Page 160 of Edge of Unbroken

I can’t take my eyes off Ronan. My own tears now drench my face as he recalls the violence. I had no idea, and looking down the row at Frank, Steve, Zack, Summer, Shane, Tori, and Vada, they didn’t know either, had not even a hint of an idea of how bad it really was for Ronan.

Mr. Cooley picks up on a detail Ronan just divulged. “Ronan, you just said something about your mom setting your collarbone. What did you mean by that?”

“It’s what she’d do,” Ronan says, his voice thick. His breathing is off, like he’s verging on an anxiety attack. “She’d usually just take care of any injuries that needed treatment. She’s an ER nurse, so she knows what she’s doing, right?” His voice cracks.

“She’d set your broken bones?”

“Yeah. Or she’d glue a deep laceration or ice an injury or provide whatever treatment she could provide, I guess. When I dislocated my shoulder last year, she relocated it. When I broke my collarbone and displaced it, she set it. She has set and relocated I don’t know how many of my fingers.”

“She would do this at home?”

“Yes.”

“Before doing this, would she give you pain medication or a sedative?”

Ronan shakes his head. “No.”

“To clarify,” the attorney says, glancing at the notes he took, “your mom would inflict an injury on you that would require setting or relocating, and then she would set the broken bone or relocate whatever joint was dislocated, in your home, without any sedative or anesthesia or pain medication?”

“Yeah,” Ronan says heavily.

A few seats down from me, Frank drops his face into his hands with a pained groan.

“Jesus,” Mr. Cooley mutters with a small shake of his head.

My gaze sweeps to Rica. I want to know if Ronan’s recollection of these horrible things is jarring to her, if she recognizes what a monster she is, how much pain she inflicted on her own child. What I see angers me. She just sits there, seemingly devoid of all emotion, her eyes directed at no one, head bowed. Is she so cold? So unfeeling?

It’s once again striking how small she looks in her seat, her shoulders hunched. If I was a juror, I’m not sure I could believe this petite and stunningly beautiful woman is capable of the horror Ronan has only just begun to describe. I glance at the jury box and am relieved to find expressions of disgust, pain, incredulity, and anger on the faces of the strangers tasked with deciding whether Rica is guilty of abusing her son. They don’t seem indifferent at all. They look appropriately enraged.

Mr. Cooley studies Ronan’s face for a moment before he continues, allowing the jury to take in the impact of Ronan’s testimony thus far. Ronan already looks like he just ran a marathon, his shoulders heavy, defeat etched into his perfect features. He looks like a boy sitting in that chair, everyone watching him as he recalls some of the most painful memories of his life.

Finally, the attorney continues his questioning, meticulously uncovering incidents buried deep in the past.

“When I was four, my dad left for three months to go to Germany. I remember begging him not to leave because I knew what would happen if he wasn’t around. But he left anyway,” Ronan says, his head dipped down, gaze trained on his hands rather than the attorney. I turn my head to glance at Frank, who’s squeezing his own eyes shut, pain on his face at the realization that his absence meant pain for his boy. “I cried when he walked out the door and I watched him drive away. There was this hallway window with a side table underneath it. I climbed on it and watched my dad drive off. As soon as he was out of sight, my mom yanked me off that table and dragged me into the kitchen, yelling at me to stop crying, which just made me cry harder. She finally shut me up when she put her belt around my neck and choked me until I passed out.”

I have a strong urge to leave the courtroom and run away. Part of me feels unable to continue listening to what Ronan has been through. I never truly understood the horror. Hearing it from him is jarring. I want to do what he asked me to do: run away with him. But I don’t. I stay firmly seated in my seat, determined to hear every detail, share every bit of his pain, shoulder some of the burden.

“Was it just your mom and you at home?” Mr. Cooley asks.

Ronan shakes his head. “No. My brother was home, too. I’m pretty sure he was in the living room, watching TV while my mom and I were in the kitchen.”

A strangled sound escapes Steve as Frank moves his arm around his oldest son’s shoulder.

“Did you tell anyone about that incident?” the attorney asks, and I know it’s a question the jurors are probably wondering about, too.

“No,” Ronan says with a small shake of his head.

“Why not?”

“Because I knew better than to tell. I knew if I told someone, my mom would’ve hurt me even more.”

“Did your mom ever tell you not to tell someone or she would hurt you more?” the prosecutor asks.

“I don’t remember a specific conversation like that, but… I don’t know.” Ronan sighs heavily.

“Explain it to the jury, Ronan. Why didn’t you tell anyone about your mom choking you when you were four?”

“I don’t know. I mean…” Ronan stops and thinks. “I was scared of her. I was scared of the pain, scared of the yelling. I don’t know…” he says wearily. “I just knew that if I told someone, I’d get in trouble because I got in trouble for everything. Telling someone just wasn’t an option,” he says through gritted teeth, frustrated at the attorney’s seeming inability to understand the psychological impact of Rica’s abuse. But I understand that Mr. Cooley has to ask these questions. I know that most people who haven’t experienced the kind of trauma Ronan has would think that the simple solution to the ongoing abuse was to rat on the abuser.

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