“My point is: Katie Cleary wasn’t present throughout most of Ava’s life, including a period of nearly two years when the sisters were completely estranged. The prosecution would like to paint her as the tight-knit auntie next door baking cookies and babysitting and leaving casseroles in the freezer, and I’m simply establishing that this is very far from the truth.”

A sinkhole of guilt opened inside of me. What if I had been next door baking cookies? Could I have somehow prevented this?

“Let’s move on, please,” the judge said.

“One final question,” Sheila said, a satisfied smirk passing over her face. “Ms. Cleary, you mentioned in your earlier testimony that your sister has an illness. Do you have any professional credentials or experience in the medical or mental health professions?”

“No, but—”

“No further questions.”

The press had a field day parsing my testimony. Many were critical of my defensiveness during Sheila’s cross examination, while others accused me of being bamboozled by my nasty, power-hungry parents whose only aim had been to have a famous child. In their minds, I was just unwittingly complicit in their neglect of my sister. I wasn’t sure what I could have possibly done differently, but I felt like I’d failed my family.

The next day, both sides presented their closing arguments. The prosecution’s argument was straightforward. They focused on the preponderance of evidence—the metric ton of medical records that showed years of Ava’s unexplained ailments, the parade of different doctors, the years of Penny’s social media posts that exaggerated or lied about Ava and other parts of her life, the lies about her work, Penny’s own bizarre medical history, including the fake pregnancy, the container of table salt discovered mere feet from the bedside where her daughter perished from sodium poisoning, the fact of the G-tube she’d so vehemently insisted on having surgically implanted in Ava’s tiny stomach, giving Penny a means to poison her in an instant—as well as the testimony of the expert witnesses, psychologists, and the doctors and nurses who’d cared for Ava not only at the end of her life but also throughout it. There was only one possible explanation for Ava’s death, they contended; Penny’s disorder was the only thing that made any of it make sense. They mentioned my parents and me only briefly, knowing that Sheila’s cross had lessened my impact.

“You’ve heard from many new acquaintances of Penny’s, many folks who’ve known her less than a year and who have communicated with her mostly on Facebook. We ask you to take more seriously the impressions of those who’ve known and loved Penny her whole life, who have also lost a family member, a beloved grandchild and niece.”