“My daughter, Linda, was seventeen when she died,” I began. “She was driving home from a friend’s house late on a Saturday night. It was around eleven. Marcus ran a red light at seventy miles an hour. He was impaired. He hit her driver’s side door. She died on impact.”
Marcus made a broken sound behind me. Somewhere in the gallery, his mother let out a soft cry.
“The police told me Linda never saw the collision coming. That she felt no pain. People said that as though it would ease anything. It didn’t. Nothing eased it. My daughter was gone, and this boy was responsible.”
The prosecutor nodded approvingly, believing my words reinforced his request for a fifteen-year sentence to make Marcus an example.
“But three months ago,” I continued, “something changed. Marcus’s mother delivered a letter to our home. She stood on my porch in tears, begging me to read what her son had written.”
I withdrew a worn envelope from my vest. I had unfolded and refolded it enough times to crease every edge. “This letter explained something the authorities never told me. Something I did not know until I read his words.”
