Penitence

David explains the situation to Martine. She thinks of Angie, spread thin caring for her mother with Alzheimer’s and Nico with juvenile Huntington’s disease. Martine is 72, tired of her work and about to retire, but she knows that the family cannot afford anyone else. David confirms this, noting that they’d taken out a second mortgage to pay for Nico’s treatment. 

Reluctantly, she agrees to defend Nora. She and David meet Angie at the county jail so that she can speak with Nora. She has no experience trying homicide cases and does not relish the media attention that her work has garnered lately. In her last case, she defended a young woman who threw her baby in the trash. The case got ugly, and Martine was struck by how much blame the community threw. This case, too, will be tried in the spotlight. Martine wants to help the family though: Angie and Martine’s son, Julian, had been high school sweethearts. She still has a soft spot in her heart for Angie, and that extends to her children. 

Nora seems both numb and terrified. Initially, she refuses to answer Martine’s questions. Martine knows that Nora shot Nico three times, once in the eye and twice in the chest. Unless she can prove that Nora was having a mental health crisis, this is going to be a difficult case. 

Having gotten no information from Nora, Martine heads to the Sheehan home. She walks through both Nico and Nora’s bedrooms: Nico’s is neat. There is evidence of his interest in birds and a large mural Angie, a gifted artist, painted. Nora’s room is messier. She, too, is an artist, and there are drawings and sketches scattered everywhere. Martine learns that Nora fell into a depression when Nico was diagnosed with Huntington’s. The two were close, and neither of their parents can make sense of the shooting. 

Martine is a good judge of character and knew Angie well once, and she gleans that Angie loved Nico more than Nora and that David knew that and it bothered him. She reflects on her history with Angie’s family. She walks by Angie’s sister Diana’s grave often. She had hoped never to have anything to do with Angie’s family again. She wishes that her son, who is well-versed in criminal law, would take the case. She knows that this is not likely. She explains the legal process to David and Angie, giving them dates for various upcoming hearings. Her heart is heavy.

Angie cannot stop thinking about the night of the shooting. There are whole portions of the night and the following day that she does not remember, but she isn’t sure if she’d like to recover those memories. Nora is in juvenile detention, and Angie gets upset when David tries to bring her clothing. Detainees are required to wear state-issued sweats, but Angie also questions whether Nora, who killed her brother, deserves kindness. 

Angie knows that she shouldn’t read media coverage of the case, but she does anyway. What she reads upsets her: People assign blame to everyone involved, including her and David. She is embarrassed to be seen around town and keeps Nico’s funeral limited to family. 

After the funeral, David visits Nora, and Angie visits her mother, Livia, at her memory care facility. David visits Nora every chance he gets, but Angie refuses. She is afraid that her anger will boil over if she speaks to her daughter. She does not know what to say to Nora and is sure that she will never be able to forgive her. 

Her mother is initially in good spirits, so Angie decides to ask her about her sister, Diana, who died when she was a teenager. She wants to know how her mother got over the loss. Her mother, however, does not remember that Diana is dead and has no answers for Angie about her grief.

In February of 1991, Martine is certain that her blended family will always remain intact and happy. They’d moved to Lodgepole, a small town in Colorado, from New York City in the 1970s. Martine’s husband, Cyrus, is a physician, a generalist who owns a thriving family practice in town. Her son Julian (whose father died when he was an infant) is 18, and Middlebury just recruited him for their ski team. The son they share, Gregory, is a healthy, well-adjusted boy. 

One afternoon, Martine gets a call from a panicked Julian. He and his girlfriend, Angie, were skiing with Angie’s seven-year-old sister, Diana. Diana, he claims, was skiing too fast ahead of them and hit a tree. They’re all at the hospital, but Diana is already dead. The story seems off to Martine: Julian is an unusually adept and powerful skier, even at his age. It strikes her as impossible that a child could have been skiing faster than Gregory. She wonders if alcohol or marijuana was a factor or if Julian might have knocked into Diana. She can tell by his voice that he is lying or omitting information. She tells him, as his lawyer, not his mother, to refrain from saying anything further to anyone in the DeLuca family. 

There is no investigation into Diana’s death, but Diana’s mother, Livia, blames Julian. Livia and Martine had been friends, bonded because they were two of the only mothers in town who worked outside of the home. Livia had a vindictive nature, and Martine was not surprised when she blamed Julian and even Martine for her daughter’s death. Cyrus shares Martine’s worries about the accident: The autopsy, although inconclusive and probably not a danger to Julian in any trial, showed classic signs of skiers who hit trees but also of skiers who hit one another. He and Martine decide that Julian will finish high school in New York with his aunt before heading to college. This means that he and Angie, who have been close since first grade, will have to break up. Martine already forbade Julian from seeing Angie (which was a relief to Livia because of the accident and because, as a devout Catholic, she disapproved of her son dating), but now the separation would be permanent. 

Julian and Angie never tell anyone what happened: Angie had insisted that they smoke marijuana before their last run down the mountain. Julian hadn’t wanted to, but he agreed anyway. They were skiing with Diana. Julian and Angie were going down a difficult part of the mountain, but it ran parallel to an easier trail that Diana could do on her own. The two runs intersected periodically, and Julian and Angie would wait for Diana at each intersection. 

After smoking the joint, Angie also downed a flask of vodka. But she drank too quickly. She began vomiting almost immediately and stayed behind to let Julian go. Diana had already left, and someone needed to supervise her. The high hit as Julian began to ski, and he felt like he was flying. He hadn’t even seen Diana, but he skied into her, launching her small body into a tree. Angie arrived after Diana was already gone, and Julian did not tell her the truth. They both agreed to lie to the ski patrol and say they saw the accident because Angie was worried that she’d be blamed. She was also worried because of the drugs and alcohol, and they did not admit to being high.

Nora is the talk of the town in Lodgepole, but locked away in a juvenile detention facility, she has no idea how much attention is focused on her. She still will not speak. She is given clothes and toiletries and shoved into a cell. She has four cellmates: Paradise is a repeat offender who sells the methamphetamines her aunt cooks. Maria Elena, who is in for armed robbery, takes Nora’s new clothes and toiletries and replaces them with her own, used items. Jacqueline, like Nora, does not speak. 

The rest of the girls sense that Nora is middle class and bully her for it. She is one of the few inmates to have a lawyer rather than a public defender, and this seals her fate as an outcast. The guards are generally unkind, and some of the male guards are known to ask “favors” from the girls. Maria Elena finds out somehow that Nora shot her brother and bullies her for that too. Nora still refuses to speak.

Twelve days after David sought her out for Nora’s defense, Martine heads back to the Sheehans’ home. She has to give them the unpleasant news that the DA is threatening to charge Nora as an adult and that, although she will charge them nothing, they will still have to pay court fees and the other costs that build up. This amount might be over $150,000. She knows they do not have that kind of money. 

She arrives, perceiving instantly that she has interrupted an argument. As she explains the financials to them, their anger boils over again. Angie accuses David of causing the murder: His gun was in a safe, but she is sure that everyone knows the combination. David accuses Angie of not loving Nora as much as Nico. David wants Martine to enlist Julian’s help. 

Martine leaves them to argue and calls Julian. She does not think that she can keep Nora out of prison: Their last meeting had also not gone well. Nora still refuses to speak but indicates via nodding that she does not remember the shooting. Julian agrees instantly and asks her to send him the files. He is puzzled when she shares that it is David, not Angie, who asked for his assistance and even more so when Martine shares that Julian should agree because “of Diana.” Julian is sure that Angie didn’t tell David the truth about the accident.

David and Angie barely speak. The DA has decided not to prosecute David: His gun was properly stored. But he is still in danger of losing his job at the Parks Department. They desperately need money, but no one will hire Angie. She’d been a popular children’s art teacher before Nico got sick but had to quit working to help manage his medical care. Now, she is a social pariah and has no idea how they’re going to pay for Nora’s defense. She begins running to help handle her stress and fill some of her empty hours. 

They receive an email from Martine informing them that she brought Julian on the case and that they have ordered a psychiatric evaluation for Nora. This news unleashes a flurry of new arguments: Angie is upset that Julian will be working on the case. David is hopeful that Nora might be able to avoid prison and wants Angie to think back carefully about Nora’s past behavior, wondering if they missed signs of something more serious than depression. Angie takes this as an insult: She tells David that if anything was amiss with Nora, it was his fault too for missing it. 

Angie and David continue to vacillate between arguments and silence, and Angie finds herself increasingly unable to manage her anger. One day, she decides to go visit Nora. She still blames her for Nico’s death and feels little for her other than anger, but she thinks that it is her motherly duty to visit her child. 

Nora initially will not speak or meet her eye, but at one point, she panics and asks Angie if she has to go. Nora tells Angie that the guard is knocking. There is no noise, and the guard has not returned, and Angie wonders about Nora’s mental health. There is a part of her that doesn’t want Nora to have a psychiatric condition: Even if a psychotic crisis had made Nora shoot Nico on purpose, Angie is sure that she would never be able to forgive her. 

After she leaves the detention center, she stops at the store to buy something for dinner. Two of her friends approach and ask if they can help her in any way, but she dismisses them. She sees one of Nora’s friends and asks how Nora has been doing lately. Confused, the girl responds that Nora stopped talking to her and everyone else she knew more than a year ago. Angie is forced to consider that Nora may had been grappling with a mental health condition that she, too busy with Nico’s care, missed. At home, she cannot eat and vomits up lunch.