Left for Garbage

Charlotte Hope and her ilk. But what I still don’t know is whether my daughter, the one person who I wanted to see the letter, ever even bothered to read it.
    I have never received a reply.
    People on the Internet read it, though, and they commented. They asked such important questions as to why I used middle names, and then slyly pointed out that nowhere in the letter did I deny either my own or Seel’s sexual abuse of Denise, so that meant I probably had.
    I believed then , and still do, that there are other, better, more honest and decent ways to defend my daughter of the crimes she is being tried for. I still hope that Denise did not harm my granddaughter on purpose. I no longer believe that there was a nanny named Manny involved or that there was anyone else who could have done this, however this was done.
    Margaret , of course, still speaks about this fictional scenario and maybe that’s all that’s keeping insanity at bay for her, I don’t know. But at this point my best hope is that Deeley drowned in our backyard pool maybe while Denise was on the phone or in the shower. I don’t know how exactly, and since it’s too painful to think about, I try not to, but I’m hoping it was something like that, an accident. Then she panicked and went into cover-up mode. I think she panicked and reacted in the worst and stupidest way imaginable, but then maybe I’m living a fantasy, like Margaret is with Manny, because it’s possible that Deeley simply got in Denise’s way.
    I can’t go there , though, I can’t, and it’s not because of Denise, it’s because of Deeley. If I thought that that little girl’s last sight was of her mother’s face as she killed her, I’d go insane. She loved her mommy, she loved everyone. The betrayal, the ugliness … No, I won’t and I can’t think it, despite having seen at times such a deep coldness in my daughter’s eyes that I’ve had to think it, to wonder did Deeley ever see that expression, too?

    Denise had been refusing me and Margaret’s visits for over a year. She wouldn’t call us and she wouldn’t see us, though she cashed all the commissary checks we sent her. I knew something that I wouldn’t like was going on but I didn’t know exactly what until 2011, a month before the trial started.
    Salvatore called up me and Margaret and asked us to meet with him, just him this time. I had never liked this guy and after the earlier meeting I hated him, but I understood that we had no choice but to show up. I got that even without Margaret telling me I had no choice. No matter what, I still hate my daughter being in jail and I still wake up covered in sweat at the thought of the State wanting to legally kill her. I’m a parent; I still love my child no matter what she is and no matter what she is trying to do to me.
    The meeting started off bad because the first thing that Salvatore said to us was that Denise was very upset when she heard that me and Margaret had been given , and worse had taken, a cruise paid for by A.B.C.. This statement put us immediately on the defensive, as he planned that it would, and from there it was quick and ugly, though the cruise itself hadn’t been - it had brought Margaret and I closer than we had been in years, maybe ever, which is why we were holding each other’s hands when Salvatore explained, without ever once meeting our eyes, that he would tell the jury exactly this:
    Denise was sexually abused by Seel and me, and that this abuse is what forced Denise to live in a wall-to-wall fantasy world which she then populated with pretend people, and jobs, and relationships, and trips, and you name it.
    In fact, between the constant sexual demands of her father and brother and the emotional abuse from her controlling and emotionally abusive mother, not only was Denise living in her version of the Merry Land of Oz, but in addition she could no longer cope, even a little, with the world and the real people in it. She could no longer care for her child because Margaret had made her doubt her parenting skills so badly. That, of course, in addition to having been a nervous wreck all the time, wondering which of us - me or Seel, that is - was going to rape her on any given night.
    Poor Denise had to manage all this and still carry on her inner fantasy life and all that entailed. As Salvatore said, it’s a miracle that she managed as well as she did, and he would tell the jury that, despite these overwhelming hardships. Denise still