Authors: Jacquelyn Mitchard

Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Social Issues, #Death & Dying, #General, #Emotions & Feelings

All We Know of Heaven (28 page)

BOOK: All We Know of Heaven

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either case with that being Danny. Bill had lost her, and gotten her back.

Now he had to let her go.

Sarah Flannery waited on the steps for Shane Baker to pick her up. Shane was going to drive her to the cemetery. They’d just starting dating—even though she just turned fifteen. It was a special privilege because her parents knew the Bakers so well. When she saw Danny and Maury on the porch, she glanced away and then back.

She thought of how many times Maury talked Bridget into playing just one game of Monopoly Junior with her before they went out.

On an impulse, she waved.

Danny waved back. And after a moment, so did Maureen. At the grave, Sarah tended the rosebushes she had planted this spring—an act of contrition—one for Bridget, one for Maureen. She snapped the blown blooms off above the three-leaf as her mother had taught her, then checked to see if the little scrap of silver wire was still tied around

the branch of one of the bushes. It was.

Sarah had never removed it. As she had since the day that she’d planted the roses, she wondered what it was and who had put it there.

acknowledgments
‌

This is a work of fiction. Although at least two separate and heart-wrenching cases of mistaken identity after a motor vehicle accident have really happened over the past de cade, there is no intentional similarity to the experiences of any actual family or individual.

Understanding the recovery process after brain injury is difficult even for researchers and clinicians. Although I know personally of only three cases in which individual progress after a significant brain injury was as rapid as it is for the survivor in this story, accounts similar to this one are uncommon in the literature of brain injury but by no means unknown. The way the brain responds to trauma and rehabilitation is intensely individual.

For their generous help in giving me the information that would help me even generally re-create the heroic efforts of men and women to save lives in a single hour, I must thank the physicians, social workers, chaplains, and rehabilitation specialists at the University of Wis consin–Madison Hospital and Clinics in Madison and the Riley Hospital for Children and Methodist Hospital

of Indianapolis—especially my friends and superlative physicians Dr. Bob Collins and Dr. Ann Collins. Thank you to my pals Holly, Maureen, Jane, Karen, Pamela, Sara, Joyce, and Mary, and to my husband and children, espe cially Martin and Dan, for their valuable suggestions. Lastly, but very importantly, I thank “my” cheerleaders, the cheerleaders of Oregon High School, who give their absolute best, always, as the status of their difficult sport changes over the generations. They and their supervisor shared openly with me their triumphs and sadnesses, making Maureen and Bridget real. As always, I am in debted to the staff and friends of the Ragdale Foundation in Lake Forest, Illinois, where this book was written in November 2006 and January 2007.

About the Author
‌

Jacquelyn Mitchard
is the
New York Times
bestselling author of
THE BREAKDOWN LANE, TWELVE TIMES BLESSED
, and
THE DEEP END OF

THE OCEAN
, which was the very first book picked by Oprah for her book club.
NOW YOU SEE HER
was Jackie’s debut young adult novel, and she also has several children’s books to her credit:
BABY BAT’S LULLABY; STARRING PRIMA!; READY, SET, SCHOOL
!; and
ROSALIE, MY

ROSALIE
. Jackie lives outside Madison, Wisconsin, with her husband and eight children. You can visit her online at www.jacquelynmitchard.com.

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www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

Credits
‌

Typography by Jennifer Heuer

ALL WE KNOW OF HEAVEN. Text copyright © 2008 by Jacquelyn Mitchard. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader April 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-185864-2

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