Chapter 14
Ava met Rosie when Rosie was nine.
No court ordered it.
No therapist described it as necessary.
Ava contacted Leah after reading public reports about the case.
She wrote:
I don’t want Rosie to feel responsible for what happened to me or responsible for making the adults tell the truth. I only want her to know she was not the first child to be disbelieved, and she is not alone.
We discussed the letter with Rosie.
“Who is Ava?” she asked.
“A girl Bethany hurt before you.”
“Did Grandma know?”
“Yes.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Would you have let me go there if you knew?”
“No.”
She looked at me for a long time.
“Do you promise?”
“Yes.”
“How do I know?”
The question no longer surprised me.
“You cannot prove a promise today. You watch what I do with the information tomorrow.”
That answer satisfied her enough to agree to a supervised meeting.
Ava was twenty-four by then.
She had become an elementary-school art teacher.
She brought no dramatic gift.
Only a sketchbook.
Rosie sat across from her inside Lena’s office.
“Did she call yours truth dots?” Rosie asked.
“Reminder dots.”
“Did they look the same?”
Ava nodded.
“Did you hide?”
“In a closet.”
“Was there a toilet?”
“No.”
Rosie considered that difference.
“Did your dad believe you?”
“Eventually.”
“Did Grandma?”
“No.”
“Did you hate her?”
“Yes.”
“Now?”
“Sometimes.”
Rosie looked at Lena.
“Can you hate someone only sometimes?”
“Yes,” Lena said. “Feelings do not have to remain consistent to be real.”
Ava opened the sketchbook.
The first page showed a bathroom.
Not ours.
A plain room with an open door.
On the next page, a closet with sunlight entering through wooden slats.
“I draw places differently now,” Ava said.
“How?”
“With exits.”
Rosie picked up a pencil.
She drew the bathroom from my parents’ house.
The toilet.
The wall.
The door.
Then she added a second door on the opposite side.
“Bathrooms don’t have two doors,” I said gently.
“This one does.”
No one corrected her.
May you like
The picture belonged to the child who survived the room.
She could give it as many exits as she wanted.
