Griffin pleaded guilty before the end of the month.
My mother went to the sentencing in her good navy dress.
She came home quiet.
“I thought I’d feel something big,” she said. “Mostly I felt tired. And then I felt light.”
I put the key in the lock.
It turned like it had been waiting.
Inside, the house smelled like sawdust and old sun.
There was a kitchen with yellow tile, a living room with a stone fireplace, and a workshop out back with a workbench my father had built himself, still bolted to the floor.
My mother walked through every room with one hand pressed flat against her mouth.
In the kitchen doorway, she stopped.
“Laney,” she said. “Come here.”
On the wooden frame, at knee height, were faint gray pencil lines.
Each one had a tiny date beside it in neat block letters.
LANEY — 6 MO.
LANEY — 9 MO.
LANEY — 12 MO.
