Page 30 of The River Is Waiting

“What kind of a name is that? Native American?”

She shakes her head. “She was from the Netherlands. She and her family were part of the Dutch resistance and hid many Jews from the Gestapo during Hitler’s reign. When they were caught, she, her sister, and their father were arrested and sent to a concentration camp. Of the three, Corrie was the only one who survived. So you see, she did know a thing or two about life in captivity after all.”

“No shit?” I say, forgetting my promise to myself not to swear in front of her.

“No shit,” she says.

I wave the folded handouts at her and thank her again.

That same night, during another battle against sleeplessness, I feel an attack coming on. I do the breathing exercises. Grab the Big Book off my nightstand and do the five-senses thing. Then I turn on the light, grab thatquote Dr. Patel gave me, and read it over and over like a mantra: “Worrying does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow; it empties today of its strength.” After a while, I start to feel calmer.…

In the morning, I wake up to the sun winking through the slats of the venetian blinds and realize it worked. It fucking worked!

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

August 1, 2017

“All rise!” the bailiff commands. “This court is now in session, Judge Rosemarie Palazzolo presiding.” She’s tiny and very tan. Big black-rimmed glasses. She looks back at me and scowls.

Bettina Reitland goes first. “There’s a name for it,” she says. “Backover. It happens more than you’d think: on average, about fifty children a week, according to the statistics. Forty-eight of them survive; two don’t. The age of the victim is most often between one year and two and the person most often responsible is the victim’s mother or father. Usually, the grief that comes from losing a child, coupled with the horror of being the parent who caused the death, is punishment enough. The police will often conclude that it was accidental and decline to press charges.”

Get ready, I tell myself. Here it comes.

“But in this case, that didn’t happen. Why, Your Honor? Because Mr. Ledbetter, having consumed excesses of alcohol and an antianxiety medicationbefore nine o’clock in the morning, got into his vehicle, started the engine, put the car in reverse, and backed over his twenty-six-month-old son, Niko, who was playing in the driveway. The defendant has stated that he misremembered having buckled both Niko and his twin sister in their car seats before operating his vehicle. ‘Misremembered.’ Well, that happens to all of us. But the guilty plea Mr. Ledbetter has entered istantamount to his admission that the tragedy was the result of his prioritizing his intoxication over the safety of his children.”

This is all true, but it’s too painful to hear, so I try as best I can to tune her out. Say the serenity prayer. Look past Attorney Dixon, who’s sitting to my right, and scan the gallery for Emily. She’s seated with her mother, across the aisle and one row back. It breaks my heart to see how pale and drawn she looks. During my last visit, when I’d asked her how much weight she’d lost, she’d shrugged and said she had no appetite—that she mainly just ate Kind bars and a few bites of whatever she’d fixed for Maisie. I keep hoping she’ll glance over at me, but she just keeps looking straight ahead. Is she listening to Reitland’s case against me? Letting her mind wander? I can’t tell. Betsy is looking over at me, though, as cold and stone-faced as ever. It’s even money on whether or not she hopes I go to prison, but I doubt she’d shed many tears if that’s the outcome today.

I look over my shoulder at the other side of the gallery and there’s Mom. And to my surprise, Dad is sitting next to her. I’m grateful to him for having covered my lawyer’s fees, but I expected nothing more than checkbook support. His presence here must be costing him pain as well as money. As a kid, I sometimes would fantasize that Dad came back home to us and, in his absence, had turned nice. Now here he is, reunited with Mom at last, because of their loser son’s colossal failure.

I look around for Dr. Patel but don’t see her. She told me she’d come today if she could. But hey, she’s a busy lady; I understand. Still, it would have been a comfort to have her here. In our one-to-one sessions after Emily bowed out of couples work, Dr. Patel helped me cope with the difficult waiting time between the day I was arrested and today. And now the wait is almost over. I’ll probably know in under an hour whether or not I’m going to prison.

My sponsor, Dale, has come as promised. He’s sitting by himself in the back row. In the weeks we’ve been working together on my sobriety, I had one slip—took a few swigs from the pint bottle of bourbon one of my coworkers at the Amazon warehouse held out to me on the sneak.When I called Dale to confess, he said, “Progress not perfection, Corby, but you need to share this at the meeting tomorrow. Remember what the Big Book says about rigorous honesty.” It was hard to do, but I did it and was moved by the number of people who surrounded me after the meeting was over to offer me encouragement and volunteer their own stories about going out and coming back. I’d been counting sober days and had gotten to thirty-seven when I slipped and demoted myself back to zero. There have been no slips since, thanks in large part to Dale’s support, so sitting in the courtroom now, I’m at day number fifty-five.

Reluctantly, I tune back in to Reitland’s reasons why I should be incarcerated.

“Within an hour of Sergeant Fazio’s and Officer Longo’s observations at the scene, Mr. Ledbetter’s blood was drawn and later analyzed. The results show that he had operated his vehicle while under the influence of an excess of the benzodiazepine he had been prescribed and a blood-alcohol level of point-zero-nine.”

Turning from the judge, Reitland takes a few steps toward Dixon and me. “I suspect Mr. Ledbetter’s attorney will attempt to establish that her client was a good and loving father, and that may have been true until the day when, suddenly and irrevocably,he was not.”

It hits me that her phrasing is the same as Emily’s that day in Dr. Patel’s office. Is that a coincidence or has Reitland conferred with my wife? I’ve assumed that Emily doesn’t want me to have to go to prison. Have I been wrong?

“Your Honor, a little boy with his whole life ahead of him would be alive today had his father not started his car that morning while his judgment was impaired by alcoholandan addictive prescription drug that, while not classified as a narcotic, may produce narcotic effects on the central nervous system. Corbin Ledbetter must be held accountable for that fatal decision. Keep in mind that this is hissecondDUI, so I think it’s fair to assume his first had no preventive effect.

“Let’s also keep in mind that the tragedy for which Mr. Ledbetteris responsible has created a ripple effect of profound grief not only for himself but also for his son’s mother, the boy’s grandparents, and the Ledbetters’ extended family, their friends, and their neighbors. Two of those neighbors, Shawn and Linda McNally, who witnessed and tried to stop the tragedy from happening, have put their house on the market. I spoke recently with Mrs. McNally, who says their decision to move out of what had always been a peaceful and safe neighborhood has been motivated by the depression she has struggled with since she could not prevent little Niko’s death in the seconds before his fatal injury. As I said, a ripple effect.”

When Reitland says she wishes to read a letter from Niko’s maternal grandmother, I see Emily turn toward her mother with wide-eyed surprise. It’s obvious she didn’t see this coming. Ignoring her daughter’s reaction, Betsy looks straight ahead, a study in stern self-righteousness.

In her letter, Betsy asks the court to keep in mind the depth of her daughter’s suffering and the physical and emotional toll Niko’s death has taken, the result of the reckless and irresponsible choice I made on the morning in question—a choice that robbed her grandson of his life. Her letter ends with a question: If the law doesn’t hold me accountable by sentencing me to prison, doesn’t that then devalue the precious life I took?

Emily’s audible sob draws my attention and everyone else’s. Really, Betsy? She wasn’t in enough pain already?

“And Niko’s grandmother is right,” Reitland says. “The average life expectancy of an American male in two thousand seventeen is seventy-eight-point-eighty-seven. Actuarially speaking, Mr. Ledbetter’s action that morning deprived his son of seventy-six years and two months of his allotted life. And that’s merely by today’s life expectancy calculation. Who knows what future medical advances might have extended the victim’s life well beyond seventy-eight years?”

When I look at my attorney, she rolls her eyes. “Bullshit,” she whispers. “I’m not letting her get away with that.”

“And let’s not forget the individual who may end up paying the highest price of all as a result of Corbin Ledbetter’s negligence: his two-year-old daughter, Niko’s twin sister, Maisie.”

Leave my daughter the fuck out of this!

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