The man became a Supreme Court justice. The woman went into hiding. And every day, every night, Diana Carmody, who’d once been a fifteen-year-old girl, running over the sand on the beach on a warm summer night, would think about him, and about Hal Shoemaker, about all the men who’d harmed women and who’d sailed on with lives continued, unimpaired. She would think about her nieces, and all the girls and young women she knew, growing up in a world where every day was dangerous, and she knew she couldn’t give herself the luxury of inaction.
This time, she decided, she would do it differently. This time, instead of going straight for the men, she’d approach the problem sideways and come at the women. Or, really, just one woman: Daisy Shoemaker, wife of her rapist, sister of the boy who’d watched. She would be much more careful, making sure that her actions did not cause children to suffer, or that at least she did whatever she could to minimize their suffering. Awake at night, she laid her traps, claiming an email address that was close to the other Diana’s, constructing a fake website and a bogus Facebook page, finding blogs and books about consultants, so she’d get the lingo down, seeding the ground for the day she would go to Philadelphia, to meet Daisy Shoemaker, the main connection between the two living men who’d harmed her, the wife of one, the sister of the other. She would look this other Diana in the eyes and then she’d decide what she would do, how she could confront Hal without hurting some poor blameless woman, in a world where being born female meant spending years of your life at risk, and the rest of it invisible, existing as prey or barely existing at all.
32
Daisy
Why are we going to Grandma’s?” Beatrice asked, after they’d dropped off poor, sad-looking Lester and gotten on the highway.
“I need to speak with her.”
“And you can’t just call?”
“I need to speak with her in person,” Daisy said. Once she’d gotten behind the wheel, a strange coolness had descended over her. She felt as if she was enclosed in a bubble where she could be reasonable and calm. The bubble would pop at some point, and all the terrible truths would come flooding in to assault her, but, for now, she could listen, and reason, and think.
“Mom,” said Daisy. “What’s going on? You have to tell me something.” Daisy could hear the anxiety in her daughter’s voice, and knew that Beatrice was right. She had to say something. She just didn’t know what that should be.
“I need to ask my mother some questions about what happened when Danny was a teenager.”
“What do you mean? What happened?” Beatrice demanded. She was putting the pieces together, much more quickly than Daisy had hoped she would. “Did this happen at Emlen? Was Dad involved?”
“It didn’t happen at Emlen. It involved Emlen students.” Careful, Daisy told herself. You need to be careful now. She would have given years of her life to be able to tell her daughter that Hal wasn’t involved. But she couldn’t. “I don’t want to say any more until I know for sure.”
Beatrice shifted in her seat. “What happened?” she asked. “Did someone die?”
“No one died,” she said quietly. “And I can’t tell you anything else. I promise, when I know the facts, I’ll tell you. But right now, I can’t.”
She was picturing Hal as he’d been when she’d first met him, handsome and solid and mature. She could still hear what he had told her, on their very first date: I used to be wild. I drank a lot. I don’t want to be that person anymore. She’d been able to intuit what he wasn’t telling her: that, if they proceeded, it would be her job to prevent him from backsliding. That, in becoming her husband and a father, he would be turning himself into something other than what he had been; a butterfly emerging from a cocoon, with a loyal, loving wife by his side. She would be an integral part of his transformation, even if that meant putting her own dreams to the side. She’d be his guardrails, his early-warning system; she’d keep him from going over the edge. She’d done her part, Daisy thought. And if he’d made good on that promise, if he’d truly become someone other than who he’d been, if he’d been a good husband and father, if he’d done good with his life, how much could she hold him accountable for his actions when he was eighteen? How much punishment was the right amount? What did Hal deserve?
“Mom.” Beatrice’s voice was tiny. “How bad is this? What’s going to happen? Is Dad in trouble?”