Healing After Hate

Charlotte, North Carolina

I MADE THE TRIP FROM CHARLOTTE to Charleston, South Carolina, full of dread. I didn’t want to be there, didn’t want to sit through the trial of the man who’d killed my mother at the church she loved, didn’t want to be in the same room with him. She’d gone to church for the Wednesday night Bible study, as always, and been gunned down along with eight other innocent souls. We’d waited a year and a half, and now, just before Christmas, the trial would begin. Justice would be served—or so I hoped. I’ve got to keep myself together, I told myself. For Momma.

The courtroom was small. There was room only for the victims’ immediate families. The prosecution team had talked to us beforehand, telling us what to expect, giving us a crash course in courtroom decorum. No outbursts. No running out mid-proceeding. But how could anything prepare me for what I knew I would have