Epilogue Six Months Later
EPILOGUE
SIX MONTHS LATER
We still have a long road ahead. A new evaluation with someone who believes in the spectrum of antisocial personality disorder, who won’t just put a sticker on Benjamin’s head and say he’s a psychopath or close to it.
I’m tired of labels, frankly. For him and for myself and maybe even for Ewan.
The science is new and unproven. If Benjamin ever has his own kids someday, they’ll have a whole new DSM by then. New words, new rules, new treatments.
Shortly after Curtis’s arrest, we told police about Benjamin’s involvement in giving Izzy the pills that led to her death.
Ralph King was at his side. The facts would emerge at Curtis’s trial, anyway.
Then we waited. Nothing. That doesn’t mean charges won’t be pressed or an investigation can’t be reopened later, even years later.
But for now, Izzy’s family and the justice system seem much more interested in Curtis and Christopher Weber.
I once asked Benjamin if being unpunished for a publicly acknowledged crime felt like having a genetic predisposition to a disease—like some biological time bomb was ticking away, ready to go off anytime or never at all.
“No, it’s more like waiting for a tax audit.”
I worried he was misunderstanding the severity of his situation or forgetting his promise to at least try to feel remorse, even if it was a thought exercise more than an intuitive feeling. But he set me straight.
“No one’s to blame for an inherited disease, Mom. But you are to blame for cheating on your taxes.”
I exhaled. “Right—”
“But on top of that, you also know the IRS is pretty fucked so you’ll probably get away with it.”
He was right, but I had to press the point. “You don’t think you deserve to get away with it.”
“Of course not,” he scoffed. “But do I want to go to juvie or prison? Does anyone? Not my fault the government is so hobbled it can’t prosecute everything it should. I mean, we could talk about the benefits of our current administration—”
“Let’s not.”
Benjamin has a year and a half left at his new public high school.
He’s not a fan. But with every passing month he’s seeing farther into the future, learning even more about himself.
In addition to reading lots of psychology, he still loves sports, like swimming and cross-country.
He doesn’t have lots of close friends, but he has teammates.
He’s never been a social kid, and nothing’s going to change that, except for the right partner someday, maybe. I can hope.
Robert feels an even tighter bond with Benjamin after what we all went through, and I don’t get in the way.
We aren’t dating, but we do see each other about twice a week.
When he asks me why we don’t call it dating, I shrug.
Maybe it is dating, or maybe it will be, once Benjamin is off to college or whatever he chooses to do after high school.
I didn’t get the fall job at Grove. The Sisters will never forgive me for being quoted in the exposé that ran in the Chicago Tribune about Curtis.
What with various pretrial motions to dismiss and a long discovery process, he still hasn’t gone to trial for multiple pending murder charges, but we expect it to happen in the next year.
I didn’t get another job at Summit, either.
I got a job working, instead, for a lawyer.
Ralph King, in fact. Counseling families with kids inside the juvenile detention system.
We moved from Pleasant Park back to Waukegan—not my favorite place, but it’s the hub for Lake County.
Court system, good tacos, cheaper rent. The downtown’s trying hard and those old houses on Sheridan Road are beautiful, if not quite within our reach.
When we made the move, I pulled the shoebox out from the high shelf in my closet.
I took it into the bathroom and I locked the door.
Then I looked at each item inside. One satiny pair of underwear.
Another, older pair—and no wonder I overreacted so strongly when I saw the underwear in Benjamin’s drawer, because this other memento had bothered me for so long.
And the third item, the one that gave the whole box its inescapable smell—the empty dish detergent bottle.
Just one sniff and I could remember holding it, pouring it, the aroma blending with that of the pine-scented floor cleaner.
Ewan would have done it differently, using some kind of motor oil or WD-40, something the cops or paramedics would have noticed as soon as they came and picked Martha’s broken, cold body off the slippery floor.
Ewan or me: I thought those were the only choices.
I didn’t realize that loving someone didn’t need to mean hurting someone else.
I’ve tried my new thoughts about unconditional love on some of the families I work with.
We talk about that stage when you realize you have to see what is before you can even hope for a what will be.
Some get it. Some don’t. There’s always the more extreme case of a kid who has done something so clearly beyond explanation that a parent is having a hard time forgiving or even understanding.
They want to stay in denial because it’s safer.
They don’t know how far their hearts might be able to stretch, once they know everything.
With my clients, I don’t fight the denial head-on. I try to be the one willing to see a troubled and even violent young offender. I don’t shock easily. Not even when it’s a kid who’s been accused of taking a life, such as that of a family member who was abusive or simply unloving.
I get why you may have done what you did, I’ll say, which often surprises a young client, especially when they’re used to all the grown-ups collaborating and covering up. But here’s what I’m offering you. A fresh start. The person you are today is not the person who did that.
They look at me as if I’m tricking them.
Sometimes I wish I could tell them a story, about a girl who loved her brother so much that she wanted to protect him from another bad person. Sometimes I wish I could tell them about the mistakes any person can make, doing the wrong thing for what seems like the right reason.
Then I remember what Benjamin has said, about how talking is the part of therapy he likes least. I remind myself to expand my activities with juvenile clients.
We don’t stop talking, of course, but we mix it up.
We draw and paint or go roller-skating. We visit with therapy dogs and horses.
I think of Benjamin, rescuing that girl. I think of myself, rescuing Benjamin.
I tell my clients, you just need to find the thing that sets you free.
The thing that assures you of your own value on this earth.
It’s like trying to open one door after another.
You’re going to keep trying, locked door after locked door, but one day you’ll find the one that opens.
You’ll stop revisiting the worst memories from your past, the dark and slippery moments that threaten to trip you up.
You’ll take the next step.
You’ll walk through that door.
You’ll never turn back.