Part 3 — The Fence At Recess
The officers cleared our apartment one room at a time while I held Ava in the hallway. The second pair of pink sneakers in the closet was a copy of the first, down to the blinking green light. A detective named Morales studied both of them under a flashlight and then asked me, gently, whether I had ever had a reason to be afraid of someone.
I told her the truth, and it was a truth I had kept from every person in Kentucky. Two years ago I left Dayton, Ohio, with a court protective order against Avas father, Derek Pruitt. I changed my number and moved states, and I told myself that a thousand miles was enough. I never mentioned it at the school because I did not want my daughter to be the girl with a story.
Morales traced the trackers in a single afternoon. Both had been bought with the same card, and it belonged to Derek. He had learned our new city from a moving company page left open on a shared computer, and he had found Avas school through a registration form. The coach who was not a coach was him, standing at the fence at recess in a borrowed windbreaker.
The apartment had a lockbox system for maintenance, and Derek had used a code he got from a former employee of the management company to open the building and the closet. That was how the shoes were placed with no sign of a break-in. Nobody was home at the time, and nobody was harmed. That fact is the one I held onto all night.
Morales asked me to trust her plan. Monday early release was circled in red on the schedule, so we knew where he would be. On Monday, plainclothes officers stood quietly along the school fence, and Ava stayed home with my cousin. At twenty past one, a man in a coachs windbreaker walked up to the chain-link and was gently stopped by two officers. No one raised a voice.
For two years I thought safety was a place I could move to, and I learned it is something a whole town can build around you.
Derek was charged with violating a protective order, stalking, unlawful tracking and criminal trespass. A Fayette County judge denied bail, and he was returned to Ohio to answer the charges there. The Ohio court extended the protective order for ten years and ordered supervised no-contact. He did not contest any of it, and he never once looked at me.
The apartment manager was honest and horrified. The company replaced the lockbox system with key cards, paid for the new cameras at our entrance, and refunded our deposit. The school added a pickup password for every parent and a quiet note in each file, and the principal personally walked Ava to class on Tuesday morning holding her hand.
Ava saw a counselor who let her draw. She asked if the coach was sad, and I told her that some grown-ups make terrible choices, and that judges and teachers and police are there so little girls can run and play. She thought for a while, nodded, and asked if they had snacks at the counselors office.
Gus at the shoe store had once seen a tracker in a truckers boot, which is how he knew what he was feeling in that insole. I took him a pie, and he turned pink and hid behind the register. He now keeps a small sign by the counter that reads, If something feels wrong, ask a clerk.
Ava picked out purple sneakers with lights that flash blue. She ran across the school field at recess last week while I watched from the fence, the same fence, and I waved. She waved back with her whole arm and ran faster than I have ever seen a child run.