Glynne winds her hand around my back—an invitation for a hug. I don’t accept it. People do and say and think whatever they can, just so they can believe they’re good. It isn’t my job to back them up. “Thank you,” I tell her, “for the notes.”
As I take her printouts and head out of the café, I’m counting the minutes until I can go to A?layan Kaya again.
IT’S A TWO-MINUTE drive to my house, another ten to load more wood into the stove, brew a pot of coffee, turn on my computer, and enter the dark web. As I take all these steps, my breathing is steady, deep, and focused, much the way it was when I used to run every day, each breath propelling me forward along with the music in my headphones, drawing me closer to my destination.
Until, at last, I’m there.
Once I’ve clicked on the Kaya chat, I type without thinking or censoring or reading anything anyone else has written. It feels like jumping out of a window, all the while knowing there’s a safety net below.
0417: I want him dead. For real. I don’t care how.
Ellipses percolate beneath my comment. I stare at them, waiting for words to appear. And it isn’t long before they do.
2201: I think you were too kind last night, simply beating him up before he gets tied to the tree. I think he could use a knife through the eyeball.
1225: Or try a cut to the carotid, in front of a mirror. Make it shallow so he can see it happen. Then chop off his head.
0104: He raped your daughter, right? Chopping off his dick seems more appropriate.
The comments keep coming, the suggestions grislier and grislier. But while I appreciate the support, the lack of judgment, the complete absence of the words forgive and move on, I know, on some level, that it’s still nothing more than a group fantasy. At this very moment, Harris Blanchard is happily brunching with his parents in New York City or enjoying the company of his fellow seniors or hiking or skiing and posting pictures on Instagram, his grinning face behind a pair of enormous goggles as he enjoys these final weeks of winter break. My daughter—the lack of her—is the last thing on his mind.
I want him dead. For real.
This morning I woke up after just two hours of sleep and showered and dressed for my meeting with Glynne an hour and a half early. I used the extra time to drive across the river to the Brayburn campus. It was the first time I’d been there since the trial, but after talking all night on Kaya about what Harris Blanchard did to my daughter, I wanted to make sure I wasn’t remembering things wrong.
I wasn’t. The woods where Emily’s body was found are a six-minute drive from the frat house—a fifteen-minute walk at the very least. That means he went out of his way to take her there, far away from the party, where no one could hear her scream.
The campus was close to empty for break. But there were still some students wandering around, and I could have sworn I saw him from a distance, laughing it up with a group of friends, just around twenty feet away from where he’d left an unconscious Emily five years ago.
If it wasn’t him, it was someone just like him, because the world is full of young men just like him—unremarkable in every regard, except for the ridiculous privilege with which they were born.
How I longed to lean into the accelerator and head straight for him. Even when I realized it wasn’t Harris Blanchard, I still had to stop myself from doing it. And really, would the world be that much worse of a place if I hadn’t stopped myself?
4566 asks if I’m still in the chat. I respond that I am. And then I type out everything that’s on my mind.
0417: I don’t just want him killed off. I want his soul destroyed, his memory ripped to shreds, just like he and his family and their lawyers did to my daughter. After he’s dead, I want the whole world to see him for what he truly was. I want his parents to have to live for the rest of their lives knowing what a mistake it was to bring him into the world.