CHAPTER THREE — THE LOCKED PRACTICE ROOM
The commission’s receptionist transferred me to an investigator named Elena Ruiz.
Ruiz did not explain the allegations over the telephone.
She did confirm that the notice was genuine and that Friday’s conference would proceed whether or not we attended.
“Your family has a meaningful opportunity to be heard,” she said.
“Please preserve the envelope and any communications concerning its delivery.”
“Our neighbor smashed our mailbox this morning.”
Silence held for a moment.
“Is your neighbor connected to the club?”
“She’s the head coach.”
Ruiz exhaled slowly.
“Please tell me precisely what you saw.”
I described the hammer, the boot, and Judith’s warning about Saturday.
Ruiz asked whether I had reported the destruction.
I told her I was about to.
“Do that independently,” she said.
“And please don’t confront any athlete about details they aren’t ready to discuss.”
After the call, Daniel drove to the police station with photographs of the damage.
I stayed home to speak with Sophie.
She had changed into her team sweatshirt and was tying her hair in a tight knot.
“I’m going,” she announced.
“Not until we understand what’s happening.”
“If I miss tonight, I lose my floor position.”
“Who said that?”
“Everybody knows it.”
“That’s not an answer.”
Sophie put down her brush.
“You only see what happens when the doors are open.”
I waited.
She watched the hallway, although we were alone.
“Judith keeps some of us after normal practice,” she said.
“She calls it finishing school.”
“Finishing what?”
“Whatever she says isn’t clean enough.”
“Does anyone else stay?”
“Two other girls.
”
“And the assistant coaches?”
“They’re supposed to go home.”
“Are you hurt?”
She rolled her shoulder and winced before catching herself.
“It’s nothing.”
“Sophie.”
“I fell three weeks ago.”
She spoke so quietly I almost missed it.
“Judith told me I couldn’t tell the sports doctor because they’d make me stop.”
The brush slipped from my hand.
“You fell where?”
“During vault practice.”
“Did you hit your head?”
“My shoulder and neck.”
“Were you dizzy?”
Her silence answered before she did.
“A little,” she said.
“I need you to see a doctor today.”
“Then I won’t compete.”
“Then you won’t compete until you’re safe.”
Her face crumpled with a grief I had never seen over a lost medal.
“You don’t understand,” she said.
“Judith told us if one person talks, every scholarship recommendation disappears.”
CHAPTER FOUR — THE WOMAN NEXT DOOR
Judith’s house stood twenty feet from ours, separated by a hedge she trimmed with almost military precision.
She had moved into the neighborhood six years earlier, shortly before Sophie entered the advanced gymnastics program.
At first we had been grateful for her attention.
She brought soup when Daniel had pneumonia, attended Sophie’s school concerts, and remembered birthdays without checking a calendar.
She also volunteered opinions about our family decisions whenever she thought we were making a mistake.
I had mistaken her certainty for generosity.
By late afternoon our mailbox lay on the garage floor, and a temporary mail hold had been arranged at the post office.
Daniel returned from the station carrying a case number.
“They’ll contact her,” he said.
“They also asked whether she took anything.”
“I don’t know.”
“Neither do I.”
A knock came at the front door.
Judith stood outside holding a new mailbox in a cardboard carton.
“I thought we could start over,” she said.
Daniel stepped into the doorway beside me.
“You can leave that outside.”
“I came to apologize.”
“Then apologize.”
Judith pressed her lips together.
“I’m sorry the box got damaged.”
“You damaged it,” I said.
“You hit it repeatedly.”
“I was upset.”
“About the letter?”
“About what people are doing to our girls.”
She glanced over my shoulder.
“Is Sophie home?”
“She’s resting.”
“She has a championship this weekend.”
“She has a doctor’s appointment tomorrow.”
Judith’s eyes hardened.
“You cannot sabotage her future because an agency sent you a bureaucratic threat.”
“You smashed government mail delivery equipment with a hammer,” Daniel said.
“You’re in no position to lecture us about procedure.”
Judith ignored him.
“If Sophie attends that conference, strangers will make her say things she doesn’t mean.”
“She can speak for herself.”
“Teenagers don’t understand the consequences of public accusations.”
“Then why did you tell her she’d lose scholarship recommendations if she spoke?”
Judith became very still.
“She misunderstood me.”
“You can explain that to the investigators,” I said.
She lowered the carton to the porch.
“You’ll regret turning a disagreement into a war.”
The threat was delivered gently, almost like a warning about bad weather.
Then she walked across the hedge opening she had always used as if our yards were one household.
Daniel closed the door.
“We should have shut that gate years ago,” he said.
