Forgive and Forget

“What do you mean you don’t care? Don’t you want justice for your daughter?” The fury in the Assistant State Attorney’s voice vibrated in my ear. I sighed. I was so tired of rehashing the whole thing once again. How do you explain to a hot-shot young public prosecutor that nothing he does can bring her back? Then again, he’s just doing his job. At least someone is trying to do something. I’d agitated in 2003 when the men who’d shot her were arrested but were told by a lady public prosecutor that they didn’t want to bring the case to trial too soon. They wanted their “ducks in a row.” Because the public defender was a wily man and could get the whole thing thrown out on a technicality. Knowing nothing about the law or how it works, I capitulated. The fight went out of me. What good was it anyway? But here I was. Fifteen years later. And I so wanted to avoid reliving the events that led to that night or the days afterward.

The Assistant State Attorney was persistent. The state would fly me to Florida; I was in Maryland then, fetch me at the airport and take me to a hotel — all so the following day I could go to court and see the young man who had driven the getaway car. I backpedaled, as always. The concept of non-confrontation was written for me. I’m a poster girl for peace at all costs. Florida still has the death sentence, but it was taken off the table, and he got life in jail without parole. I promised to attend the court proceedings when the young man who had fired and killed my daughter came to trial. I’ve heard nothing in the five years since that phone call in 2018 inviting me to the trial of the driver of the getaway car.

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