I’m not telling you that to act like I’m better than her. I sat with it a long time. Because I almost talked myself out of that subpoena too. I almost let three months turn into a growth spurt.

The only thing that saved my Eli was forty minutes of me keeping my mouth shut in a parked car. The only difference between me and Carol is mine talked first.

The case is with the county now, not the church. The Patterson boy is finally being looked at by people who don’t care how many generations sat in those pews. Eli still locks the bathroom door. He’s eating again, slow. We don’t go to that church anymore.

I saw Carol once, in the grocery store, a few weeks back. She saw me too. She had her cart half-turned down the cereal aisle and she just stopped. I thought she’d say sorry. I think I wanted her to. She didn’t say anything for the longest time.

Then real quiet she said, “I have to live with mine too.”

And she turned her cart around and walked the other way.