“I just want everyone to understand that my sister has an illness,” I said to the jury. “I don’t know if she even understands what she’s done. But my parents and I love her. We love you, Penny, we just want you to get help.”
My sister—who had alternated between crying and an icy, blank affect throughout the trial—stared pointedly, angrily away from me, lips pursed.
Even then, even in that awful moment, when I was worn down by the battle fatigue of it all, I held on to some hope that there was, if not a happy ending—such a thing is forever negated by the death of a child—some reconciliation possible. I imagined Penny in a treatment center of some kind, where she would slowly be brought to the realization of what she’d done, where she would have to process the shock, the grief, the guilt, but we’d stay by her side. It was a fantasy that brought me relief, picturing the day when this trial was over, and some kind of healing could begin. It was the best outcome I could dream up, and still, it gutted me.
The defense’s cross-examination was an entirely different experience from the prosecution’s questioning. Penny had two defense attorneys: a young, fit man with a tight haircut who looked like a recruitment poster for the Navy, and a fiftysomething woman called Sheila Gregory who was broad shouldered and had the face and disposition of a mistreated bulldog. I was a big witness, so they used the big gun on me.
“Ms. Cleary,” she said. “You’re an elite ski racer, is that correct?”
“Yes.” I’d been warned to keep my answers as short as possible when answering Sheila. She’d be on the lookout for chinks in my armor and would be ruthless once she found one. I’d already seen her bring a veteran ER doctor who’d treated Ava during a previous close call to tears on the stand.
“And how early does the career of a skier start?”
“Depends.”
She gave me a chilling grin. I wondered for the hundredth time, what motivates a woman like this? Who takes on a case like Penny’s? She seemed like a cartoon villain to me.
“Indeed. And when did yours begin, that is, at what age did skiing become a major focus for you?”
“Around five,” I said.
“Five years old?” Sheila said. “That’s very young, Ms. Cleary. You must have been extremely dedicated. And tell me, does it take a lot of resources to bolster the career of a young, potentially professional, Olympic-level ski champion?”
“Objection. Relevance?”
“Ms. Gregory,” said the judge, who’d been looking increasingly exhausted as the trial wore on, “keep it moving or change tracks, please.”
Sheila put her hands up.
“Is it true that in order to pay for your skiing, your parents deprived Penny of all but the most basic necessities? That she was forced to work outside the home from the time she was a teenager to help contribute to your family’s dreams of having a gold-medal downhill skier?”
“Objection!”
“Ms. Gregory, I agree that I don’t see the point of this line of questioning.”
I wasn’t so sure I wanted them to stop her. I wanted to answer, to defend my family. Maybe her hobbies hadn’t been as costly as my skiing, but she hadn’t been deprived of anything. Penny got a job waiting tables when she was sixteen to spend more money on makeup and clothes, not to pay for anything for me.
“I’m trying to establish that this is a particularly uneven family dynamic, one that set Penny Cleary up to be the screwup, the misfit, and one that affects her family’s perspective on my client and her actions to this day. Penny Cleary grew up in the midst of extraordinary neglect in a home where she was forced to survive on the scraps of whatever was left over from her talented sister.”
“That’s not how it was!” I burst out. “My parents wanted me to succeed but never at the cost of Penny. Penny had jobs and I didn’t, but that’s only because skiing was my job and Penny didn’t have a sport she loved or anything. My parents never deprived Penny, that’s ridiculous! We weren’t wealthy people. I moved to Sun Valley when I was fifteen, we had a team and patrons. It wasn’t like they were taking anything from Penny so I could succeed.”
Sheila smiled calmly.
“Indeed, Ms. Cleary, you moved away from home to Sun Valley to live with the Duncan family. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“And at what age did that take place?”
“Fifteen.”
“While your sister was still finishing high school, correct?”
“Yes.” I legitimately had no idea where she was going with all of this.
“And your line of work since then, it involves a great deal of international travel, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“So you haven’t really been that close with your sister for what, a decade?”
“I wouldn’t say that. I travel a lot but, I mean, we used to talk all the time, and I came to see her when I could. I was there when Ava was born, I was there for her first birthday party.” My throat tightened—the pain of saying her name out loud was visceral. Earlier in the day, the prosecution had shown the most damning of Penny’s many chilling Facebook posts featuring Ava. This one featured a selfie of a sobbing Penny, holding her lifeless child in her arms, moments after her death. Heaven has a new angel today, my sweet daughter has journeyed on. There are no words for the pain of a mother who loses her child. My heart will never be whole again! The prosecution used it to ask the jury what kind of sane mother does a thing like that. The defense argued that many overwhelmed mothers turn to social media in moments of grief and shock, to disseminate the news of a tragedy and get the support they need. It was easier than calling two hundred friends one by one. It may seem like bizarre behavior, and was perhaps not the most appropriate response, but who were we to judge a mother who has lost a child? Unsettling, sure. But not criminal. And inappropriate behavior wasn’t so surprising, given Penny’s “deprived” childhood and the constant stress of caring for a sick child.
“My point is,” Sheila continued, “you were very focused on your career, as you should have been! You’re a talented young woman, Ms. Cleary, and that kind of self-focus is normal for any twentysomething. But you’d allow that you were not directly involved with Penny and Ava during her short life?”
“No, I won’t allow that. I really did everything I could to stay close. We Skyped, Penny sent me pictures almost every day. I sent Ava presents. It was Penny who cut us off, not the other way around. I loved them so much.” This last part came out meekly. Suddenly, it was all too much: the lights of the courtroom, the cameras, Sheila the bulldog.
“Would you please confirm some dates for me?” Sheila said. She proceeded to read off my partial tour schedule for the seasons that spanned Ava’s short life, putting particular emphasis on the fanciest-sounding locales: St. Moritz, Val d’Isère, Aspen.
I confirmed that yes, I had competed in those locations.
“You didn’t just compete, Ms. Cleary, you won a great deal of races.”
I shrugged in response.
“Sounds very all-encompassing. Wouldn’t leave much time for being an auntie, would it?”
“Objection!”
“Ms. Gregory, if you have a point to make, make it.”
“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 professio
ns?”
“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.”
The defense’s close was delivered not by the bulldog, but by her handsome young counterpart. He was chosen, I presume, for his big dark eyes and his buttery voice, his Clark Kent appeal to both genders.
“Penny Cleary-Granger was a neglected child, and this neglect caused her to sometimes seek attention in desperate and strange ways, but she nonetheless grew up to be a dedicated professional, a loving spouse, and a devoted mother. The prosecution has told you a terrifying horror story, but that’s all it is, a story. They have not presented you with a smoking gun because no crime has been committed. A monumental tragedy has occurred; we ask you not to compound it by sending an innocent grieving mother to prison.”
The jury deliberated for four days.
Penny was acquitted.
As the judge read the verdict, I saw my sister’s expression transform from stoic to beatific relief. She smiled bravely and hugged superman and the bulldog. As I watched her, I realized that whomever I was seeing in that courtroom wasn’t my sister anymore. Somewhere along the line, the Penny I loved had disappeared and was not coming back. I would not see my sister, or the monstrous doppelgänger who’d replaced her, again.
Stewart moved his wife to the Air Force base in Macon, Georgia, for a fresh start. Though their marriage did not survive—buckling under the weight of their loss and the stress of the trial—Penny remained in Georgia. The fact that she no longer lives nearby doesn’t stop me from seeing Penny’s face around every corner each time I’m home in Coeur d’Alene, nor does it stop me from seeing her in crowds hundreds of miles away from anywhere she’s ever been. Penny is a ghost who is mine forever.
About a year later, another piece of news made its way back to us, joyful or horrifying depending on where you stood. Penny had met and married someone new after a six-month whirlwind courtship. They were expecting their first child.
During the year of the trial, I didn’t qualify for the World Cup Tour and had an unimpressive run in a handful of NorAms, and I tried to get my bearings while Luke and Blair and all the rest of my friends did their normal run around the globe. I was demoted to Alpine C Team. Red Bull officially dropped me.
My therapist, Gena, told me I was suffering from PTSD, a diagnosis I couldn’t wrap my head around; it felt somehow too dramatic, reserved for war veterans and refugees. At first, it was a bad night’s sleep, then it was a bad day on the hill, then it was a shaky month on the hill. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t stop crying. I began taking Ativan for the panic attacks and Klonopin to sleep, usually after several glasses of wine, sometimes a bottle. My focus was shit, my thoughts were consumed. Late in the season, not long after the verdict came down, I crashed out on a sloppy training run and shattered my tibia. Then the panic attacks got worse. Luke and I broke up. Everything I’d ever consciously lived for, every reason I’d had for getting out of bed in the morning, was gone.
And that’s how Katie Cleary disappeared.
Liz Is Ready to Talk
TO SPARE myself, I ask Cali what she already knows about my sister. She recalls the broad strokes from the news coverage. The bizarre and horrifying story, the contentious, divisive acquittal.
“I remember feeling really bad for your family,” she said. “For what it’s worth, I believed you guys. I couldn’t understand how she could just walk after all that. Obviously I’m not an expert or anything, but I just thought there was no way something wasn’t seriously up with her.”
Since everyone in my old life experienced it in real time, I’ve never actually sat down and told anyone the story from start to finish. Halfway through, sobs come up from my chest, and the familiar signs that I might dissolve into panic present themselves: the coldness in my throat, the tightness in my chest. Cali asks if I’m okay. Do I want to keep going? I don’t need to if I don’t want to. But suddenly I do want to. I need Cali to know. I can’t hold the weight of it for another second. So Cali takes my hand and listens. I tell her about the breakup with Luke, the downfall of my skiing, and lastly, how I wandered into an airport and ended up here, with an alias and an apartment in San Telmo and an affair that’s slowly devolving into a disaster.
“Oh, honey,” she says, “exhale. That’s a lot.”
“I know.” I tense up, realizing too late that perhaps this was too much to lay at the feet of any new friend, and I haven’t even mentioned my pregnancy fear. “I’m sorry to just”—I mime a vomiting motion—“put that all out there.”
“Not at all,” she says. “I’m glad you felt like you could tell me.” She squeezes my hand and smiles. “I sort of can’t believe you’re still walking upright after all that.”
“Some days that’s about all I can do.”
“God,” Cali says. “Liz, er, Katie. My friend, I am so, so sorry that you went through all of this. I don’t even know what to say other than that I’m sorry for your pain.”
“That’s plenty, Cali, honestly.” Her response is as close to the right one as exists. People had done many strange things when faced with this story, which—thanks to the news coverage—everyone in our lives had been. Some offered platitudes: Whatever doesn’t kill you . . . or The darkest hour . . . Others parroted empty religious aphorisms about God’s plans, and these especially rankled me. Where was God in this story? No god I could reconcile came anywhere near something like this. “I’m just glad you don’t . . . I don’t know. I’m glad you didn’t run in the other direction.”
“Why would I? It doesn’t have anything to do with you, or I mean, it does, but none of it is your fault.”
“I know that,” I say. Do I? “Not everyone in my life back home reacted so well. Maybe things would have ended with Luke anyway, but it made it all so much worse.”
“Well, that doesn’t say much for him.”
“He just wasn’t up to it. We’d known each other since we were kids, and I’d always been one person—disciplined, positive, single-minded—and then this all happens, and I come unglued.” It all sounds so familiar to me, I realize, because this is the voice in my head, the voice that berates me and exonerates Luke day after day. “I don’t know, I just totally lost focus, I was crying all the t
ime. I wasn’t the same person. I wasn’t what he signed up for anymore.”
Cali thinks on this for a moment. “It’s not that you weren’t you though, you were just in a crisis. And when you love someone, you’re supposed to be there for the bad as well as the good. I mean, you don’t get to just take the easy parts of a relationship, that’s not how it works.”
I shake my head. Why do I always feel the need to make excuses for him? Maybe I’m just looking for a way to not hate someone I loved for so long. The cost of all this has already been too high. “I think a lot of people, not just Luke, had this feeling that I might be contagious. Like if they looked too closely at what was happening to me, they might have to accept that something like that could also happen to them. What was even worse was all the people who blamed us, me some, but my parents especially. And oh god, Cali, they deserve it least, they’re the best people in the world.” My voice catches as I think about my mom and dad in the eye of the storm. Of all the things I hold on to as truth—and some days, it doesn’t feel like much—this I do know: my parents didn’t fail Penny. I’m sure they made garden-variety parenting mistakes, but they were loving and kind and generous, and they did their best, which is all two humans can ever do.
Some of the trial watchers—the pathetic people who treated our misfortune as entertainment—speculated that I was deluded and didn’t see the malevolence of my parents. But no one who knew the Clearys felt this way. People forget that I was the one who was there, following on her heels less than two years behind throughout the majority of her life. When it comes to Penny, I am the witness, the one and only. Once I started pulling on threads, there were a thousand tiny things she’d done: minor lies that had blossomed into major ones, her illness—such as it was—had been a progression.
We Came Here to Forget Page 26
