began choking me, and my grandpa heard it and stopped him in time.
But I know what I saw in his eyes.
Her letter was like a handrail fixed to reality, one I could reach out
and grasp when my mind began to spin. That is, until it occurred to me
that she might be as crazy as I was. She was damaged, obviously, I told
myself. How could I trust her account after what she’d been through? I
could not give this woman credence because I, of all people, knew how
crippling her psychological injuries were. So I continued searching for
testimony from some other source.
Four years later, by pure chance, I would get it.
While traveling in Utah for research, I would meet a young man who
would bristle at my last name.
“Westover,” he would say, his face darkening. “Any relation to
Shawn?”
“My brother.”
“Well, the last time I saw your brother,” he would say, emphasizing
this last word as if he were spitting on it, “he had both hands wrapped
around my cousin’s neck, and he was smashing her head into a brick
wall. He would have killed her, if it weren’t for my grandfather.”
And there it was. A witness. An impartial account. But by the time I
heard it, I no longer needed to hear it. The fever of self-doubt had
broken long ago. That’s not to say I trusted my memory absolutely, but
I trusted it as much as I trusted anybody else’s, and more than some
people’s.
But that was years away.