Cat #4
“Excuse me? Everything that happens under my roof is my business.” Rica takes a step toward Ronan. “Are you fucking that girl in my house?”
“No,” Ronan says sternly, a frown on his face. “Nothing’s happening under your roof, Mom.”
“You call me catching you up in your room, with your shirt off, making out with your little blondie nothing? Seriously? How stupid are you?”
“I was changing shirts, Mom,” Ronan defends himself.
“Stop lying to me, Ronan!” she shouts.
“I’m not lying.” His voice is strained with the effort to keep his cool. “God, fuck. You know what, it doesn’t fucking matter. You won’t believe me anyways.” Ronan begins marching out of the kitchen.
“Don’t you dare walk away from me!” Rica yells after him.
Ronan stops, turning back around. “What do you want from me?” he says loudly, exasperation in his voice at the aggression from his mother just moments after he woke up that morning.
“I want you to stop being so god damn disrespectful,” Rica screams at him. “I don’t know what I did wrong with you. You’re absolutely fucking worthless, Ronan. All I ask is that you respect me and my house, but all you do is take shit for granted. You can’t fucking do as you’re told, and you fuck that little blonde bitch in my house.”
“I’m not doing any of that,” Ronan argues back.
“Oh no? You’re not disrespecting me right now?”
“No.”
“No? What do you call this then, Ronan?”
“God, Mom, I just woke up. I came down here for some fucking water and you immediately lay into me. I don’t fucking get it.”
“I don’t want you fucking around under my roof!” Rica yells again.
“I’m not fucking anyone in this god damn house!”
“Stop lying!” she screams even louder.
“I’m not lying!” Ronan shouts, matching her volume. He’s immediately silenced when Rica slaps his face, hard. Ronan blinks at her for a second, his jaw tight. “You know what, yeah, I’m fucking her. Right here, in this fucking house. All the damn time.”
That earns him another slap. “Knock it off, Ronan!”
“God, it doesn’t fucking matter,” Ronan mutters against gritted teeth, shaking his head.
“You’re right. Nothing you say matters. You don’t matter!” Rica shoves Ronan back before turning and moving back into the kitchen.
Mr. Cooley stops the footage. “Do you remember this incident?”
Ronan nods. “I do.”
“Did you sustain any injuries?”
“No.”
“Did you tell anyone about this incident?”
“No.”
“What did you do after this run-in with your mother?”
“I don’t really remember,” Ronan says, pinching the bridge of his nose as he shuts his eyes, trying to steady his breathing.
The attorney continues to take Ronan through the next couple of weeks, and I continue to realize, in horror, how much Ronan had to endure during our summer together without me ever realizing what was going on. It’s sickening.
Ronan does his very best to be out of the house as much as possible, expertly avoiding his mother, until the prosecutor arrives at the footage of Saturday, August 28th.
The moment Mr. Cooley selects the still, Ronan’s face contorts with terror at the date on the screen. He knows that in mere seconds, he’ll have to talk about one of the most traumatic days of his life.
Mr. Cooley once again asks for the lights to be shut off and the curtains to be drawn as he moves to his computer to select the footage for the day that would forever change my life, my friends’ lives, and Ronan’s life. He selects a video, the still image obviously of the vantage point from Ronan’s front door facing the street and sidewalk. The time is 4:38 in the morning when the attorney hits play. It’s quiet, though just a few seconds later Ronan pulls up to the sidewalk in his car, turns off the ignition, then walks quietly into the house, where, from a different camera angle, he can be seen noiselessly making his way up to his room.
The attorney pauses the video. “Ronan, where were you coming from at four thirty-eight in the morning on August 28th?”
“My girlfriend’s house,” Ronan says. “It was her birthday the day before.”
“Did you have a curfew?” Mr. Cooley asks, already knowing the answer because previous video footage made it very clear how angry Rica got over Ronan breaking curfew.
“Yeah. When my parents are home, my curfew is one a.m.”
“So, why did you get home at past four that morning?”
“Because my mother was working that night. Nobody was home, except my brother.”
“But your mother was home,” Mr. Cooley says.
Ronan’s eyebrows knit in confusion. “No, she was working that night.” He tries to sound convinced, but I can hear him wavering.
The attorney moves back to the computer, then selects footage that depicts the dark kitchen of the Soult home at the same time that Ronan’s car pulls up. And there she is. Rica’s standing in the unlit kitchen, noiseless, unmoving, as Ronan makes his way into the house and to his room. He had no idea she was lingering, stewing after her conversation with Frank, who had just broken the news to her about his intention of divorcing her. Ronan had no idea what was coming for him when he went to bed that morning.
“I didn’t know she was home,” Ronan says more to himself when Mr. Cooley pauses the video. “Fuck,” he sighs, raking his left hand through his dark-blond hair.
“What happened after you went upstairs?” the attorney asks.
Ronan takes a deep breath, then lifts his eyes to him. “I went to bed and fell asleep pretty much right away.”
Darren Cooley takes Ronan through the morning—Steve waking Ronan, their brief conversation, and Ronan’s plans for the day.
“Did you see your mother that morning at all?”
“Not until… not until I went downstairs at just before noon,” Ronan says anxiously.
“What happened when you went downstairs, Ronan?”
“I walked down the stairs. I had my phone in my hand because I was going to send a text to Cat, and then… my mother was just suddenly in my face. I almost ran into her,” Ronan says, looking down and at no one.
“Did she say anything to you?”
“She immediately started yelling at me. She shoved me. I hit my head and… I tried to get out of the house, but… she wouldn’t let me leave,” Ronan says, his voice cracking.
Once again, Mr. Cooley moves to his computer screen and selects a video, the still showing Ronan as he begins to walk down the stairs in his house. He has his phone in his left hand—just like he testified—and is looking at the screen. In the video, his dark-blond hair is still damp, and he’s wearing a pair of light-blue jeans and a basic heather-gray crewneck shirt that hugs his arms and shoulders so beautifully. He looks incredible in these basic outfits that show off his sculpted physique, and I know that had I actually seen him that day, I would have drooled over him like I do each time I lay eyes on him. My heart constricts in my chest with the knowledge that, just minutes from the time depicted on the screen, that heather-gray shirt would be stained with Ronan’s blood, those jeans would be cut off his body, and both would be shoved into an evidence bag for the police to take with them a few hours later.
Mr. Cooley hits play, and we watch in silence as Ronan descends the stairs and almost walks into his mother, who’s waiting for him at the bottom, her face already contorted in anger. There was nothing Ronan said or did to set her off. She was waiting for him, ready to ambush him, to take all her pain, her fear, her rage out on her son.
It suddenly feels like gravity is pushing down on me, anchoring me to my seat, crushing my insides and suffocating my lungs. The entire day I’ve listened to Ronan as he laid himself bare. I’ve watched a year’s worth of video footage depicting the terrible things Rica did to Ronan, but nothing, nothing could prepare me for this moment. The Rica Soult on the screen is not the Rica Soult sitting—demure and small—at the defense table. It’s not even the Rica Soult Ronan had talked about all morning. The Rica Soult on screen is soulless with a black heart made of poison as she beats and kicks the life out of her son. Her eyes are devoid of compassion and any emotion other than hate, and pain, and depravity. The violence she inflicts on Ronan, the force of her hits, the viciousness with which she slams Ronan’s hockey stick into his body, breaking his bones and tearing his skin open, is nothing I could ever have sufficient words to describe.
I know Ronan saw it, too. How different his mom was that day, because there was a moment when he fought back. He was on the ground, lying in broken glass, and he did the unthinkable. He kicked his foot into her knee, causing her to fall. And, god, I held my breath as I watched him scramble to his feet, desperate to make it out of the house. He was so close, too, only feet away from safety, his hands inches from reaching the damn handle of the sliding glass door. But his mom in all her rage managed to hook his ankle with his hockey stick, yanking his foot right out from underneath him, and he slammed back to the ground where he remained until his heart eventually stopped beating. That damn hockey stick.
Tears stream unhindered down my face as I watch the strength slowly leave Ronan. He fights valiantly for as long as he can, shielding as much of himself for as long as possible, but his mother is relentless, her repeated blows so violent, so destructive.
“You fucking piece of shit. You worthless, stupid, ruinous piece of trash,” Rica screams. “I fucking hate you. I hate you! You are nothing! Do you hear me? Nothing!”
Ronan tries to get up several times, each time pushing himself up off the ground before his mother’s violence forces him back to the floor.
“Fuck you, Ronan,” she yells at him. I clasp my hands to my mouth as she stomps on his left hand violently. I can hear it break, a groan escaping Ronan’s mouth as he falls back yet again, the glass digging into his flesh, cutting his skin open. Nobody speaks as they watch this sickening footage, which seems to go on and on. Each second that goes by I pray that Steve finally walks through the door and ends his mother’s assault on his brother. But he doesn’t yet come, and Rica continues to beat Ronan, screaming at him.
A loud sob—not my sob—echoes through the courtroom when Rica slams the hockey stick into Ronan’s right knee with a sickening sound of bone breaking, and Ronan begs his mother to stop hurting him. “Mom, please. No more.”
It’s agonizing.
“You know how I hate it when you beg, you piece of shit. If you beg me for anything, beg for me to put you out of your misery. Come on, Ronan! Beg! Beg for me to kill you!”
I’m shaking, my hands trembling, shocked at her words, her callousness, her viciousness, her violence. Even when the hockey stick fractures—the force of her hits too much for the hard wood to withstand—she doesn’t let up and resorts to kicking Ronan in the face and stomach. He’s bleeding profusely, his face resembling a prizefighter’s as Rica relentlessly takes advantage of Ronan’s inability to protect all of him at once.
I can see Ronan’s energy waning, and I think it must be over any second now. But then Ronan seems to gather every ounce of strength left in him in an attempt to get up. He moves his right, still unbroken hand to push himself off the ground. I’m in awe of the fight he has within him. His effort, however, is immediately thwarted when Rica slams her foot into his face, forcing him back to the ground yet again, fresh blood spilling from another wound inflicted on his body. Ronan seemingly surrenders to her, no longer attempting to get up. I can’t imagine he has very much strength left in his battered body at this point. He seems to be on the verge of losing consciousness, unable to shield himself as his mother forcefully kicks him in his stomach several more times, and I wish, no, pray for it to be over as I cry desperate tears.
And then I hear him, hear Steve’s voice in the background. My eyes move away from the image of Ronan’s broken body briefly as Steve and Zack appear on the screen. Steve yells at his mother to stop. The relief momentarily felt by everyone watching, however, is wiped away when Rica stomps on Ronan’s unprotected rib cage. The sound of his ribs breaking echoes through the silent courtroom.
We know what happens next, obviously. We’ve seen Zack’s footage, have heard Steve, Zack, Frank, the EMTs, and the police officers testify about what they witnessed, but it’s still startling to watch Steve push his mother away from Ronan, then frantically drop to his knees as Ronan struggles for air. The sounds of Ronan’s coughs and his desperate attempts to get air into his injured lungs are devastating. Even in this video, it takes a perceived eternity for the ambulance to arrive while Steve pumps Ronan’s heart.
It’s the first time we see Frank frantically make his way into the house. He pushes past the police officers as they try to stop him from entering the living room. Frank’s face drains of all color when he finds his oldest son—shirt stained with blood—kneeling on the floor next to his youngest son, two paramedics by Ronan’s side as they shock Ronan’s heart once, then twice.
“What happened? What the hell happened?” Frank asks over and over, but nobody stops to answer his question as they try to get control of the situation.
Darren Cooley allows the footage to run until Ronan is moved out of the house on a stretcher and Rica is led to a police car only minutes later. It remains silent in the courtroom while the lights are turned back on and the curtains are pulled aside. Natural daylight floods the courtroom. I notice the dark clouds in the sky, gray and heavy with rain, matching the somber mood.
I look at Ronan, whose head is lowered.
“Ronan, how much of what we just watched are you able to remember?” Mr. Cooley asks, his warm voice echoing around the four walls of the otherwise silent courtroom.
Ronan takes a deep breath in, holds it for a moment, then releases it. I know he’s working to ground himself.
“I remember everything until the moment I finally blacked out,” he says, his voice low, his eyes not seeking anyone else’s. He’s lost in the past right now, stuck in the moment when his mother almost ended him. “I remember what it felt like when my mom slammed my hockey stick into my face; I remember falling into the coffee table and how the glass cut into my skin; I remember how it felt when she broke my hand, my nose; I remember the pain that shot through my body when she fractured my kneecap. And I remember hearing my brother’s voice,” Ronan says, lifting his head to look at the attorney. “I remember the split second in which I thought it was finally over. And I remember her breaking my ribs. I could hear it. It felt like she ripped all the air from my lungs at once,” Ronan says, his voice small.
There’s silence as he tells his story.
“I could hear my brother telling me to breathe. He told me over and over again. And I tried. God, I fucking tried.” Ronan’s voice cracks and he breaks eye contact with the attorney, looking down again, his face contorted as he tries to keep it together. “I felt myself dying,” he says slowly, quietly. “It was like I was drowning from the inside. I could feel myself slipping away and then the pain just… stopped. And there was peace,” Ronan says with finality.
Darren Cooley stays silent for a moment, allowing Ronan’s words, the heaviness of it all, the last several, long hours of painful testimony to sink in with the jury, those in attendance—and with Rica, who to my utter surprise is wiping away her own tears. But honestly, the fact that she’s crying just makes me hate her more. How dare she exhibit this kind of emotion after everything she’s done to her son. Is this her attempt to sway the jury?
“What’s the next thing you remember after passing out on the living room floor of your house?”
“Hearing my dad’s voice,” Ronan says, his voice meek. “He just kept telling me to wake up. It felt kind of like I was underwater. I struggled to come out of it. I remember it was dark. I heard beeping, there was an IV in my right hand, my dad was by my side.”
“Did you know where you were?”
“Not right away. I was super foggy, but it eventually clicked for me that I was in the hospital.”
“Are you aware how long you had been at the hospital by the time you woke up?”
Ronan nods. “Yeah. The doctor said I had been out for almost seven days. It was around two in the morning on Friday when I woke up. I had been there since Saturday. It was so weird because there’s this week-long gap in my life. Like, I just lost all this time,” he says in a strained voice.
“How did you feel when you woke up?”
“Out of it; things were really foggy. I didn’t have any stamina at all. I couldn’t stay awake for very long and I was in a lot of pain. All the time.”
“Were you given any medication to help with the pain?”
“Yeah. A lot of it, and it definitely took the edge off, but it didn’t take it away completely. It really just made me incredibly tired. Honestly, the most pain came from my broken ribs. Coughing, deep breathing, all of that hurt. And I was so immobile in the beginning. It was frustrating,” Ronan groans.
“What injuries did you sustain as a result of your mother’s beating on August 28th?”
“My right kneecap was fractured; I broke seventeen ribs in thirty-two places; my spleen had ruptured and had to be removed; I had an orbital fracture under my left eye; my nose was broken, as was my left hand; my left shoulder was separated. My left lung was collapsed, and I had a small tear in the right; I had cuts and deep bruises all over my body,” Ronan lists. “It was pretty excruciating there for a while,” he adds quietly.
“How long did you remain in the hospital after you woke up?”
“I was in the ICU for two more days and then was moved to a step-down unit for pain management and respiratory therapy. I stayed there until September 17th when I was transferred to a rehab hospital.”
“How long did you stay at the rehab hospital?”
“Three more weeks. I didn’t get released home until October 8th.”
“How were you doing physically when you got home?”
“A lot better than I was when I got to the hospital originally,” Ronan says sarcastically, and there’s a small chuckle from the jury. A smile tugs at my lips at the fact that even in this emotionally triggering environment, Ronan’s personality manages to shine through. “I was mostly able to get around with crutches. My knee really was the biggest handicap by then. My ribs were still sore but getting a lot better. My stamina was really bad, though. I got really tired, really fast. I needed to rest all the damn time. I wasn’t used to that at all.”
“And how were you doing emotionally?”
Ronan presses his lips together; I can tell he really does not wish to go into this subject, though he obviously has no choice. “Terribly,” he says, almost choking on the word. “I started having nightmares and panic attacks when I got to the rehab hospital.”
“What did you dream when you had nightmares?”
“I would always dream about my mom beating me. I was always back in the living room, on the floor, with my mom hurting me.”
“How often did you have those nightmares?”
“Multiple times, every single night,” Ronan says. “The nightmares got so bad and so frequent, especially when I got home, that I couldn’t sleep, which added to my exhaustion, my brain fog. There was a lot of anxiety—it was constant. I was restless, yet tired. A lot of pain still. I lost a bunch of weight. I stopped seeing my friends, spent less time with my girlfriend, and…”
“Ronan?”
“I started thinking it would be better if I wasn’t around anymore. I really just wanted to sleep without nightmares. I wanted to sleep and not wake up. It’s… god…” He sighs before continuing. “I didn’t want to burden anyone. It’s…. Sorry, this is really hard for me to talk about.”
The attorney nods. “I bet it is,” he says warmly. “Did you make any attempt to end your life?”
“No,” Ronan says, shaking his head. “My dad sent me to live with my grandparents in Montana and that… it helped. A lot. It’s peaceful there.”
“Do you still struggle with thoughts of suicide?”
“No. But I’m still trying to unlearn a lot of the stuff my mom told me. It’s constant work to convince myself that I’m enough, that I’m worthy of good things and love and that, maybe, I didn’t deserve the things she did to me.”
“Do you believe you deserved any of the things that were done to you?” Mr. Cooley asks with an empathetic voice.
“I want to say no, but… yeah. I mean, it’s all I’ve ever been told,” Ronan says with a small shrug. “That I’m a worthless piece of shit who can’t do anything right. It’s been beaten into me my entire life. I can’t just flip a switch and turn that voice off.”
“Are you seeing a therapist to help you with these thoughts and beliefs?”
“Yep. I see her twice a week.”
“Does it help?”
“I don’t know,” Ronan says with a small shrug and a shake of his head.
“You said you had panic attacks. What happens to you when you have one?”
“My heart races in my chest, my breathing picks up until I hyperventilate, I have cold sweats, but feel hot at the same damn time, and sometimes I get sick to my stomach.”
“What do you do when you have a panic attack like that?”
“I try to ground myself. I’m not great at it, honestly, because I’m still not great at recognizing when an attack is coming on, so most of the time it’s too late to do anything about them.”
“When was the last time you had a panic attack, Ronan?”
Ronan glances at his watch. “Umm, roughly ten hours ago.”
“Was it a bad one?”
“Pretty bad,” he agrees with a nod.
“What did you do to ground yourself this morning?”
“I called my girlfriend,” Ronan says, his voice softening.
“Did it help?”
“Instantly. She’s like medicine.” I note several members of the jury smiling. That deep love for him in my chest buries itself deeper into my bones.
“Ronan, are you on any medication for any of your mental health struggles?”
“Not right now. I was in the beginning, but I didn’t like the way they made me feel, so I weaned myself off them. My therapist wasn’t happy with me, but it is what it is.” Ronan shrugs with a rueful chuckle.
“One final question: if you had the chance to say anything to your mother, what would you tell her?”
A hushed silence mutes the courtroom, thickening the air as we await Ronan’s answer.