I was fifteen years old in 1982, lying in one of the twin beds in my bedroom, listening to Bob Uecker call a Milwaukee Brewers game on a little black transistor radio with two dials—one for tuning and one for volume. The radio sat on the nightstand beside my bed. Next to it was a Brewers pocket schedule, folded open and consulted often enough that I could have told you who they were playing that night—and who they were playing in the series after that. This was how I followed baseball. Only...

I was sitting on the couch when the text came in. Nothing particularly interesting was happening. It was an ordinary day. Maybe even a Tuesday. Across from me was the television. On the stand beneath it was a framed photograph of Jody and me on our wedding day. It had been there long enough that I probably wasn’t consciously noticing it anymore. Some things become so much a part of a room that you stop seeing them unless something gives you a reason to look again. Jabriel had stood beside me...

The couch was orange. Not burnt orange. Not rust. Not some color that would eventually come back into fashion and be assigned “color of the year.” Orange. It was the 1970s. Apparently people did that to couches. The couch sat in the Family Room of the house on Manor Circle where my little brother, Jeffrey, and I grew up. At the end of a long hallway, the room was covered in knotty pine paneling from the shag carpet all the way to the ceiling. My dad’s recliner sat in one corner. Through one...