Chapter 9 - I Found Elaine Before I Spoke to Lenora Again
Elaine was alive.
Sixty-seven.
Living in Rhode Island.
She agreed to meet me only after my attorney explained why.
We sat in a quiet coffee shop.
For several minutes she simply looked at me.
Then she said:
“You have his eyes.”
My father’s.
I almost apologized immediately.
Elaine stopped me.
“Not yet.”
So I listened.
She told me the argument began over unpaid overtime and missing wages.
My father became insulting.
She threatened to quit and report him.
He grabbed her arm when she tried to leave.
She pulled away.
He grabbed again.
She reached for the nearest object.
The lamp.
She swung once.
He fell.
Then I entered.
“That’s what happened?”
“That’s what I’ve said for twenty-four years.”
I asked:
“Why did you take the plea?”
She smiled without humor.
“Because your father had three lawyers and I had an eighteen-year-old daughter sleeping in my cousin’s living room.”
I looked down.
“I’m sorry.”
This time she let me say it.
Then I told her what Lenora had done to Vanessa.
Elaine’s face changed completely.
“She did what?”
I explained the dragging.
The bat.
The threat.
Elaine closed her eyes.
When she opened them again, there was no satisfaction.
No sense that history had somehow balanced itself.
Only horror.
“My daughter used my suffering to justify terrifying a child?”
I nodded.
Elaine whispered:
May you like
“Then she learned the wrong lesson from everything that happened to us.”
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