Chapter 9: The Verdict
Diane did not testify.
Forsythe made the decision, and Ryan heard about it from Carver the evening before the final day.
The defense had calculated that putting Diane on the stand would do more damage than good.
That her composure, which had served her so well for so many decades, might not survive cross-examination.
Ryan told me this in the hallway outside Lily's room.
She was asleep.
It was late.
"She's not going to speak," he said.
"Does that change anything?"
"Carver says no.
She says the letters are the testimony.
Diane wrote them herself.
There's nothing Forsythe can do about her own handwriting."
The jury deliberated for a day and a half.
We waited at home.
Noah stayed with us.
He sat on the back porch most of the afternoon, drinking tea, watching the yard.
Lily went out at one point and sat beside him without being asked, and they talked about something I couldn't hear through the glass.
After a while she came back inside and said, simply, "Uncle Noah is okay."
"I know," I said.
"He was sad before," she said.
"I could tell.
But I think he's a little less sad now."
Carver called at four seventeen in the afternoon.
I was in the kitchen.
Ryan picked up.
I watched his face.
He didn't say much.
He said yes twice.
He said thank you.
He hung up.
He looked at me.
"Guilty," he said.
"On all counts."
I sat down on the kitchen floor.
I didn't plan to.
My legs simply stopped.
Ryan crouched down beside me.
He didn't say anything.
He put his arm around me and we stayed there on the kitchen floor for a moment, the refrigerator humming beside us, the afternoon light coming through the window at a low angle.
"It's done," I said.
"It's done."
Noah appeared in the doorway.
He looked at us.
He read it in Ryan's face.
He sat down on the floor too, his back against the doorframe, his knees up.
None of us spoke for a while.
Then Noah said, "I want to call my therapist."
"Go," Ryan said.
Noah nodded.
He got up.
He went to the back porch, and through the glass I could see him standing in the last of the afternoon light, his phone to his ear, one hand in his pocket.
Diane received a sentence of eleven years.
Given her age, Forsythe argued for leniency.
The judge noted the number of victims, the duration of the conduct, the deliberate use of threats to ensure silence, and the letters — thirty-one of them, written in her own hand — and declined.
She was led out of the courtroom without looking at Ryan.
He had wanted her to look at him.
He told me that afterward, in the car.
"I wanted her to look at me," he said.
"I don't know what I wanted to see.
I just wanted her to look."
"She couldn't," I said.
"I know." He kept his eyes on the road.
"That was her answer, I suppose."
We drove home in the early evening, the sky going pink and orange over the highway, Lily asleep in the backseat with her rabbit tucked under her arm.
May you like
Ryan reached across and took my hand without looking away from the road.
I held it.
