Covered in blood, he got undressed, showered, and took clothes from the back of a closet, shoving his bloody clothes into a trash bag. He snuck out a back window, tossed his stuff in a dumpster a few blocks over, and then went back to his brother’s house only to tell him that he was leaving town. And that is exactly what he did. He left and never looked back. It wasn’t until years later when he was sitting in a police station, that he even thought about Alice again. When the police made it obvious that they were going to do everything in their power to dismiss his confession, he decided that he wouldn’t bother trying to convince them.

At the age of seventy-six, it’s hard to believe that the old man with silver hair and drawn features sitting across the courtroom would be capable of the crime he committed, but when he finishes talking, there is no denying that he is a true monster or that he deserves to be locked away for the rest of his life.

I don’t know if his plea for forgiveness will ease his guilt or have any kind of effect on what happens to him when he dies, but I do know that it offers no comfort to Greg, his son, Nicole, or Heather. There isn’t a dry eye in the courtroom, as Judge Brown adds to his life sentence. And with so much animosity still swirling around Alice’s family and Greg, no one is brave enough to extend an olive branch before they leave the courthouse. I can only hope that, eventually, they will be able to sit down and talk. After weeks of getting to know Alice through her friends and family, I know she would have wanted that. She would have wanted them to forgive each other but I’m not sure that will ever happen.

By the time I get home that evening, I’m emotionally drained, and sensing my mood and my reluctance to talk about what happened in court, Franny does what she has done since the moment we met; she sticks close and offers me a sense of normalcy that I didn’t even know I was missing until her. We have dinner, watch a show on TV, and just sit together until I’m ready to broach the subject of what happened. I don’t give her the details; I don’t want that in her head when she goes to sleep, but I give her enough so that she knows Alice’s family has finally gotten the truth.