I knew without having to be told that they were the couple who had offered to foster me. I’d already informed the psychologist in no uncertain terms that I would not live with strangers. She said that I needed a family that would love me as their own. I told her that no family would love me the way my real family had done.

It took time, but eventually I realized I couldn’t stay at the hospital forever. A foster family was my only option. I had no relatives that I knew of. I asked the psychologist if the couple she’d told me about had other children. She said they hadn’t been blessed in that way. I asked why and she told me that she guessed it was because he’d been hurt in a war and that it had taken a long time for him to heal.

I learned much later that Henry was injured five weeks into his first tour of Vietnam, when a grenade exploded in a ditch not far from where he lay. He spent more time in rehabilitation than he had on the battlefield.

A surgeon at a U.S. military hospital saved him by stopping the bleeding and removing whatever shrapnel he had time to pull out in the meatball surgery they did in those battlefield hospitals. The shards he left behind caused Henry terrible pain for the rest of his life. Henry was a kind man who spoke little and left it to his wife to run the household. Her name was Kate. Henry always called her Kitty.

On the day I first met them, they walked into the hospital recreation room, their eyes only on me as I stood uncertainly while introductions were made. Before I could say a word Kitty embraced me with plump arms and the scent of jasmine. It was probably only a second or two, but I could have stood like that for hours. In her arms. For the first time since Jenny died, I felt safe. When Jenny died, my mother surrendered to death. Now I embraced life. I cherished it and protected it as if it were the sputtering flame of a candle. I couldn’t look back. Only forward. Or my life would be unendurable.

In the months that followed I moved to Kitty and Henry’s graceful home across the state, near the Appalachian foothills. I wore pretty cotton clothes in shades of pastel and white. I slept in a cream four-poster bed in an upstairs bedroom. Henry painted the walls a dusty pink. Kitty plaited my hair and drove me to school and dance class and soccer practice. Nothing was too much for them.

When my art teacher told Kitty that I had talent, Kitty arranged extra classes with a private teacher. She covered her living room walls with my creations, even those that only a parent could love. Time passed and we blended into a family. I can’t remember exactly when the adoption went through. I must have been around thirteen.

During those first weeks, Kitty slept on an armchair in my room when I woke screaming during the night. Eventually they bought me a night-light. I used that night-light throughout my childhood out of politeness. It never stopped the nightmares. Not once.

My night terrors became so bad that when I went to college my roommate asked to be reassigned. She said that she couldn’t live with someone who screamed as if she were being murdered. I learned to stifle my screams by burying my head in my pillow.

I made an appointment at the college campus medical clinic and asked the doctor for a prescription for sleeping tablets. He suggested I consider therapy. I told him that I was just fine with the medication. I fooled him. I didn’t fool myself.

7

Guilty or Not Guilty

Season 3, Episode 2: The Shortcut

I’m starting to get a feel for Neapolis. The population here is just over ninety-six thousand. Around a quarter of that are the original townsfolk. The rest are imports, mostly military families—there are two military bases near town—and retirees. There’s a cottage industry of retirement homes for older folk drawn to this isolated but beautiful coastal strip by affordable beachfront property and the relaxed lifestyle of a sleepy seaside town.

Before the relatively recent population spike, Neapolis was your classic small town. Everyone knew everyone. In fact, it still has that small-town vibe. The town is on a weather-beaten stretch of North Carolina coast. It gets pummeled by storms, and occasionally by hurricanes. Cartographers can never properly chart the coastline. It changes every year.

The locals love their water sports: fishing, sailing, windsurfing, and sea kayaking. There are shipwrecks along the coast for scuba divers, and a golf course for those who prefer to keep their feet on dry land.

Despite its beautiful beaches and laid-back atmosphere, Neapolis hasn’t taken off in a big way with vacationers. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because it’s never been able to shake off its blue-collar roots. Or maybe it’s because it’s hard to get here. There’s no commercial airport nearby. No train. It’s at the end of a dead-end offshoot that is itself an offshoot of Interstate Ninety-five.

There’s a decent-size hospital. A courthouse and a local paper, the Neapolis Gazette. Flip through its pages and it quickly becomes apparent that the political bent here is more red than blue.

Local cuisine? I’ll have to get back to you on that one, but I’ve been told the crabs around here are something special.

They have a languid way of talking in these parts. As if they have all the time in the world. Which they sort of do, because the rat race feels very far away. Neapolis is surrounded by national parks, a marine reserve, and some expansive beaches. The locals say they’re the prettiest beaches anywhere. From what I’ve seen so far, they could well be right.

Speaking of sweeping landscapes, you’ve probably heard background noise behind me as I talk. I’m not in the studio right now. Maybe you can figure out where I am?

I’ll hold out the microphone so you can hear the ambient noise. Listen real hard.

Can you hear it?

It’s loud. Right?

There’s a definite whoosh. Like a waterfall.

Except there’s no water here.

I’m actually in the middle of a barren field of long wild grass. That whoosh you hear is grass swaying in the wind. We forget how loud nature can be when there are no car engines to mask the magical sound of a windblown field.

I want you to hear the rustling of wild grass because I want you to hear what K heard when she walked through this very field on that fateful night.

K is the name of the victim—sorry, alleged victim—in the case we will be following this season. This podcast follows accepted practice by media outlets to withhold the names of victims of sexual assault. So I won’t be using her real name in the podcasts. We’re going to refer to her as K.

It was a Saturday afternoon. Nearly dusk. The sun was low and the light was ebbing. It was fall. The field I am walking through right now was burnished in rusts and dark autumn gold. Running along the side of the field is a row of dark green fir trees that give it a forbidding air reminiscent of a Brothers Grimm fairy tale.

You’re probably wondering what brought a sixteen-year-old girl to a desolate field close to nightfall. It was something very simple that I bet happened to you all at least once in your lives: she missed her bus.

K was heading to her best friend Lexi’s house for a sleepover. By the time she reached the bus stop, the bus had gone. Happens to the best of us, right? So K walked.

She had two choices. She could walk along the main road. It would take three-quarters of an hour. Or she could cut through this field. It would take fifteen, twenty minutes tops. She chose the narrow track where I’m walking right now. You can probably hear my feet crunch on the dirt as I walk down the path.

Let me describe where I am right now. On each side of the path is tall wild grass that reaches my waist. Maybe even higher. I’m just short of five foot eight, so that grass is pretty darn tall.

If I spin around and look in every direction, all I see is long burnished grass and the forest beyond. There’s no sign of civilization. No houses. No roads. It feels stark and desolate in a way that kind of makes me nervous. I suspect K felt the same way.

I have no reason to be scared. I’m here in the afternoon. The sun is shining, and my producer, Pete, who’s in the hospital recovering from a car accident, is on speed dial.

That’s not how it was for K. She was here at dusk. Alone. Nobody knew she’d come this way.

Slung over K’s shoulder was a backpack, heavy from the weight of beer bottles she’d brought from home. Her parents were out, so she scrawled a note explaining that she was sleeping at Lexi’s house. She left it under a magnet on the kitchen fridge.

What K didn’t mention in the note was that Lexi’s parents were away until the following evening. They’d left Lexi’s twenty-year-old brother, Miles, in charge. He told Lexi he was out for the night and that she’d better invite a friend to keep her company. That’s why Lexi invited K.

Through a series of texts between the two girls over the course of the afternoon, they decided they would throw a party. Nothing crazy. A dozen friends. Music. Beer. Maybe they’d all chip in money and order pizza. K was rushing to Lexi’s house to get ready for the party when she took this shortcut.