M. Gessen

As if falling short of the daily goal for Mary Poppins and Russian wasn't bad enough, Lena complained in the family chat that O was not receiving hot chocolate, or enough hot chocolate.

I fear that O and L are now Lena's only project.

Well, really O, because, as she acknowledged in court, she barely knows L. She's in her 70s, living alone in a Jewish elderly housing complex.

She has been divorced for half a century.

She never had a career.

She used to believe that her son, Alan, would become a great man.

He's in prison.

That leaves O as the one thing that can give her life purpose.

And she's continuing to pursue this purpose.

After Alan was arrested, law enforcement helped Priscilla move to a new neighborhood, where no one was supposed to be able to find her.

But,

And she's not supposed to know where you live, right?

Priscilla's lawyer wrote to Lena, warning her to stay away.

Lena wrote to her own lawyer, claiming that she had come to the neighborhood to pick up something that she had bought from Facebook Marketplace.

Priscilla doesn't believe her, because Lena lives a couple of towns away, and because the corner Lena was standing on is the intersection of two minor residential streets, unremarkable, except for the fact that it's on O's route from school.

Also, this wasn't the first time Lena had been spotted in the neighborhood.

A few months earlier, O told Priscilla that he thought he had seen his grandmother outside his school.

Priscilla asked the school to check security camera footage, and they showed her what they'd found.

Lena, with O going right past her on his scooter.

Lena denied to Priscilla that she'd been there.