You aren’t supposed to blame the parents, but you do anyway.
Parents are expected to stick by their children no matter what.
Maybe it’s worse than outliving them, sitting there in the courtroom while witnesses describe the horrors in excruciating detail, first to the prosecutor and then to the defense.
How familiar the situation must be to them, this cross-examination.
Do they sit there, searching their own flawed memories for a single moment when they might have changed everything with a word?
They only made it through the first two days.
Maybe they watched the rest from home on television.
I liked that this was in the son’s point of view, not the parents
Dear J Hardy,
Fortunately none of my kids grew up to commit heinous crimes, but I relate to this parent’s angst. There are so many things I wish I could go back and do differently. I’ll leave it there with sensitively written story. Well done.
Shalom,
Rochelle
A great idea for a story – what do the parents’ feel? So difficult.
Eerily, I entertained similar thoughts to this whilst listening to some heinous murder trial yesterday, where the accused were only fourteen at the time of the crime. Well encapsulated. Good one.
Interesting take on the prompt. Nice writing and engages with a lot of good questions. Well done.
Quite a journey you took this week and I enjoyed sitting in a passenger seat. Thank you.
The parents must question themselves when in this situation, but sometimes nothing they could have done would have changed the child. Nicely done.
This is a brilliant point of view.. what you tell without telling it is perfect.
What he did must have been very, very bad. Thanks for hinting but not telling.
Definitely exploring a complex and difficult situation. I like the way you approached this.