Page 63 of The Chaperones

Mona, the PTA mom

It’s impossible to tell if I’ve made much progress in this downpour. I keep walking, step after step, my pace barely more than a shuffle. Everything hurts, not just my ankle and nose but my joints from the damp and the cold and too many miles. My fingertips are numb. My trail sneakers are not waterproof as advertised. Believe me, the company is going to get quite the complaint when I get back to the mainland. You will make it back to the mainland, I tell myself as I take another wobbly step. You will not give up on yourself. You will not disappoint your family.

Now that the rain has weakened to a light drizzle, I pull the fleece down from my head and wrap it around my body. It’s soaked, but I’m so cold that I’m hoping it will act like a wetsuit, warming me up. My backpack is equally drenched, and I feel a sinking dread as I open it up to check inside.

At least one of my outdoor products does its job. The inside of the backpack is dry. The relief is instantaneous, despite everything that continues to hurt in my body. The files are untouched. I hug the bag to my chest, protecting it like it will protect my children, and keep walking.

My foot slips on the slick mud, and before I know it, my cheek hits the hard earth again. I roll onto my back and stare up at the sky, the clouds too thick to see the stars anymore. My head pounds, and my nose feels like someone has punched me again.

Get up, the voice inside me demands. Think about your children.

I roll over on my side and use my spindly arms to push my torso up.

“Wyatt. Sawyer,” I grunt as I stand on my right leg, putting as little weight as I can on the left.

I lumber along, reciting my children’s names like a mantra. Sawyer. Wyatt. Memories flash before me. Sawyer’s scrunched face when the doctor held her over the curtain. My sister, bringing her to the hospital when Wyatt was born, Sawyer saying My baby, claiming him as her own. My children holding hands at the LA Zoo, Sawyer’s legs wrapped around Wyatt as they’re gliding down the slide at McDonald Park. Brady at the grill, warning the kids not to get too close since all they wanted was to be near him. When did things change? When did Sawyer start calling Wyatt a poop face, trading her protectiveness for scorn? When did Brady stop grilling every Friday night? When did our lives get so busy that we were lucky to sit down together once a week for a meal?

While everything fell apart this year, it had started to unravel long before then.

With each awkward step, I try to locate the exact moment when everything started to come undone. I can’t remember that first Friday when Sawyer wanted to go to Lily’s instead of having a movie night with us, the first time Wyatt had soccer practice that interfered with dinner so he and Brady ate later, an iPad and phone no doubt in front of them. My mind rotates through every moment where we could have been more connected, until it lands on this year’s fall carnival. I was so busy that day, making sure the stations were covered, that none of the animals escaped the petting zoo, that the prize tent was continually stocked. I didn’t see my kids except at a distance. I remember stopping beside the bounce house—the generator was fully charged, the kids’ shoes were lined so no one would trip on them—and finding them across the way. Brady, Wyatt, and Sawyer tossed beanbags. Sawyer hugged her brother when he landed one. Brady lofted him into the air. It overwhelmed me, watching them, a love that felt explosive. I feel it now, as I wince when I put too much weight on my left foot, that love nearly tearing me apart. Instead, it keeps me going. I won’t miss those moments. I won’t observe them from across the parking lot again.

At some point during the carnival, Sawyer had asked me if she could go swimming at Lily’s. Dismissively, I’d said sure, because I was busy, because I didn’t think I had any reason to say no. Did she tell me Lily’s uncle would drive them over? Did she mention he was chaperoning Lily, that her parents weren’t even at the carnival? He was nothing to me then. Not even a blip on my radar. Sawyer had squealed with delight. It must have been Travis she’d run to, to deliver the good news.

Is that when he hugged them? When he pulled my daughter close for the first time? When the camera had no idea what it was catching as it snapped a photograph of four first graders with missing teeth and painted faces, my daughter and her best friend in the background, enclosed in the arms of a predator?

It wasn’t until Sawyer was left alone with Travis in the art room and I learned exactly what kind of man Travis Stevens was that I realized why Cassie had really wanted that picture taken down. Even Cassie wouldn’t have made a stink about Lily being out of focus in the background. No, it was her brother, the way he’d pulled my daughter to him. The way his touch had promised more. Even then, she’d known what he was capable of. Even then, before anything happened, she had sacrificed my daughter to protect him.