The other students were treating it as an academic exercise, analyzing Cold War politics like they were solving a puzzle. But I was thinking about real applications of power and fear, about how systems of oppression function when they're designed by people who understand psychology better than their victims do.
I wanted to tell them that deterrence only works until someone decides the consequences of action are preferable to the consequences of inaction. I wanted to explain that sometimes the threat of mutual destruction isn't enough to prevent necessary change.
Instead, I sat there and performed the role of the traumatized student slowly recovering from tragedy. Because that's what they need me to be—a cautionary tale with a redemptive arc, someone whose suffering serves a narrative purpose they can understand.
But you see me differently. You see someone who participated in justice rather than witnessed tragedy. Someone who understands the necessity of what happened rather than someone who needs to forgive and heal and move on.
That recognition means everything to me. It means I'm not losing my mind when I feel grateful instead of grief-stricken. It means I'm not broken when I feel disconnected from concerns that used to seem important.
You asked about my anger, whether it's directed at the right targets. The honest answer is that I'm angry at everyone who enabled him. The police colleagues who covered for his drinking and his temper. The neighbors who chose not to see the signs. The system that protected him because he wore a badge and spoke the right language about law and order.
I'm angry that it took a stranger to deliver the justice that should have been available through legitimate channels. Angry that you had to risk everything to stop someone who should have been stopped years ago by people whose job it was to protect victims like me.
But I'm not angry at you. I'm grateful to you in ways I can't fully express. You saw through his performance when everyone else was fooled. You acted when everyone else looked away. You delivered justice when the system failed.
That gratitude isn't trauma-bonding or misplaced emotion—it's the recognition of someone who finally experienced real protection instead of its absence.
Your distinction between murder and execution resonates deeply with me. What happened that night wasn't violence for violence's sake—it was surgery, the careful removal of something malignant that would have continued spreading harm indefinitely.
I understand now why you position the bodies the way you do, why every detail has to be perfect. It's not just about sending a message to law enforcement—it's about honoring the significance of what you've done. Justice deserves ceremony, even when it happens outside official channels.
Especially when it happens outside official channels.
I've been thinking about your question regarding whether I plan to pursue law enforcement or criminal justice as a career. The answer is yes, but probably not in the way most people would expect. I want to understand how people become monsters, how they hide in plain sight, how they manipulate systems designed to protect their victims.
I want to become someone who can identify predators before they perfect their methods. Someone who can speak for victims who can't speak for themselves. Someone who understands that justice sometimes requires actions that can't be taken through official channels.
Does that make me like you? Am I becoming someone who could do what you do if circumstances required it?
I don't know yet. But I'm not afraid of finding out.
D.
I fold the letter carefully, matching his precise creases, and seal it in an envelope addressed to his P.O. Box. Tomorrow I'll mail it from the post office near school, during lunch period when no one will notice my absence from the cafeteria.
But first, I need to process what I've just written. The questions I asked, the admissions I made, the possibility I raised about becoming someone who could cross the same lines he's crossed.
Because sitting here in Janine's safe house, surrounded by evidence of normal life and legitimate concern, I realize that Kent's letters aren't just helping me understand what happened that night. They're helping me understand who I might become if I follow the logic of what we shared to its natural conclusion.
The thought should terrify me. Instead, it feels like possibility.
***
Three weeks later, I'm writing the letter that will change everything between us.
It's past midnight, and Janine's house has settled into the quiet rhythms of sleep. I sit at my desk in pajamas and fuzzy socks, surrounded by discarded drafts of a letter I've been trying to write for days. Each attempt has felt either too guarded or too revealing, never quite capturing the truth I need him to understand.
But tonight feels different. Tonight, the barriers between thought and expression have dissolved in ways that feel both liberating and terrifying.
Kent,
I need to tell you something I've never told anyone, something I'm not sure I should be telling you. But our correspondence has become the only place where I can be completely honest, and I think honesty is what you deserve from me.
You are the only person in my life who sees me clearly.
That sounds dramatic, probably naive coming from someone my age. But it's true in ways I'm still learning to understand. Everyone else—Janine, my teachers, the therapist, even well-meaning classmates—they see what they want to see. The traumatized daughter who needs healing. The survivor who requires protection. The victim whose experience should be processed through conventional frameworks of grief and recovery.
They see someone broken who needs to be fixed. You see someone awakened who needs to be understood.
