My Neighbor Thought I Was Away and Dumped Broken Glass Into My Pool

Chapter 20

The plea hearing was on a Thursday. I wore the only suit I owned.

Ellen sat at the defense table in a gray cardigan. She looked smaller than I remembered. Her lawyer stood beside her, and behind them sat a row of people I didn't recognize — her family, maybe. Her nephew James wasn't there. He had his own problems.

The prosecutor stood and read the charges. Each one landed in the quiet courtroom like a stone dropped in water.

"Conspiracy to commit fraud." Pause. "Evidence tampering." Pause. "Vandalism." Pause. "Trespassing." Pause. "Reckless endangerment."

Ellen said "guilty" to each one. Her voice was thin but steady. She didn't look at me. She looked at the judge, and her hands stayed folded on the table.

Then her lawyer spoke about cooperation. The second set of records. The map. The school site. The twenty-two years of logs. The lawyer said Ellen had provided information no one else could have provided, and that children who would have attended that school owed their safety to her decision to come forward.

The prosecutor confirmed it. He asked the court to consider her cooperation when sentencing.

The judge asked Ellen if she wanted to say anything.

She stood up. She looked at the floor for a long moment. Then she looked at me.

I hadn't expected that. Nobody had told me she would speak to me directly.

"Mr. Palmer," she said, "I kept a system running that hurt your daughter. I told myself I was protecting something, and then I told myself I was afraid, and both of those were true, and neither of them was enough. I am sorry."

She sat down. The courtroom was silent.

The judge gave her six years. Reduced from what could have been fifteen, because of the cooperation. She would be eligible for parole in four.

I wrote a victim-impact statement. I stood at the podium and read it, and my voice shook on the first sentence and then steadied.

"My daughter was ten years old when she started getting sick," I said. "She thought it was the chlorine. I thought it was the food. We were wrong for six months because the people responsible made sure we would be wrong."

I talked about the birthday party. The glass. The hospital. The blood work. I talked about the emails where two adults discussed my daughter's illness as a scheduling problem.

"Six years," I said. "That's what the law allows for what she gave back. I understand the law. I don't have to like it."

I sat down. Ava wasn't there — she was at school, and I was glad. She'd asked to come, and I'd said no, and for once she hadn't argued.

Two weeks later, Rhodes was sentenced. He hadn't cooperated. He'd fought everything, and the executives' testimony buried him. The judge gave him twenty-two years. Conspiracy, fraud, environmental crimes, endangerment of a minor — the list took the prosecutor ten minutes to read.

The courtroom was packed. Rhodes sat at the defense table in a suit that probably cost more than my car, and he didn't look at anyone.

The CFO testified for forty minutes. He described the payment system in detail — the shell company, the monthly transfers, the way Rhodes personally approved every amount over five thousand dollars. When it was over, the judge spoke directly to Rhodes.

"Mr. Rhodes," she said, "you treated children as a cost of doing business. This court will treat you as the cost of that decision."

Twenty-two years. He would be seventy-one when he got out, if he lived that long.

I watched it on the news that night with Ortiz on speakerphone.

"Twenty-two," she said. "He'll die in there."

"Good," I said, and I meant it, and it didn't fix anything.

A reporter outside the courthouse asked one of the Summit Ridge executives if he had anything to say to the families. The man looked into the camera and said, "I'm sorry." Just that. Two words. It was the most honest thing anyone from that company had said in twenty-four years.

That night I sat on the back steps again. The pool was still there, empty and cracked, waiting for the demolition crew. I thought about six years and twenty-two years and how neither number meant anything to a ten-year-old girl who just wanted to swim on her birthday.

My ex-wife called. She'd watched the sentencing on the news.

"Twenty-two years," she said.

"I know."

"Is it enough?"

"Nobody's asking me," I said. "But no. It's not enough. It was never going to be enough."

She was quiet. Then she said, "She's doing better, David. The doctor called me. The numbers are good."

"I know."

"Then that's enough for today. The rest of it — the years, the numbers — that's for them. She's ours."

I hung up and sat in the dark. She was right, and I hated that it had taken a phone call to remind me.

Ava came out and sat beside me. "Is Mrs. Voss going to jail?"

"Yes."

"For a long time?"

"Six years."

She swung her legs. "Is that enough?"

I put my arm around her. "I don't know, sweetheart. I really don't know."

She leaned against me, and we sat there until the mosquitoes found us.