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

His father was gone one winter day and Adam caught the chicken pox. Spots popped out on his body. His Mama dotted him with pink lotion. "Don't scratch. Don't," so he scratched when she wasn't looking. His stomach and feet and toes and arms all had splotches. His face in the mirror had them too, and his ears. He laughed in the mirror. He thought his daddy would come home when the red spots were gone, but it was a long time.

When his father came back home, time had gone away. Adam was twelve and had a chicken pox scar still visible on his arm. His mother made a yellow cake with chocolate icing. His father bought him a bicycle. Now he could ride like the other boys on the sidewalk. But he wobbled and fell and kept falling until he could hold the handlebars straight and pedal very fast. Then his daddy said he had to leave again. Adam knew it was over, but didn't know why. He straddled his bike rubbing the long curved handlebars, and tried to think of ways that he could be good enough to make his father stay.

A few days later, before light, his daddy said goodbye again. Adam got up in his pajama bottoms and followed him to the door. "Don't get up," his father told him. "Go back to bed." But Adam followed him to the door. The house was still full of night. When his father opened the door, a cool air hit Adam's chest. He curled forward with the chill. "Go back to bed," his father said. The air was wrong and his father's voice sounded off-pitch, and throaty. Wrong. Then the door closed with a soft sound, and the black air inside the house smelled like pennies.

As Adam climbed into bed, the door kept closing and closing before his eyes, and the dark air seemed like a door itself, until he was asleep. He dreamed, remembering the shape of his father's back and head—walking away. Leaving always felt cold.

He woke to hear his mother crying.

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.