to be as prepared for it as children could possibly be.

I check my phone. It’s now past seven in the morning. I want to give the kids as much time in the comfort of their home as possible before we leave. “We should probably get you guys dressed,” I say to them, Grace still in her Notorious RBG long sleep shirt, Lincoln wearing a Cubs uniform for pajamas, his matted hair sticking in ten different directions.

The text messages and calls are pouring in now. News travels fast in Hemingway Grove. After the first dozen or so, I wrote a message and copied it so I could answer everyone with the same note: Thanks for your thoughts. It means a lot to us. We are staying hopeful and will speak to you soon.

I leave the couch and walk over to the window. Two TV vans have pulled up, a reporter fixing her earpiece as a cameraman sets up, though the patrol officer stationed outside my house has ordered them to maintain a distance. I assume there will be more reporters at the hospital. It’s not every day that someone gets shot in HG. To say nothing of the fact that the victim is the Cotton River Hero, who only recently was featured in a video that went viral online. I can only imagine the headlines, the ledes on the broadcasts: A man who only months ago was celebrated for a daring river rescue now finds himself clinging to life in a downstate Illinois hospital following an apparent robbery …

An “apparent robbery” is how our newspaper, the Downstate Sentinel, has chosen to characterize it after a brief statement was issued by Hemingway Grove police. So it seems like Kyle has not yet decided to go public with his suspicions about David.

But it’s only a matter of time. Secrets don’t stay secrets in HG.

I’m taking the kids upstairs to get dressed when my phone buzzes. It’s Camille, whose number I put into the phone.

“How are the kids?” she asks when I answer.

I don’t respond. That’s none of her business.

“Let me help you,” she says. “Let me help you make sure they’re safe.”