Driving home, these ten years later, nearly six of them with you lying in the ground and it hit me. I killed you.
I killed you, and I’m not sorry at all for it.
Sure, we could blame your heart. We could blame your mother for giving you bad genetics that inclined you towards heart disease. We could blame the prison, their health care (or lack thereof), or even a slow response from those responsible for trying to restart your heart.
In the end though, you and I, we both know the truth. I killed you.
Me.
I killed you…in that meeting room at the District Attorney’s office three years before.
Nina had talked to the district attorney. Cornering him there in the country club where she worked, and where he had a membership, she had asked for his help. She elicited his promise to supervise the case personally, even though he was moving on to bigger and better things by then.
We had been called to a meeting, Nina and I, to discuss the possibility of offering you a plea deal.
The team of prosecutors sat there and explained to us that nothing was certain – that you might walk, with no jail time, nothing, despite your admission of guilt and the case against you. They told us that our best chance was to ask for 120 days.
One hundred and twenty days.
And then you would be free.
Free to walk on the street, free to laugh and love and live. Your crime “paid for.”
Never mind that it had gone on for nearly three years with my only child, and over a year with Nina’s daughter.
Four months of your life…after causing hurt that would take years, if not a lifetime, to overcome.
I shook my head. “No,” I said quietly, “do not offer him this deal.”
Nina looked panicked. “Christine, you heard what they said, the judge could let him go. Let him walk free and serve NO time for this. Is that what you want?”
I looked back at her and the prick of tears hit then, the hate and the hurt and the feelings of guilt. For not having seen, for not having known, but failing my child nonetheless. I was such an epic failure. Would I be a failure yet again if I didn’t agree to this?
“No.” I turned to the district attorney and said, “Please, do not offer him a deal. I’ll get down on my knees and beg you if I have to. But please, no deal.”
Nina began to cry too. “Christine, think about it.”
“I am thinking about it. I’m thinking it is like making a deal with the devil. He shouldn’t get a deal, he doesn’t deserve a deal. If the judge wants to let him go, then on his head be it. I just want him in prison, and if he would have the good sense to drop dead that would work for me just as well. But no deal, Nina. No.”
By the end of it, she went along with my request.
And so did they.
They didn’t offer you a deal.
And the judge, his hands now freed to dispense justice, didn’t just give you the 120 days. He gave you that extra little bit – that “call back” – the ability for your jailors to recommend a longer holding period if you proved to be at risk for re-offending. And that would be your death sentence. It kept you in there long enough, along with our two visits to the parole hearings, to ensure you would die there, in the place that you belonged.
I cannot say I regret my actions. Instead, realizing it made me smile. You were, and are, exactly where you belong. In the ground. Where you can never hurt another living soul. I have found the world is a slightly brighter place because of it.
I gave you my love and trust – and you betrayed it. Worse, you hurt the most important person I had in my life. And if there is a hell, then you are in it.
I killed you.
And I’m not the least bit sorry.