Patricia’s supervision requirement was fully lifted in January, after Susan Bell confirmed six consecutive months without a single concerning comment reaching Lily. Patricia asked, through Daniel, whether she could take Lily to see a children’s theater production of a story about a girl who builds a rocket. I said yes. It was not an act of forgiveness so much as an act of trust in the systems that had, slowly and imperfectly, done what they were designed to do — protect a child while giving the adults around her room to actually change.
I do not know if Patricia and I will ever be close. I suspect we won’t. But the last time I saw her, at a school event in the spring, she approached me in the hallway, and instead of the sharp, dismissive tone she’d used in the courtroom, she said, simply, “You look well.” I told her I was. She nodded once, and that was the entire conversation, and somehow it felt like more progress than a hundred long apologies would have.
