DURING THE horrific eight months between Penny’s arrest for Ava’s murder and the beginning of her trial, a thousand emotions consumed me, each one fighting for center stage. First, a bottomless well of grief: Ava was gone, and I didn’t need a judge and jury to tell me who’d been responsible. I was angry at Penny, I had been for a long time now. But I felt scared for her too, and the longing I’d felt for her only increased as her absence began to feel permanent. I see from the outside how it all appears unforgivable, but the desire to forgive someone you love blocks out the sun, and I convinced myself that she hadn’t actually meant to kill her daughter, she’d just miscalculated. Because we’d had no contact with Penny or Ava in two years, the whole situation felt surreal. I kept waiting for someone to tell me that they’d been wrong, as though this were all just some kind of nightmarish prank.

I always figured that Penny would come back to us, if not because she wanted to than because she needed to. The credit card debt of her early twenties had turned out to be the tip of the iceberg. She’d made about every bad financial decision a person could make: she owed back rent, had defaulted on payday loans, had written bad checks. How long until Stewart ran out of resources to support her?

I knew there was nothing to be gained from reaching out to her, but there were times I ached for her so much, I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t stop thinking about her. I wrote her a letter and mailed it to her house. I told her that it was my love for her that wouldn’t let me pretend that nothing was wrong. I told her I hoped she’d be standing next to me on my wedding day, as I’d been on hers. I told her I hoped she’d be by my side when I gave birth to my first child as I was when she gave birth to Ava. I told her I’d always love her. And I’d meant it. What a miserable fate.

Up until the news broke, I’d been holding on to hope that, if nothing else, Ava would eventually come of age and we’d all get another chance. We could help her then and perhaps we could help Penny too. By that point, her fertility—her weapon of choice—would be obsolete. Until then, I would have to reconcile myself to the fact that I would not get to see Ava grow up. As it turned out, no one would.