M. Gessen

This collection of notes and observations would never have happened if I wasn't set up by the FBI and charged with a crime I didn't commit.

Priscilla has continued to take extreme care with talking to the kids about Alan.

Ella's still little and doesn't remember Alan well at all.

She's just told that her dad works far away.

O is 12 now, so there's no hiding from him facts that are easily available on the internet.

Priscilla involved O's therapist in telling him.

The therapist also handles the letters that Alan writes to O, filtering what's appropriate for O to read and in what context.

And now Lena, with this book, was throwing all of this into disarray.

So, no more Lena visits.

More court hearings followed.

Lena represented herself.

As time went on, Priscilla said, it came across more pathetic than menacing.

I was eventually able to listen to a partial recording of a hearing, and I agree.

Lena sounds sad, almost like she still hasn't understood what's happened to her.

How is it possible, she seems to be asking, that her life collapsed, that her son is in prison, and that her grandchildren's mother doesn't want the kids to spend time with her when she has so much to give?

It's hard to listen to.

Until the judge catches Lena lying, or apparently attempting to mislead the court.

This happens repeatedly.

But before that happened, a copy of the locked-up lawyer had been entered into evidence.

Lena said that she had no idea how the book ended up in O's bag.