Cheltenham’s Corey Bradley was still mourning after his mother’s murder. Baseball gave him a chance to honor her.

Corey Bradley had begun thinking about the at-bat before its first pitch, visualizing how it might play out and what it could mean for his team and for himself, imagining what this moment and this opportunity would have meant to his mother.

He was due to be Cheltenham High School’s fourth batter in the bottom of the seventh inning on May 6, in a game against Upper Moreland that had been rained out and rescheduled and that, through its first six-and-a-half frames, was still scoreless. In the back pocket of his baseball pants rested the bracelet that his mom, Elizabeth, had given him, a string of seven beads in a repeating pattern, each with a different meaning: onyx for strength, Amazonite for hope, aquamarine … Elizabeth’s birthstone.

He trotted to the bench from his position at first base. It had been less than a month since her murder.

Coming up through the Glenside Youth Athletic Club, Corey played whatever sport was appropriate for a particular time of year — soccer in the fall, basketball in the winter, and so on — until middle school, when he narrowed his interest to two: wrestling and baseball. His parents, Paul and Elizabeth, and his two older brothers, Bobby and Sean, made up a close and loving family, even after Paul and Elizabeth divorced a few years ago, even after Bobby moved to Austin and Sean to Tampa. Corey spent one week at his dad’s house, the next at his mom’s. They made it work.

Wrestling for Cheltenham this year at 172 pounds, Corey qualified for the state tournament and posted a 37-6 record, setting the school’s single-season record for victories. His father and mother showed up at every match they could, Elizabeth making time despite waking up at 4:30 each morning to run Lucky Dogz, her pet-care business in Wyndmoor. Last year, when at 56 she married one of her employees, Kenneth Shea, who was 36, Corey didn’t mind. His mother was happy. That was all that mattered to him.

» READ MORE: As a Montco woman’s husband — and accused killer — faces a judge, her sons mourn her as a devoted, loving mom

“I would tell her about friendship problems or even great things between friends,” he said, “and she was all ears. She wanted the best for us.”

Three years ago, in the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic, Cheltenham’s varsity baseball team didn’t win a game. But the Panthers have improved steadily since, going 9-11 this season. After taking a year off from baseball to focus on wrestling, Corey rejoined the baseball team as a senior, mostly to enjoy the experience. He played outfield and catcher before settling in at first base and the No. 5 spot in the lineup, where he batted nearly .400.

“There’s nothing he couldn’t do for us,” Cheltenham baseball coach Kevin Hite said. “Just his presence on the team, it’s like a beautiful cloud. I have a teenage daughter, and he’s the type of young man you’d be safe to bring your daughter around. He’s a gentleman.”

A walk, a single, a passed ball — Cheltenham had runners at second and third with no outs, and Finn Copp, the Panthers’ cleanup hitter, was up. In the on-deck circle, Corey rotated his arms in circles, grabbed a bat to get loose, and then noticed something.

Upper Moreland’s coaches were having their pitcher walk Copp intentionally. “You know why they’re doing it,” Corey said. It was the baseball-smart move to make, to set up a force play at every base, but it motivated him nonetheless. He took it as a sign of disrespect, as if they were unafraid to face him in an important situation.

He stepped into the batter’s box and looked at Hite in the third base coach’s box. Hite pointed to the sky. Corey patted his back pocket.

He suspected nothing. The 20-year age difference between his mom and Kenneth? Bobby and Sean’s suspicions over Kenneth’s tendency to answer their text messages to Elizabeth’s phone? Corey could go on only what he saw and experienced day to day, and Kenneth had never acted strangely or inappropriately around him.

When he found out that Elizabeth had obtained a protection-from-abuse order against Kenneth in March — that she had told police she and Kenneth had gotten in an argument and Kenneth had wrapped his hands around her throat and squeezed until she thought she might die — Corey was shocked.

“Every night, you’re on edge,” he said. “When I was going to her house, I always had my head over my shoulder. I can’t imagine what she was going through. She put up with it to protect us.”

On April 9, during a game against Springfield, Corey glanced at the crowd surrounding the field and made eye contact with Elizabeth. They smiled and waved at each other. That night, around 10:30, he texted her that he had decided to attend Elmhurst University, a Division III school near Chicago, where he would wrestle and major in exercise science. Sean was already planning to relocate there, and they had been trying to persuade Elizabeth to join them.

Are you coming with me? Corey asked in a text.

I’ve got my bags packed, Elizabeth wrote.

Roughly two hours later, according to police, Kenneth Shea took an Uber from a hotel in Feasterville to Elizabeth’s house, then broke in and stabbed her to death. He has been arrested and charged with her murder.

The next day, Corey was in art class when he was summoned to the school’s main office. I wonder what this is, he thought. Hope it’s nothing crazy. In a back room, Paul was waiting for him, crying.

It’s Mom, Paul told him.

“I just fell,” Corey said.

» READ MORE: Montco woman killed by her estranged husband weeks after she filed a protection-from-abuse order, police say

He was gone from school, from the team; for how long, no one knew. How does one even ask that question?

“We didn’t want to rush him back,” Hite said, “because we didn’t think he was coming back.”

A week later, the Panthers had a game at Abington, their primary rival. Players from those schools and those teams grow up together and live in nearby neighborhoods. Corey knew that some of Elizabeth’s friends, some of his friends, would be there.

“It felt like a game where I knew it was going to be tough, where everybody was going to be talking to you,” he said, “but it was a game I definitely wanted to go to. All the problems are going to go away for an hour and a half.”

He put on his uniform, climbed into his Honda Accord, and drove himself there.

“I did a double take,” Hite said. “Gave him a hug, told him we loved him. He’s a man. I tell everybody: Corey Bradley is the strongest kid I know.”

First pitch: big swing, no contact, too impatient.

The whole at-bat, I’m ready to hit.

Second pitch: in the dirt. One ball, one strike.

I’m obviously thinking about my mom.

Third pitch: fastball, outer half of the plate …

I just want to put the ball in play.

A short, crisp cut … a line-drive single to right field … Cheltenham 1, Upper Moreland 0 … a kid sprinting down the first-base line with his right fist in the air … his coaches and teammates hugging and backslapping him as he rounded the bag … a bystander filming the entire sequence on a smartphone so Corey Bradley could watch it and share it … and just one regret. Paul wasn’t there. He was still at work. He hadn’t known the game had been rescheduled.

“You had a game today?” he asked Corey.

Yes. Yes, he did.

His equipment bag slung over his shoulder, he walked down a hill last Tuesday toward Cheltenham’s baseball field, toward the final game of his high school career. A misty rain fell. Being alone with his thoughts and memories has been difficult, he said. He’d always loved going to sleep, for example, because he always understood the value of a good night’s rest in staying in top physical shape. Now each night he lies down and closes his eyes and thinks about things he shouldn’t.

“But I’m taking it better than a lot of people would,” he said. “That’s what my mom would want. She wouldn’t want us to go off the rails and lose our sense of direction.”

It was senior day. There was a folding table behind the batting cage and an announcer on a scratchy microphone, and a couple of hundred spectators, students and parents and people who had coached Corey when he wasn’t yet a teenager, gathered around the field and murmured and clapped, and when his name was called, someone handed his father a bouquet of flowers yellow and white, and the two of them stood near the pitcher’s mound. His mother was there, the announcer said, in love and spirit, and Corey Bradley somehow smiled.

“She was such a strong person,” Elizabeth Shea’s youngest son said.

She wasn’t the only one.