Chapter 12: What Follows
The arraignment was on a Monday.
I did not attend.
Margaret advised against it, and I agreed — not out of fear, but because I had learned, in the weeks since the hospital, to distinguish between the things I needed to witness and the things I simply needed to know had happened.
Carol called me from her car outside the courthouse.
"He pleaded not guilty," she said.
"Of course he did."
"His attorney asked for bail.
The judge set it at two hundred thousand.
Russell posted it within the hour."
I was sitting at Carol's kitchen table with coffee and the morning light coming through the window at a low angle, the way it does in late autumn.
"And Russell?" I asked.
"The bar investigation is ongoing.
His license is under review.
He's been removed from the Mercer company's board pending the outcome." A pause.
"Thomas Greer — the attorney who called you at the hospital — withdrew from the family's representation last week.
Apparently he has his own concerns about the NDA arrangements."
Even the lawyers were stepping back.
"Ellen Park," I said.
"Did Margaret's colleague find her?"
"Yes.
She's in Oregon.
She's speaking with an attorney." Carol's voice was careful.
"She's not ready to come forward yet.
But she's not saying no."
I looked at my coffee cup.
Three women.
Three settlements.
One locked drawer that Graham had left unlocked because he had been afraid and in a hurry and had never, in six years, believed that I would be the one to open it.
"Nora," Carol said.
"How are you?"
I thought about the question honestly, the way I had been trying to think about everything honestly since the night in the hospital.
My ribs were healing.
The wrist brace had come off the previous week.
I slept through most nights now, which I had not done in years.
I had started seeing a therapist — a woman in Carol's town who had a small office above a bookstore and who did not rush me and did not minimize and who had said, in our second session, something I had been turning over ever since: *The story you told yourself to survive was not a lie.
It was a strategy.
You can put it down now.*
I was putting it down.
Slowly.
Piece by piece.
"I'm getting there," I told Carol.
"That's enough," she said.
After I hung up, I sat for a while with the quiet.
Then I opened my laptop.
I had been offered something unexpected two weeks earlier — a woman from a local organization that supported survivors had asked if I would be willing to speak, eventually, when I was ready, to a small group.
Not publicly.
Not with my name attached if I didn't want it to be.
Just my voice, my story, the specific shape of how it had happened and how I had finally told the truth.
I had said I would think about it.
I thought about Diane Voss, drafting a text message for two hours before sending it.
I thought about Ellen Park in Oregon, not ready yet but not saying no.
I thought about the notebook with the small, almost-invisible handwriting.
The evidence I had kept for myself, to prove to myself, that I had not imagined it.
I opened a new document.
I started writing.
Not for a detective.
Not for an attorney.
May you like
Not for a courtroom.
For whoever might need to read it.
