Page 175 of Edge of Unbroken

“Did she say anything to you?”

“She immediately started yelling at me. She shoved me. I hit my head and… I tried to get out of the house, but… she wouldn’t let me leave,” Ronan says, his voice cracking.

Once again, Mr. Cooley moves to his computer screen and selects a video, the still showing Ronan as he begins to walk down the stairs in his house. He has his phone in his left hand—just like he testified—and is looking at the screen. In the video, his dark-blond hair is still damp, and he’s wearing a pair of light-blue jeans and a basic heather-gray crewneck shirt that hugs his arms and shoulders so beautifully. He looks incredible in these basic outfits that show off his sculpted physique, and I know that had I actually seen him that day, I would have drooled over him like I do each time I lay eyes on him. My heart constricts in my chest with the knowledge that, just minutes from the time depicted on the screen, that heather-gray shirt would be stained with Ronan’s blood, those jeans would be cut off his body, and both would be shoved into an evidence bag for the police to take with them a few hours later.

Mr. Cooley hits play, and we watch in silence as Ronan descends the stairs and almost walks into his mother, who’s waiting for him at the bottom, her face already contorted in anger. There was nothing Ronan said or did to set her off. She was waiting for him, ready to ambush him, to take all her pain, her fear, her rage out on her son.

It suddenly feels like gravity is pushing down on me, anchoring me to my seat, crushing my insides and suffocating my lungs. The entire day I’ve listened to Ronan as he laid himself bare. I’ve watched a year’s worth of video footage depicting the terrible things Rica did to Ronan, but nothing,nothingcould prepare me for this moment. The Rica Soult on the screen is not the Rica Soult sitting—demure and small—at the defense table. It’s not even the Rica Soult Ronan had talked about all morning. The Rica Soult on screen is soulless with a black heart made of poison as she beats and kicks the life out of her son. Her eyes are devoid of compassion and any emotion other than hate, and pain, and depravity. The violence she inflicts on Ronan, the force of her hits, the viciousness with which she slams Ronan’s hockey stick into his body, breaking his bones and tearing his skin open, is nothing I could ever have sufficient words to describe.

I know Ronan saw it, too. How different his mom was that day, because there was a moment when he fought back. He was on the ground, lying in broken glass, and he did the unthinkable. He kicked his foot into her knee, causing her to fall. And, god, I held my breath as I watched him scramble to his feet, desperate to make it out of the house. He was so close, too, only feet away from safety, his hands inches from reaching the damn handle of the sliding glass door. But his mom in all her rage managed to hook his ankle with his hockey stick, yanking his foot right out from underneath him, and he slammed back to the ground where he remained until his heart eventually stopped beating. That damn hockey stick.

Tears stream unhindered down my face as I watch the strength slowly leave Ronan. He fights valiantly for as long as he can, shielding as much of himself for as long as possible, but his mother is relentless, her repeated blows so violent, so destructive.

“You fucking piece of shit. You worthless, stupid, ruinous piece of trash,” Rica screams. “I fucking hate you. I hate you! You are nothing! Do you hear me? Nothing!”

Ronan tries to get up several times, each time pushing himself up off the ground before his mother’s violence forces him back to the floor.

“Fuck you, Ronan,” she yells at him. I clasp my hands to my mouth as she stomps on his left hand violently. I can hear it break, a groan escaping Ronan’s mouth as he falls back yet again, the glass digging into his flesh, cutting his skin open. Nobody speaks as they watch this sickening footage, which seems to go on and on. Each second that goes by I pray that Steve finally walks through the door and ends his mother’s assault on his brother. But he doesn’t yet come, and Rica continues to beat Ronan, screaming at him.

A loud sob—not my sob—echoes through the courtroom when Rica slams the hockey stick into Ronan’s right knee with a sickening sound of bone breaking, and Ronan begs his mother to stop hurting him. “Mom, please. No more.”

It’s agonizing.

“You know how I hate it when you beg, you piece of shit. If you beg me for anything, beg for me to put you out of your misery. Come on, Ronan! Beg! Beg for me to kill you!”

I’m shaking, my hands trembling, shocked at her words, her callousness, her viciousness, her violence. Even when the hockey stick fractures—the force of her hits too much for the hard wood to withstand—she doesn’t let up and resorts to kicking Ronan in the face and stomach. He’s bleeding profusely, his face resembling a prizefighter’s as Rica relentlessly takes advantage of Ronan’s inability to protect all of him at once.

I can see Ronan’s energy waning, and I think it must be over any second now. But then Ronan seems to gather every ounce of strength left in him in an attempt to get up. He moves his right, still unbroken hand to push himself off the ground. I’m in awe of the fight he has within him. His effort, however, is immediately thwarted when Rica slams her foot into his face, forcing him back to the ground yet again, fresh blood spilling from another wound inflicted on his body. Ronan seemingly surrenders to her, no longer attempting to get up. I can’t imagine he has very much strength left in his battered body at this point. He seems to be on the verge of losing consciousness, unable to shield himself as his mother forcefully kicks him in his stomach several more times, and I wish, no, pray for it to be over as I cry desperate tears.

And then I hear him, hear Steve’s voice in the background. My eyes move away from the image of Ronan’s broken body briefly as Steve and Zack appear on the screen. Steve yells at his mother to stop. The relief momentarily felt by everyone watching, however, is wiped away when Rica stomps on Ronan’s unprotected rib cage. The sound of his ribs breaking echoes through the silent courtroom.

We know what happens next, obviously. We’ve seen Zack’s footage, have heard Steve, Zack, Frank, the EMTs, and the police officers testify about what they witnessed, but it’s still startling to watch Steve push his mother away from Ronan, then frantically drop to his knees as Ronan struggles for air. The sounds of Ronan’s coughs and his desperate attempts to get air into his injured lungs are devastating. Even in this video, it takes a perceived eternity for the ambulance to arrive while Steve pumps Ronan’s heart.

It’s the first time we see Frank frantically make his way into the house. He pushes past the police officers as they try to stop him from entering the living room. Frank’s face drains of all color when he finds his oldest son—shirt stained with blood—kneeling on the floor next to his youngest son, two paramedics by Ronan’s side as they shock Ronan’s heart once, then twice.

“What happened? What the hell happened?” Frank asks over and over, but nobody stops to answer his question as they try to get control of the situation.

Darren Cooley allows the footage to run until Ronan is moved out of the house on a stretcher and Rica is led to a police car only minutes later. It remains silent in the courtroom while the lights are turned back on and the curtains are pulled aside. Natural daylight floods the courtroom. I notice the dark clouds in the sky, gray and heavy with rain, matching the somber mood.

I look at Ronan, whose head is lowered.

“Ronan, how much of what we just watched are you able to remember?” Mr. Cooley asks, his warm voice echoing around the four walls of the otherwise silent courtroom.

Ronan takes a deep breath in, holds it for a moment, then releases it. I know he’s working to ground himself.

“I remember everything until the moment I finally blacked out,” he says, his voice low, his eyes not seeking anyone else’s. He’s lost in the past right now, stuck in the moment when his mother almost ended him. “I remember what it felt like when my mom slammed my hockey stick into my face; I remember falling into the coffee table and how the glass cut into my skin; I remember how it felt when she broke my hand, my nose; I remember the pain that shot through my body when she fractured my kneecap. And I remember hearing my brother’s voice,” Ronan says, lifting his head to look at the attorney. “I remember the split second in which I thought it was finally over. And I remember her breaking my ribs. I could hear it. It felt like she ripped all the air from my lungs at once,” Ronan says, his voice small.

There’s silence as he tells his story.

“I could hear my brother telling me to breathe. He told me over and over again. And I tried. God, I fucking tried.” Ronan’s voice cracks and he breaks eye contact with the attorney, looking down again, his face contorted as he tries to keep it together. “I felt myself dying,” he says slowly, quietly. “It was like I was drowning from the inside. I could feel myself slipping away and then the pain just… stopped. And there was peace,” Ronan says with finality.

Darren Cooley stays silent for a moment, allowing Ronan’s words, the heaviness of it all, the last several, long hours of painful testimony to sink in with the jury, those in attendance—and with Rica, who to my utter surprise is wiping away her own tears. But honestly, the fact that she’s crying just makes me hate her more. How dare she exhibit this kind of emotion after everything she’s done to her son. Is this her attempt to sway the jury?

“What’s the next thing you remember after passing out on the living room floor of your house?”

“Hearing my dad’s voice,” Ronan says, his voice meek. “He just kept telling me to wake up. It felt kind of like I was underwater. I struggled to come out of it. I remember it was dark. I heard beeping, there was an IV in my right hand, my dad was by my side.”

“Did you know where you were?”

---