I asked her why she looked at the grass at the barbecue.
She said, “Because I knew whose sentence that was.”
I have not forgiven her. Daniel has, more or less, because she is his mother and he was raised by her and he is doing the arithmetic on what it would cost him to lose her too.
I understand the arithmetic. I have simply decided not to do it.
Grant Whitmore was arrested on the fourth of August.
PART 5
He took a plea in the following March, to two counts involving the other girl and one involving Ava, and got six years with the sex offender registry attached to the rest of his life. He never admitted anything out loud. His lawyer read a statement about accepting responsibility that used the word inappropriate three times and the word child zero times.
The family came apart along a line you could have drawn in advance.
Grant’s ex-wife believed Ava the same afternoon she heard. Two cousins believed her. Marlene believed her and had believed her for eleven months, which is its own category.
Daniel’s aunt sent a four-page letter about how easily a teenage girl can misremember a hallway. Grant’s oldest friend, a man who had carried our couch up a staircase, posted about false accusations and then blocked us all.
