Page 71 of The Chaperones

Chapter Twelve

Saturday morning, 1:39 a.m., twenty-one minutes earlier

Mona, the PTA mom

My walk has slowed to a snail’s pace, but I keep pressing forward, thinking about the evidence in my bag. About Sawyer.

Every Tuesday for three months, I waited in the reception area while Sawyer talked to Dr. Chen. As kind and gentle as Dr. Chen was, as young and well dressed, too, Sawyer found nothing enjoyable in her time there, in the questions Dr. Chen asked, in the fact that I made her go, week after week until Dr. Chen finally recommended we take a break. In her professional opinion, Dr. Chen didn’t think Sawyer was hiding any trauma. She wasn’t a victim of something she didn’t understand, of anything beyond an adult with boundary issues. And Travis did have boundary issues, Dr. Chen confirmed. It was good he wasn’t around anymore, but even without meeting him or diagnosing him, she was confident he hadn’t molested my daughter.

I could have let it go at that. Sawyer had moved on. Travis wasn’t allowed on campus anymore. When Raymond Zhao came for a cooking lesson, the school made good on their promise and did background checks, going so far as to not allow one of his assistants to attend because of a long-ago DUI. I should have been satisfied that the school had enacted a new policy, that my daughter was her typical bubbly and resentful self. Only, that image of Travis, pulling Sawyer so close that her face dug into his stomach, the way his crotch must have pressed against her too—it haunted me. I grew ever more certain that even if he hadn’t done something to my daughter, he’d intended to. That it hadn’t gone any further because I was the kind of mother who intervened.

So I did what any concerned mother of means would do. I hired a PI to investigate Travis’s past. It took him a month to come back to me with a file—the file, in my backpack. Although there was nothing on Travis’s permanent record, the PI had collected testimony from past girlfriends about stalking, threats, inappropriate sexual conduct. If only they had brought charges against him, filed restraining orders, submitted to rape kits. But I understood why they hadn’t. I understood because the one charge that had been brought against Travis had been dropped. That’s how the system works with people like Travis and Cassie.

Still, the records of the dropped charges were there, buried under years of silence in the face of his menacing behavior. It was a charge of sexual assault. Of a minor. I was right.

I had planned to tell everyone, to let the school know exactly who Cassie Bent had invited to work with our children. I had the whole telephone chain mapped out. I’d casually tell Yoo-Jin, You’ll never believe what someone told me about Cassie’s brother. What’s his name? Travis? Then, I’d conveniently and uncharacteristically be a few minutes late to our next PO meeting, where Yoo-Jin would say, Oh my god, I have to tell you what Mona heard, and from there, it would spread like wildfire. I’d like to see Cassie regain control of that narrative.

Then I found the discrepancies in the PO ledger, and my focus shifted to our own damage control. I never stopped agonizing over those moments that Travis was alone with Soy, but her therapist had insisted she had no psychological damage. I chose to believe the happy version of Sawyer that I saw each day, because what choice did I have? Her father going to prison, her family being ripped apart—that would definitely cause her trauma. So I hid the file in my closet and decided to let Travis Stevens go. Karma would catch up with him. It didn’t have to be me who exposed him.

I still don’t know if Jill told Cassie what had happened in the classroom. Obviously, she knew I had complained about her brother. I’d like to think that Jill took responsibility for the decision to replace Travis. Cassie ended up finishing the project herself, coming in each week until we were all invited to campus to see the finished sneakers. When, at the end of the night, the display case was locked, the sneakers safeguarded behind glass, I told myself it was all over.

Then Cassie decided to run for PO president, and I knew that she blamed me for what had happened with her brother. More than blamed. She was out for revenge. To take away the one thing that would truly hurt me.

A gust of wind barrels through the brush, knocking me over. My body is so weak, it’s not even painful. More like a stage fall. The wind continues to pin me to the ground. I hug my backpack to my chest. The folder inside will end this, one way or the other. Despite her many faults, Cassie isn’t a monster. She can’t actually believe that her brother would touch a child. She wouldn’t defend him, wouldn’t try to enact revenge against me, if she knew there was truth to what I told. That doesn’t absolve her of inviting him into our school. I mean, clearly she realizes Travis isn’t the kind of person you let chaperone children. She made sure to bury that photo from the fall carnival. But she’s stuck by her brother. She’s defended him against me. The only way she could be loyal like that is if she didn’t know what he’d done, the accusations against him, woman after woman, near identical stories. When Cassie sees the evidence, it will be too obvious for her to ignore. And she’ll realize that I wasn’t being vindictive, that in response she has no reason to be vindictive either. And she’ll back down from her threat to take PO from me.

The wind continues to rage against me as I sit in the path, waiting for a break so I can try to stand. I go over my plan again. I can feel how close I am to making this work. If the wind will just stop.

Because if Cassie doesn’t want to reason with me, doesn’t want to believe the truth, well, I’ve got plenty of evidence for good old-fashioned blackmail.