defending herself. If she was late with an assignment, it was because the teacher’s instructions had not been clear. If she got caught sneaking out in the middle of the night, it was because her friends had threatened her, cajoled her into being part of the group.
“Which is more possible,” June had asked, “that every single person in the world is conspiring to make you seem a fool, or that you are only fooling yourself?”
But this was different. June was vindicated. One by one, the girls dropped away, their charges dismissed for lack of evidence. The parents made excuses: The girls were not lying, but the public scrutiny was too much. The limelight not what they had expected. All of them refused to testify — all but one. Danielle Parson, Grace’s best friend. Richard’s original accuser.
The prosecutor, having tremendously lost face when the bulk of his case fell apart, would have sought the death penalty if possible. Instead, he threw every charge at Richard that had even the remotest possibility of sticking. Sodomy, sexual assault, statutory rape, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, providing alcohol to a minor, and, because the debate team had traveled to a neighboring state for a regional tournament, child abduction and transporting a minor for the purposes of sexual concourse. This last one was a federal charge. At the judge’s discretion, Richard could be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
“It’s come-to-Jesus time,” their lawyer had said, a phrase June had never heard in her life until that moment. “You can fight this and still go to jail, or you can take a deal, serve your time, and get on with your life.”
There were other factors. Money from a second mortgage they had taken on the house would get them through jury selection. Obviously, Richard wasn’t allowed back at work or within three hundred yards of any of the girls. The board had told June they were thinking of “transferring her valuable skills” to a school that routinely ended up in the news for campus shootings and stabbings. Then there were the signs left in their front yard, the burning bag of shit on their front porch. Nasty phone calls. Deep scratches in the paint of their cars.
“It’s like Salem,” June had muttered, and Richard agreed, making a comment that burning at the stake was preferable to being slowly drawn and quartered in front of a crowd of hysterical parents.
June decided then and there to dig in her heels. They would fight this. They would live in a homeless shelter if that’s what it took to clear Richard’s name. She would not let them win. She would not let this lying, cheating whore who had been her daughter’s best friend take another life.
She was certain then that Danielle had had something to do with Grace’s death. Had she taunted her? Had Danielle hounded Grace until Grace felt that picking up that straight razor and opening up her skin was the only way to save herself?
Leading up to the trial, June was consumed with such hatred for Danielle Parson that she could not look at a blond, slight, simpering teenager without wanting to slap her. Danielle had always been mouthy, always wanted to push the limits. Her mother let her dress like a whore. She skipped class. She wore too much mascara. She was a hateful, hateful child.
More obscure Latin: from
The twenty-one years since Richard’s conviction had given June plenty of time to reflect on what happened next. They were sitting at a table in the prosecutor’s conference room. Richard and June were on one side of the table — he because he was the accused, and June because she would have it no other way — while Danielle, Martha, and Stan Parson sat opposite. The lawyers were in between, lined up like dominoes ready to knock one another over with objections and motions to strike.
June relished the prospect of confronting the girl face-to-face. She’d prepared herself in the mirror that morning, using her best teacher gaze, the one that caused students to stop in their tracks and immediately apologize even when they weren’t quite sure why.
There was no such confrontation. Danielle would not look anyone in the eye. She kept her hands folded in her lap, shoulders drawn into a narrow V. She had that fragility some girls don’t lose even when they cross into womanhood. She was the type who would never have to take out the trash or change a tire or worry about paying her bills because one flutter of her eyelashes would bring men running to her aid.
June hadn’t seen Danielle since Grace’s funeral, when the girl had sobbed so uncontrollably that her father had to physically carry her out of the church. Recalling this scene, June experienced a revelation: Danielle was acting out of grief. Grace had been her best friend for almost a decade, and now she was gone. Danielle wasn’t hurt, at least not in the physical sense. She was mad that Grace was gone, furious at the parents who couldn’t prevent her death. There was no telling what reasons had clogged her mind. She obviously blamed Richard for Grace’s death. She was lost and confused. Children needed to know that the world was a place where things made sense. Danielle was still a child, after all. She was a scared little girl who didn’t know that before you could get out of a hole, you had to stop digging.
In that crowded conference room, a tiny bit of June’s heart had opened up. She understood fury and confusion. She understood lashing out. She also finally understood that the loss of Grace had left a gaping hole in the girl’s chest.
“Listen to me,” June had said, her voice more moderate than it had been in weeks. “It’s all right. Just tell the truth, and everything will be fine.”
Danielle had finally looked up, and June saw in her red-rimmed eyes that she was not angry. She was not vindictive. She was not cruel. She was afraid. She was trapped. The slumped shoulders were not from self-pity, but from self-loathing.
“It’s my fault Grace died.” Danielle’s words were a whisper, almost too soft to be heard. The court reporter asked her to repeat herself as the girl’s lawyers clamored to ignore the declaration.
“She saw us,” Danielle said, not to the room, or to the lawyers, but to June.
And then, with no prodding from the prosecutor, she went on to describe how Richard had seduced her. The longing glances in the rearview mirror as he drove the girls to and from school. The stolen kisses on her cheek, and sometimes her lips. The flattery. The compliments. The accidental touches — brushing his hand across her breast, pressing his leg against hers.
The first time it happened, they were at school. He had taken her into the faculty lounge, deserted after the last bell, and told her to sit down on the couch. As Danielle described the scene, June moved around the familiar lounge: the humming refrigerator, the scarred laminate tables, the uncomfortable plastic chairs, the green vinyl couch that hissed out a stream of air every time you moved.
Danielle had never been alone with Richard. Not like this. Not with the air so thick she couldn’t breathe. Not with every muscle in her body telling her to run away. June did not hear the girl’s words so much as experience them. The hand on the back of her neck. The hissing of the couch as she was shoved facedown into the vinyl. The agonizing rip as he forced himself from behind. The skin shredded by his callused hand when he reached around to touch her.
Why hadn’t she told anyone?
The lawyer asked this question, but June did not need to hear the girl’s answer.
If June Connor knew about anything, it was teenage girls. She knew how they thought, what they did to punish themselves when something bad happened, even if that bad thing was beyond their control. Danielle was afraid. Mr. Connor was her teacher. He was Grace’s father. He was friends with her dad. Danielle didn’t want to lose her best friend. She didn’t want to upset June. She just wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened, hope it would never happen again.
But she couldn’t forget about it. She turned it over again and again in her mind and started blaming herself, because wasn’t it her fault for being alone with him? Wasn’t it her fault for not pulling away when he brushed up against her? Wasn’t it her fault for letting their legs touch, for laughing at his jokes, for being quiet when he told her to be?
Slowly, in her little-girl voice, Danielle described the subsequent encounters, each time shifting the blame onto herself.
“I was late with an assignment.”
“I was going to miss my curfew.”
“He said it would be the last time.”
And on and on and on, and finally it really was the very last time because Grace had walked into Richard’s office at home. She’d come to find out if her dad wanted some popcorn. She’d found instead her dad raping her best
