“I don’t want to be someone who can’t trust people.”
“You won’t be,” I promised. “You’ll be someone who trusts people who earn it. That’s not the same as being closed. That’s just being nineteen turning into being wise. It costs something. But it’s not the same as losing your heart. Your heart’s fine. I checked. It’s the best one I know.”
He leaned his head on my shoulder, the way he did when he was little, and we sat on the porch until it got dark.
PART 5 — FINAL
The man went to prison.
Tyler’s testimony — and the forms still in his backpack, the ones he’d been a week from signing — helped put him there, alongside the other victims who finally had the courage to come forward once someone had stopped him.
That’s the part Tyler holds onto, and I’m glad he does.
Because eleven young people got hurt before my son. But Tyler is the reason the twelfth, and the thirteenth, and however many would have come after, never did. His willingness to stand up in court, humiliated and heartbroken and brave, is why that man is somewhere he can’t smile at anyone’s trusting kid ever again.
“I got conned,” Tyler said, “but I got to be the one who stopped him. That’s better than just getting conned.”
