Left for Garbage

the pool and that it was Keith, her grandfather, who, invoking the shadow of my wrath, convinced Denise not to call the authorities. Instead he volunteered to help her hide my sweet little Deeley, to help Denise hide her sin, because his sins against Denise were so much greater. He owed her that, and now still more is owed.
    Whether Mr. Gutierrez believes any of this, I don’t know. What does belief matter anyway?
    Mr. Gutierrez, forced to raise his voice over the sounds of my retching and Keith’s sobs, intoned that he felt it was doubtful charges would be brought against my husband or my son, despite the severity of the crime. He states that Denise does not wish to see her father and her brother rot in prison, and that she has found forgiveness for them, forgiveness, he cautions, that will only be granted if the truth is told and justice is done.
    Truth and justice? I know now there is no justice. My daughter murdered my granddaughter and there can be no justice; and as for truth, what is that? I’ll admit I have lied for my daughter. I have turned my face from her crimes, her lesser crimes, for all of her life. I have chosen to shield her from any justice or accountability. I have degraded my husband for this child of mine and I never considered any other road, except once, and it looks like my chance came too late for any of us.
    A month ago I chose to accept a free cruise, and on that faraway ocean I laid on my back and stared up at the face of the man I’ve shunned and who I thought I had left far behind me, and I saw that I loved him. I saw, too, that despite the lack of justice I have given him, he loved me still, and we came together - not again, but for the first time - as a man and a woman, skin-to-skin, our eyes meeting in horror and shame and desire, and for the first time in decades in a belief that what separated us might not be as insurmountable as what still drew us together.
    I woke up the next morning , naked and sated beside him, and saw what he had always known; I understood, at last, that what I had mistaken for weakness was strength larger than I had ever dreamed of and that strength can be cloaked in gentleness; I saw that what I thought I knew was ashes: that my fearing I was always alone and must make every choice was not true, for I had never been alone, he had been there all along, waiting with a love as vast as the ocean and a patience deeper than I could imagine. I touched him in sorrow and regret, and he took me again and washed me clean of it.
    It is so new and rare to me, this love, and I h ave had so little time with him; thirty years of shared life, yes, but no time.
    And now my daughter, my voracious daughter, reaches out from the shadows of her ce ll and says, ‘You cannot, must not, have this fragile joy. You must do as you have always done, you must put me first. ’
    It’s an old habit, putting Denise first. Now, too late, I see that the world’s scorn was justified. I have made her as she is and so I must continue to protect this damaged, dangerous child.
    Mr. Gutierrez says Keith and Seel must atone for their crimes and hers. He says they should pay for what they did to her, which is wrong because they are innocent of these ugly things. I am the one who is not innocent. But it is not me who must be sacrificed, it’s them. And, in that, my daughter proves once again that she is not merely a destroyer but one who is diabolical in her destruction.
    Denise has always seen herself as alone. No amount of admiration, of love, of sacrifice , was ever enough to fill the screaming black emptiness inside her. What should I have done - let her fall to her inner demons? No mother can do that. So, instead, I set about trying to give her what I thought would help her, what would fill her up and make her whole.
    I threw my husband and my son aside and devoted my existence to her, the one who needed me most, and when that beautiful baby came into my life is when I became like my daughter , a liar. First I lied to myself, and I did it because I wanted that baby, that magical little girl, in our lives and in our house. Too late, now, I can see that I wanted her not just for her own sweet self but to have another chance to do it and do it better.
    I knew what my daughter was , what she couldn’t do, and maybe I knew too what she could do, and now she has. Deeley’s blood isn’t only on Denise’s hands. All the coming of Deeley into our lives did was make the hole inside Denise widen